When Globe and Chroma made it to the ruins, globe was extra glad to see that Emerald and Mercury, his two best friends, were among the four that were already there.

  "Emerald! Mercury!" Globe shouted, before running even faster towards them.

  Emerald and Mercury looked surprised to see him, for some reason, turning to each other to talk about something that Globe couldn't quite hear. When Emerald turned back to face him, she did so with a look of horror on her face, and looked like she was about to scream something, but that something never came out as Globe barreled into her, knocking the wind out of her as he scooped her up and spun her around.

  "Glad to see you too, buddy," Mercury said, after landing on top of Globe's shoulders. "And you too, Chroma. Nice ride you got, here."

  "It was very comfortable," Chroma said, as Emerald struggled to catch her breath in Globe's arms.

  "Aww, they're so cute!" the blonde girl standing a few feet away from them said. "You think they know each other from before Beacon?"

  "Obviously," the black-haired girl standing beside her said, rolling her eyes.

  "At-" Emerald screamed, though it was cut off when Atlas squeezed her tight, knocking the wind out of her once more, before she kneed him in the stomach, making him slacken his grip slightly. "Fucking moron. Let me go!"

  Reluctantly, Atlas let her go, and Emerald stumbled when she landed, though she managed to catch herself before she fell. Running her hands through her hair to straighten it again, she sent a glare towards the blonde girl, who matched her glare with a grin.

  "You guys know each other from before Beacon?" the blonde asked, directing it towards Emerald this time. "And just in case you try to lie, I saw you all sleeping in a cuddle pile last night."

  "Unfortunately," Emerald grumbled, as she ran her hands through her hair one last time. "This is Atlas and Chroma."

  "Who?" Chroma yelled, before slipping out of her ropes and falling to the floor, glaring at the two girls, clearly expecting one of them to be the aforementioned Atlas.

  "And these are Yang and Blake," Emerald said, ignoring Chroma's outburst completely. "Please don't hug them."

  "Aww, why not?" Yang asked. "I like hugs."

  Atlas gasped in joy, before he surged forwards, though Emerald jumped on his back and caught him in a stranglehold before he could get too far, making him stop abruptly.

  "Woah, buddy. Easy there," Yang said, reeling back in surprise at the suddenness of what had happened.

  "Don't say that if you don't want to get attacked," Emerald said, with a sigh, as she slowly let go of Atlas's neck. "He's excitable."

  "I can see that," Yang said, backing away slowly, with a smile. "Maybe later then."

  "I'd like to put it out there that I don't like hugs. At all," Blake said, already having backed away at least double the distance that Yang had.

  Atlas stared at Blake, completely unable to comprehend the words that just came out of her mouth. He blinked a few times, just to see if that would somehow un-utter the blasphemous words that had escaped her, but when nothing happened, he looked down at Emerald for an explanation.

  "Some people just don't like hugs, Atlas," Emerald said frankly. "For what it's worth. I don't like hugs either. You just keep forcing them on me whether I like it or not."

  Atlas's eyes widened before he threw his head back and laughed.

  "Oh my word," he said, wiping a tear from his eyes. "You almost had me fooled. Oh, I know we will be the best of friends, you rapscallion."

  "Me?" Blake asked, pointing at herself, as if Atlas could be talking to anyone else. "What did I do?"

  "Oh, even now you feign ignorance, despite being caught red-handed in your playful deceit," Atlas said, grabbing Emerald's shoulder and shaking her around. "Oh, how amusing."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Blake said, resisting the urge to turn around and run.

  "You say that you dislike hugs, but I know that such a thing is simply not possible. Perhaps if I was a naive babe, you might have tricked me, but unfortunately for you, I am more than familiar with such lies already as it is a favoured joke of my best friend, Emerald, who loves hugs more than anyone I am acquainted with," Atlas said, hugging Emerald's shoulders tight.

  Blake seemed to give up on reasoning with Atlas and tried to lock eyes with Emerald instead. Unfortunately, the green-haired girl was in no position to make eye contact.

