Jaune was making his way to Amity alone, walking through the halls of Beacon and towards the area where the ships bringing people on and off the colosseum were stationed.

Well, as alone as he could be, anyway.

You know, I thought that having a physical form would mean that I want to be my own person at all times, but honestly? Making you do all the boring stuff like walking around is kind of nice.

You do realize I could just expel you from my head right now, right? Jaune reminded Second Thoughts

But you won’t, because I’m amazing and you love having me as your semblance.

Do I really?

Of course.

Where is all this confidence coming from? Ever since you manifested, you’ve been… different, somehow. I’m not really sure how to put it into words.

Me? Confident?

Exactly my point! Before you were sort of a smug, pretentious jerk-

Rude

-but you also spent a lot of time worrying about who we could trust, and what would change the timeline, and just had a general sense of… anxiousness, I guess? Like you were constantly paranoid that the other shoe was about to drop.

I would have appreciated you wording that in a nicer way, but I guess you’re not exactly wrong.

Well, how am I supposed to word it?

I don’t know, just nicer! I have feelings too, you know!

Riiight. Jaune rolled his eyes. But anyway, my point is that now, you… well, it seems like the anxiousness has sort of gone away and now you’re just a smug, preten-

I get it! You don’t have to repeat it. I’m an ass… I thought I was improving though! We had our little heart to heart, didn’t we? Have I really not gotten any better about that?

Well… I guess you have improved a little bit, at least when it comes to talking to me, but with how crazy things have been lately…

I’ve been slipping into old habits, haven’t I? Shit.

Jaune frowned as he stepped onto the bullhead, several of the other passengers giving him strange looks as they watched his expression change constantly for no apparent reason.

Well, it’s not so much that you’re being as rude to me. It’s more… maybe it’s because you can finally interact with other people? On your own, I mean.

What do you mean by that? Second asked.

Well, after the whole Breach and Cinder thing, and my- I mean our friends, Jaune corrected, were talking about maybe going after her… did you really have to bring up Ruby and Yang’s dead mom?

I… well… it did the job, didn’t it? They stopped trying to plan their little suicide mission.

You can do that without bringing up their dead mom!

I was going through a lot at the time! I’d just manifested for the first time, there was the panic attack, you’d seen some stuff you shouldn’t have, I just wanted to keep them safe!

I still don’t think it was fair of you to do that, but even if we ignore that example, then how about… just casually telling everyone that Pyrrha would kill Penny?

Was it casual? I was going for more of a “big reveal” vibe with that whole explanation.

That’s too big of a reveal! We haven’t all had much time to hang out with the Vytal festival going on, but think about how awkward Pyrrha is going to feel around Penny from now on! Every time they see each other, she’s going to think “What if I had killed you?” or something like that.

You… may have a point there…

Once the festival started, I started thinking that maybe you had calmed down a bit. Outside of your response to Yang’s… teasing… all you really did outside of small talk was give us information on our opponents. But then we go to that meeting and you start doing it again!

What did I do wrong in the meeting? It was a sales pitch! I was trying to sell Roman and Neo as allies rather than enemies, and potentially a very good ally to have with Neo. I’m capable of pretending to be sure of myself in situations like that.

Second. Jaune managed to deadpan within his thoughts. You were acting like you were old friends with one of the most well known criminals in Vale. Even if it was an act like you’re saying, I’m not sure that you can just call that “being sure of yourself.”

You agreed with me in the meeting!

I agreed that they should know what they’re getting into if their lives were at stake, I wasn’t giving a general agreement to everything you said!

Well you should! I was making solid points!

You threatened Ozpin!

No, I threatened Roman!

Threaten him with what?! I know everyone in that room views me as some goofball kid in over his head at best-

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You did forge your transcripts to get in…

-but I’m not a complete idiot! Roman doesn’t have options, Ozpin does, the threat was directed at him.

You can’t prove that.

It’s not a matter of proving that! The point I’m trying to make is that you’re threatening people at all! I know you have your problems with Ozpin or whatever, but I happen to think he’s a good guy. And if you’re trying to get Roman to work with us, then I don’t see the point in threatening either of them. And I really don’t see how you went from so worked up and anxious over everything that you had a panic attack strong enough to knock me out, to so confident in your decisions that you’re willing to threaten people when it doesn’t look like things are going your way.

That’s… hmm…

Talk to me, Second. What happened to “you deserve to know everything”?

You don’t have to throw my words back at me like that. I just… it’s easy to say that things will change, but actually doing it is something else entirely. I guess maybe… when I realized how poorly worrying over everything was working out, I might have overcorrected?

What do you mean by that?

I mean, trying to analyze your own behavior is kind of an impossible task because you’re always justifying things to yourself, but I guess now that you’ve pointed this all out… maybe I’ve been trying to bury all that anxiety with… well… everything you’ve been complaining about. Plus, you know, I’m just sort of generally an ass.