  Trapped in his grip, but knowing that the best way to escape it was to let him get it out of his system on his own, Emerald kept her body limp, letting her head loll around with every exuberant motion that Atlas made, relying on her aura and robust neck muscles to keep her neck from snapping.

  "I hate you so much, Atlas," Emerald grumbled.

  "I love you too, Emerald!" Atlas shouted.

  Before Blake could seriously start to consider just leaving and dropping out of Beacon entirely, a red blur zipped out of the edge of the forest, making its way towards the ruins, before barreling into Yang, providing an ample enough distraction that Blake didn't feel like her life was immediately in danger.

  Though it was an unfair comparison to make, given that the new girl was short enough that she wouldn't even be able to reach Atlas's chest, and she was likely a fraction of his weight, the tackle that Ruby Rose executed seemed somehow lackluster despite the lightning fast speeds she travelled at. In support of that sentiment, Yang barely seemed to flinch as she caught Ruby in midair.

  "Woah, Ruby," Yang said. "I'm happy to see you too, but you gotta chill out a bit."

  "Yang," Ruby whispered, completely ignoring Yang's comment and staring up at her older sister with a look of dread in her eyes. "You have to help me."

  Before Yang could decide on whether her sister was being serious or not, in too good of a mood to process the look of genuine fear in Ruby's eyes immediately, her thought process was interrupted when she was tackled again, this time with a force that she couldn't simply tank, especially when she found herself being lifted into the air.

  "Ack!" Ruby yelled as she flailed around, sandwiched between Yang and Atlas's bodies. "Help! I'm being kidnapped!"

  "Atlas!" Emerald yelled, from somewhere that Yang couldn't see. "Let them go!"

  Atlas made a sound that was close to a whimper, before Yang felt herself being lowered back to the ground.

  "I apologise," Atlas said. "I saw the two of you engaging in a hug and I assumed that meant I could join in as well. I forgot to ask for your explicit permission."

  "It's no big," Yang said, brushing out her hair, before patting Ruby down, grabbing her sister's shoulders before she had a chance to run away. "You know, your hugs are a lot more gentle than they look."

  Atlas beamed back down at her.

  "May I hug you?" he asked.

  "Maybe later, big guy," Yang replied.

  "Yang," Ruby whispered beside her, at a volume that made it clear she only had a vague understanding of the concept of whispering. "Who's this guy?"

  "He's Atlas," Yang said easily, before patting Ruby on the shoulder. "Everyone, this is my little sister, Ruby."

  "Hello, Ruby," Atlas said, extending a hand towards her. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

  Ruby blinked, but Yang gripped her shoulders right, having anticipated her sister's base instinct to run and hide at the first sign of a social interaction. Though Ruby strained against her sister's grip for a moment, when Yang gave her a pointed smile, she seemed to get the hint and raised her own hand.

  "Hello," she mumbled, seeming to suddenly grow shy at the idea of having to talk to a person directly. "It's nice to meet you too, Atlas."

  By now, Yang had seen Atlas's smile enough times to know what it might mean, but having just met him, Ruby was too slow to react to the way she was suddenly scooped into the air.

  "Ack! Yang, help! It's happening again!"

  After Emerald finally convinced Atlas to let Ruby down, and Yang tried and failed to convince Blake to "give it a go", Atlas seemed to see a speck of friend in the distance, exiting the forest edge where Ruby had come from. Nobody was able to stop Atlas before he dashed off to meet his new friend.

  Though Ruby felt a shiver run down her spine at the sight of her partner, before she could shout out a warning to Atlas of what he was about to meet, one of the people surrounding her caught her eye.

  Though it took a moment for her to figure out why the short owl faunus looked so familiar to her, she eventually snapped her fingers before walking over to her.

  "You're Chroma Sky, right?" Ruby asked. "Of Sky Arms Productions?"

  Chroma turned her head around to give Ruby a look of mild surprise, before she turned away.

  "Unfortunately, I can't claim to own my father's company just yet," Chroma said. "But soon, yes."

  "Oh," Ruby said. "Can I get an autograph anyways? The first weapon I bought myself was a Sky gun."

  Chroma's face twisted in consideration, before she shook her head.

  "Not yet. It would be disingenuous," Chroma said. "But I'm flattered that you hold me in such high regard. Only one other has approached me for an autograph before, and he turned out to be my... best friend."

  "Oh, that's nice?" Ruby said.

  "Perhaps, I could offer you something similar," Chroma continued. "An acquaintanceship, with the possibility to become something more. What do you say? Do you take this offer?"

  "Uh, sure?" Ruby said.

  "Very well," Chroma said. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Red."

  "My name's Ruby, actually," Red protested.

  Chroma didn't dignify the complaint with a response, staring off towards where her best friend, Globe, was in the process of making a new friend.

  Seeing no point in trying to convince Chroma otherwise, Red walked slowly back towards her sister.

  "Her, nice going, Ruby!" Yang said. "You made another friend!"

  "I kind of just wanted her autograph, if I'm being honest," Ruby mumbled.

  Atlas returned a moment later, with a very stiff armed Weiss pressed tight into his chest, proudly proclaiming that he asked for permission before hugging her this time. Though Emerald and Ruby were both skeptical of the claim, with the former being suspicious of Atlas while the latter was more suspicious of her allegedly insane partner, when Weiss didn't protest the claim, Emerald seemed to be content with letting it go though Ruby made sure to keep an eye trained on Weiss's weapon, knowing how volatile the girl could be.

  Not too long after, Nora and Ren came out of the forest, to Chroma's displeasure, and after Atlas ran up to greet them, Nora finally stopped moonwalking now that they had officially finished saying goodbye.

  It was only after the next pair of Huntsmen-to-be arrived, that things started to get a little crazy.

  - - - - -

  Pyrrha wasn't sure why she let Jaune lead the way, or why she let him convince her that taking a path into a dark cave that could be more accurately described as a "lair" would be a good idea, or why she didn't simply attach her spear to his armour and just toss him back to Beacon where he would be safe as soon as she discovered he didn't have aura, but a small part of her held the suspicions that it had something to do with her dead twin brother.

  Pyrrha didn't like to think of Atlas. It was difficult to ignore the thoughts that invaded her mind after so many painful reminders that day, but she still tried to fight them down.

  Usually she could do it. Back at home, she had many things that she used to cope with her brother's death. Her room, for one, was the same room she had slept in six years prior, when she had shared it with Atlas. She hadn't know at the time why her parents had them sleeping in the same room for so long, when there were so many empty rooms in their huge ancestral home, but after she'd gotten the room to herself, she had kept it until she moved out, even as it grew too small for her.

  When Atlas first disappeared, she had started sleeping on her side in the hopes that she would see Atlas's dopey sleeping face as she woke up the next day, if she ended up sleeping at all. Nowadays, she just prayed she wouldn't have any dreams about the day that she sent Atlas out to his death.

  Nobody blamed her, and logically, Pyrrha knew that it wasn't her fault.

  She had been in bed with a cold. It was nothing major, in fact, it was just at the perfect level of sickness that her parents could be convinced to keep her at home instead of sending her to school, but she still felt well enough to enjoy the break from school.

  Atlas had stayed behind with her, both because her parents were afraid that he would be carrying the same germs that had caused Pyrrha's sickness and just wasn't affected by them, and because they were afraid that Pyrrha would be lonely if she were in the mansion alone, with both of them having to attend a business meeting that day.

  She had just wanted some juice, which wasn't a crime for a child to want, but she still regretted asking her brother to get her some.

  Pyrrha had always known that she loved her brother, he was her twin brother after all, but she hadn't realised how much she would miss him until he was gone. After he left her life, she had become a shell of a person, wandering the streets of Argus every day for a few months in search of her brother, despite knowing it wouldn't do anything. With how influential the Nikos family was in Argus, and with how many bodies were already on the streets, searching for the lost boy, she knew that one more pair of eyes wouldn't make much difference, but she couldn't simply sit by and wait.