My dad did tell me that “all you need is confidence”, but I don’t think this is quite what he meant, Second.

Yeah. Probably not.

The two settled into a slightly uncomfortable silence as their flight up to Amity finished and Jaune stepped off of the bullhead.

I’ve never been good with people, Jaune.

Yeah. I think calling someone a parasite on your first day of existence is probably a good indicator of that, Jaune joked.

My first… yeah. Anyway, feedback received, I’ll try to be better about it. Let’s hurry over to your friends already before they kill you for missing the singles matches.

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Emerald was having a very bad time.

“She’ll win, of course. She’s one of his friends.” Cinder remarked, eyes glued to the screen as they watched the blonde bimbo duke it out with some loser she didn’t recognize in the singles rounds of the Vytal festival.

“Are you really still obsessing over that child?” Watts asked, exasperation clear in his voice. “Come now, Cinder, we all know that you’re but a simple minded buffoon who can’t accomplish anything on her own, but you really ought to give up on this little fantasy of yours. Do you really think that if this all-knowing semblance you keep harping on about existed, that you would have escaped with your life? I could very easily kill you, and though I am not quite at that level, I am far closer to being omniscient than this boy.”

The creep was waxing his mustache. Again. He seemed to be as obsessed with his appearance as Cinder was becoming with Arc and his semblance. Not just his physical appearance, mind you, but the overall view people had of him. He had to look his best at all times, if only to make his supposed “genius” shine even brighter in the eyes of the “lowly masses”.

But given how harshly security had clamped down in the area, the only “lowly masses” that were forced to watch the trainwreck were her and Mercury.

“Quiet, Watts. You making yourself useful for once in your life changes nothing.” Cinder snapped at him.

Watts was, admittedly, very skilled when it came to hacking and whatnot, but there were enough living soldiers around at the moment that they couldn’t really risk going out in public.

Being trapped in a tiny safehouse with these three was quickly driving her insane.

She loved Cinder, would do anything for her, but… even if Arc had been the source of their problems and failu- setbacks, even Emerald was getting sick of hearing how “everything is his doing!”

“Of course, what was I thinking!” Watts rolled his eyes. “Perhaps I should have let the big bad first year student spell your doom! Watch out, Cinder, he might be planning your downfall at this very moment!”

Arc and Second Thoughts knew which safehouse she would stay in, so they’d been forced to swap between three at random intervals, their next destination literally being chosen out of a hat.

Arc and Second Thoughts knew which escape route out of Vale they would use, so they needed to hide within the city… despite the fact that it was crawling with people looking for them.

Arc and Second Thoughts knew what box of cereal they would eat out of in the morning, so she’d been tasked with stealing some from the neighbors in case it had somehow been poisoned.

None of it made sense. Cinder had become paranoid. But the fact that the Haven headmaster, who had apparently been working for Cinder’s… group… for some time now, was ousted at the same time that they had been? Well, that certainly didn’t help make Cinder see things clearly.

And to top it all off, she hadn’t been given a chance to properly rest since the Breach.

Ensuring Cinder’s escape had been torturous. She didn’t think she’d worked her semblance that hard since… well, ever really. Constantly switching targets, trying to track who would attack Cinder next, putting in just enough effort to make a difference while trying to keep herself from passing out from exhaustion…

She had practically been a walking corpse by the time Watts had bailed Cinder out.

And then, of course, since they were on the run and she had the only semblance useful for disguising them…

Well, at this point she didn’t think she was too far off from seeing some hallucinations herself instead of casting them on others. Only difference was that the ones she experienced would be due to sleep deprivation and being utterly spent.

Sitting beside her, Mercury leaned over to whisper. “If those two kill each other, what happens to us?”

Part of her wanted to kill him right then and there for even mentioning the possibility of Cinder’s death.

The other part of her wondered if their deaths would mean that she would finally get a full night’s sleep.

----------------------------------------

It wasn’t often that she took the time to watch something like this.

But she was curious.

In the seclusion of her tent, none would dare to bother her. Getting close enough to a major city so that she could actually get a decent reception had a few of them on edge, but she could just head towards the nearest village after this and all would be forgotten.

It’s not like she needed to spend much time on this. One fight would be enough.

She watched as punches flew, gunfire rained down in an attempt to create some distance, aura flared to protect the brawler.

She could really do without the oaf rambling on about nothing, but with how poor the video quality was and all the buffering she had to sit through, having the co-host’s insights on the fight was necessary to keep up with the flow of the battle.

Not that it lasted very long. Really, it was over quite quickly after it started.

As it should be.

Though the target of her interest had won their fight, she turned off the broadcast. She didn’t need to see the rest of the tournament.

The girl was strong, for her age at least, if that footage was anything to go by.

Just not strong enough.