  She didn't know how many months she lost to walking and searching, only stopping when she was caught sneaking around outside the city walls, and her parents begged her to stop, lest they lose another child.

  Though she agreed to stay put, she became almost feral after that. She started to attend school once more, but after she had attacked one of her classmates for a reason that probably didn't justify her response, the only reason why she hadn't been expelled immediately after was because her parents managed to smooth things over with the school board, using their influence and the promise that Pyrrha would never do such a thing ever again.

  Her parents didn't know what to do with her, but her grandfather, being a retired Huntsman, made the suggestion that she could channel her aggression into something useful, while learning discipline at the same time.

  Not knowing what else to do, Pyrrha's parents gave him the reins to her education.

  For the most part, Pyrrha's training under her grandfather was a pleasant one in theory. While he was a tough man, having cultivated an instinct for brutality throughout his years as a career Huntsman, he also loved his grandchild very much, and shared in her pain for the loss of the other. Adranus Nikos knew Pyrrha's pain better than he would ever admit to her, and he knew better than anyone else in her family that it was not in his place to try and tell her how she should feel.

  Trusting in his granddaughter enough to overcome her own demons, given time, he simply gave her something to channel them into through his training.

  After a few months of training, Adranus had decided that simple training would not be enough to contain Pyrrha's demons, but he did not want to let her fight the Grimm that surrounded the city, not out of fear that she would succumb to them, but out of the fear that she would destroy them too easily.

  Pyrrha was a talented fighter, much more so than Adranus himself had been at her age. If she fought the Grimm, especially the ones that were weak enough that the city guards didn't care enough to quell them, he knew that she would tear through them like wet cardboard, and he didn't want to cultivate a sense of brutality in her by giving her a target that she was encourage to destroy so thoroughly.

  So he registered for a tournament fight instead, knowing how poorly it would go, but willing to sacrifice another child's health if it meant that his own grandchild would thrive.

  Pyrrha's first, and only fight of her first tournament went about as poorly as Adranus expected.

  Maybe it was because the referee had been too shocked to react, or maybe it was because he simply believed that Pyrrha's opponent was being overdramatic, but the child in the ring had wailed, clutching his broken arm and crying out for his mother for twenty long seconds before the match was called and Pyrrha was disqualified for unnecessary brutality.

  Adranus had jumped into the stadium and picked up Pyrrha to throw her across his shoulders, making sure to pick up her dropped weapons before he left. He carried her in that way, until he walked all the way back to the Nikos manor, and dropped her to the floor.

  Pyrrha, not seeming to care or even notice that she had been dropped so suddenly, simply stared blankly at her hands.

  "I hurt him, grandpa," she had said.

  "And you'll never do it again," Adranus had replied.

  As Pyrrha sobbed on the floor in front of him, Adranus refused to give in to his base instincts to lean down and tell her that everything would be okay, because he loved her too much to lie to her.

  It was only when she stopped crying when he sat down on the floor in front of her.

  "You've lost someone important to you," he said. "And because of that, you hurt someone else, thinking that it might somehow bring him back. But you know it won't."

  Pyrrha sniffled, but her throat had been too hoarse to respond, not that she had a response in mind.

  "You will lose more people, everyone does," Adranus said. "I'm sorry for that, Pyrrha. I'm sorry you had to learn so early."

  "Is Atlas dead, grandpa?"

  "I don't know," Adranus said. "But you must not kill yourself in hopes of saving him."

  Pyrrha nodded.

  After that point, it was like a switch had been flipped within her. After learning that the boy she had injured had been a child from outside of Argus, she had asked her grandfather to take her to the city that he hailed from to beg for forgiveness outside his door for two days and nights, before the boy had been brave enough to face her.

  Using the Nikos family's money, Pyrrha's grandfather had bought the best treatments that money could buy for the young boy's, and though the doctors claimed that he'd made a full recovery, the boy never entered another tournament fight again.

  Adranus hired a new personal trainer for Pyrrha, claiming that she didn't need him anymore, and Pyrrha began putting more and more time into her tournament fighting, and started to win.

  Pyrrha didn't particularly care about her career, but whenever she won a tournament, she would turn to face the cameras and spread her arms wide in a silent request for a hug from a boy who never knew when to stop giving them.

  "Pyrrhhhaaaa, heeeeellllppp—"

  Pyrrha blinked in confusion at the sound of her name being called by the quickly fading voice of a ghost before she looked up to see her partner soaring away into the distance for some reason. As she struggled to understand why, still being too caught up in her memories to fully exit her trancelike state, she vaguely took notice of the fact that her arms and legs were pumping in a way that might've implied that she was running in a dead sprint.

  Frowning, she paused in her step for a moment, to try and recall why she was running in the first place, but at the slight moment of hesitation, she felt something impacting her aura hard as a large pincer slapped itself against her side.

  She looked up at the Deathstalker that was chasing her, before it sent her flying violently into the air with the swipe of a claw. Though she supposed she should be grateful that it hadn't grabbed her in its claws, she wasn't particularly enthused by the fact that she was flying towards a solid rock ruin on an uncontrolled flight path either.

  Bracing herself for impact, she raised her arms to protect her head at the very least, and closed her eyes to prevent debris from entering them upon landing, but to her surprise, though she did hit something hard, it was with a much more gentle force than she expected.

  Blinking in confusion, Pyrrha opened her eyes to see a familiar face.

  "Oh hello again, Jaune," Pyrrha said, though she was still distracted enough to not understand why his face was so squished.

  "Help me," he wheezed, right before Pyrrha felt herself being flung around uncontrollably.

  Though she still had no idea what was going on, she was surprised that her fighter's instincts hadn't kicked in yet to defend herself from what was clearly a threat, seeing that she had her arms pinned and was completely defenceless, but for some reason she couldn't find it in herself to panic at the current situation.

  "Emerald!" a voice boomed out from extremely close to her. "I was unable to ask this new friend of mine whether a hug would be appropriate, given the speed of their arrival, but I was afraid that they might get injured if I let them be."

  "That's fine, I guess," a voice replied, likely belonging to whoever Emerald was. "But why don't you let them go? The blonde one looks like he's dying."

  There was a dull thud, and a quiet thank you, as Jaune was dropped to the floor, but Pyrrha wondered why she hadn't been subjected to the same fate. She wasn't complaining, with how strangely comfortable she felt with this whole experience, but she was confused.

  "Atlas," Emerald said, making Pyrrha flinch and attempt to twist her head, the only thing that she could move without forcing her way out of a hug that she really didn't want to leave, for some reason.

  When Pyrrha recognized Emerald as the same girl who had screamed out her dead brother's name when they were first launched into the forest, she glared at her, even if it strained her eyes at the awkward angle she was forced to look at.

  Emerald immediately flinched back, glancing down at the owl faunus that was also glaring up at her for some reason, before she threw her hands up in frustration.

  "Okay!" Emerald shouted. "Fucking fine! Globe. Why haven't you put the other girl down yet?"

  Globe seemed to flinch back at Emerald's tone, but didn't seem to be interested in letting go.

  "You said that I wasn't allowed to hug random strangers without asking. Thusly, I have concluded that I am permitted to hug people I know do without asking," he said.

  "That is not what that means," Emerald said, with a frustrated groan. "And seeing people on the TV doesn't count as knowing them, At- Globe."

  "I know that," Globe said, with an audible pout. "But I know Pyrrha."

  "You're telling me that you know international superstar, Pyrrha Nikos?"

  Pyrrha felt Globe nodding his head, though for some reason she just couldn't bring herself to believe that was his name.

  "Sure I do," Atlas said. "She's my sister."

  Pyrrha didn't know when she had truly started to think of Atlas as her dead brother, rather than her lost brother, but it hadn't been a decision she had made in one day. Even if her grandfather's lesson made her realise that she mustn't let her love for her brother consume her, it didn't mean she let the embers die out completely. Stoking them just enough to keep her hope warm without actively burning her from the inside out, she had thought the embers would glow forever, but one day she had woken up to realise that they were gone.

  It didn't hurt as much as she expected, and she had grown to live in its absence, accepting that even the brightest of flames would burn out someday.

  But as it reignited spontaneously, with a fiery heat of the feral anger she had felt six years before, she came to realise that this pyre still had more life in it for at least one more funeral.

  "Atlas," Pyrrha said, in a voice that she didn't feel like belonged to her. "You're Atlas Nikos."

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "Indeed," Atlas said, nodding his head, causing the ridiculous pompadour on his head to sway erratically.

  "My brother."

  "Indeed."

  "We haven't seen each other in six years."

  "We have not."

  "But now you're here in front of me."

  "Indeed I am."

  "Not dead. Very much alive. Thriving from the looks of it."

  "Oh you flatter me, dear sister."

  "Have you been eating well?"

  "Not always, though I do drink a lot of milk."

  "That's pretty funny, Atlas. Did you know mom and dad spent a lot of money to put your face on the backs of a lot of milk cartons?"

  "Oh that explains why I kept seeing my image everywhere. Why did they feel that to be necessary?"

  "They were missing child notices."

  "They were? I was not aware."

  "What did you think they were?"

  "I simply thought that they were targeted advertisements. It was quite an effective campaign, if I do say so myself. I can only assume that you have had your own fair share of cereal, as well."

  "I'm a spokesperson. You were a lost child."

  "I was?"

  "You were. Or are you telling me that you could have returned home at any time?"

  "No, I could not. I took a shortcut to get to the marketplace and could not regain my bearings."

  "In other words, you were lost."

  "Hmm. I have never thought about it in that sense, but I suppose you are correct."

  "You didn't think to give us a call?"

  "I did not have a scroll. And I could not recall the number to dial."

  "There was a number on the milk cartons that you could have called."

  "Right you are. I have been rather rude to be enjoying such high quality milk without paying my proper respects to the people that produce it. Do not fret, Pyrrha. I will call the milk company as soon as possible to show my appreciation for them."

  "I'm not talking about the milk company, Atlas. I'm talking about our parents' scroll number."

  "On the milk cartons?"

  "On the milk cartons."

  "I was aware that mother and father were quite influential, but I was not aware that they owned the milk companies as well."

  "They don't, but you should call them anyways."

  "I shall endeavour to do so."

  "Maybe you could explain why you wandered off in the first place too. I'd appreciate an explanation as well, now that it's come up in conversation."

  "Whatever do you mean, Pyrrha? You were the one to request that I fetch some juice, were you not?"

  "Oh, you mean this juice?"

  Somehow despite her arms being pinned to the sides of her head in Atlas's thick-armed hug, Pyrrha managed to casually pry one of her arms free and reach down to her side, where a small tin can hung from her hip. She raised it up to Atlas's face and he smiled.

  "Indeed!" Atlas said. "Please, drink it at your own leisure, dear sister. I pray that you recover from your illness soon."

  Pyrrha stared at Atlas for a long moment, and the world almost seemed to fall into utter silence in the first pause in the conversation, only accented by the sounds of gunshots and a screaming Deathstalker as Chroma, the only one not transfixed by the sibling conversation, drew two large revolvers from her pockets and unloaded eight bullets perfectly into every single one of the Deathstalker's eyes.

  "So it was my fault then?" Pyrrha asked, amidst the cries of the screaming Deathstalker.

  "What was your fault?" Atlas asked, as Chroma put two more bullets into the same leg joint, making the Deathstalker careen off its course, too off balance and blind to properly continue its charge towards the group of students who were too distracted to otherwise defend themselves.

  Pyrrha didn't answer her brother as she glanced between him and the tin of juice she held in her hands, the metal crumbling away under her fingers, slowly spraying a fine mist of sugary liquid in between them.

  Atlas licked the air and frowned.

  "Hey, this tastes like apple," he grumbled. "Did the juiceman lie to me?"

  For some reason, Pyrrha couldn't help but think that was the funniest thing that Atlas could have possibly said. A laugh escaped her lips unconsciously, quiet at first, but gradually growing in volume and intensity until she found herself laughing louder than she ever had before in her life. Despite her throat growing hoarse enough that a small part of her wondered if she would cough up blood if she didn't stop, she kept on laughing and laughing.

  But she stopped herself abruptly once she felt like she might pass out. Though she felt tired, and wanted nothing more than to simply lie down and fall asleep, there was something she desperately needed to know.

  "Atlas," she said. "How much aura do you have?"

  Atlas smiled at her.

  "A lot!"

  "I'm glad to hear that," Pyrrha said.

  Raising her arm into the air, Pyrrha's face didn't so much as twitch, as she brought the half-crushed tin of juice down on her brother's chin. Not having expected the blow, Atlas couldn't block the precise blow that was designed to rattle his brain, but thankfully for both of them, Atlas's aura flashed to protect him from the immediate knockdown.

  Reeling back from the hit, more in surprise than pain, Atlas rubbed at his chin, inadvertently letting his sister fall to the ground.

  "Ouch," he said, frowning. "Why'd you do that, Pyrrha?"

  Though Pyrrha hadn't intended to say anything back, she hadn't exactly intended to hit her brother either in the first place, so following the trend, she simply let her instincts decide what to say in response.

  When she opened her mouth, a blood curdling warcry came out and she charged towards her brother, metal can raised in the air, spraying both juice and righteous fury around her in a wild arc.

  As Pyrrha charged towards him, Atlas struggled to think of any possible reason why Pyrrha would be so angry, before he quickly decided it didn't matter. Whenever he was feeling upset, or at least less than completely happy, he knew one thing that always cheered him up.

  Opening his arms wide for a hug, he brightened up when Pyrrha's eyes widened mid charge, and she let out a howl of a laugh at the sight. Glad that she already seemed to be feeling better, he lunged forward to grab her in a hug, but his eyes widened when Pyrrha suddenly jumped, flying feet first past him, her arm hooking around his neck as she sailed past his shoulder.

  For a brief second, as Atlas was thrown off balanced and dragged down to the floor, choking all the way down, he wondered if he should stop hugging Mercury by the neck, until he hit the floor hard and forgot what he had been thinking about.

  Staring up at the sky, Pyrrha suddenly appeared in his vision, her eyes bloodshot and wild.

  Pyrrha screamed, mounting Atlas over his chest before grabbing her juice tin with both hands and bringing it down against Atlas's head. Unfortunately for her, while Pyrrha might have had better training and refined combat skills, her wild assault against Atlas's face held none of the discipline and skill that had been so vital in her illustrious tournament career.

  Attacking so wildly to the point that her vision had clouded over, she hadn't noticed the large protruding pompadour that was in the path of her attack, and in her recklessness her arm had gotten caught against the pillar of stiff hair. Though it was only for a split second, that split second had been enough for Atlas to sit up and give Pyrrha the biggest squeeze he could manage, reserved only for family and the bestest of friends.

  Paradoxically, the pain of the hug seemed to be the only thing that managed to quiet Pyrrha down, her habit of maintaining a more family-friendly viewing experience taking over as her body finally recognised that she was in a fight.

  With that same recognition however, came the instinct to defend herself.

  Though she couldn't reach down to her hips, with how tight Atlas's grip around her was, she instinctively pulled against her weapons with her semblance, bringing both Milo and Akuou to her hands.

  Though her mind was both too blank and too busy to fully comprehend what was happening in front of her, or what she was doing, Pyrrha still heard the vague panicked shouts around her as she angled Milo's edge down towards her opponent, but she didn't listen, too angry to form any coherent thoughts except for the burning desire to punish whoever she was currently attacking, knowing that they deserved it even if she couldn't remember exactly why.

  But even though words couldn't reach her, there was a language that Pyrrha knew better than mere verbal communication, and that was the language of violence.

  As Pyrrha heard the threatening click of a gun having its hammer cocked, and the feeling of cold metal pressing against her forehead, she finally looked away from her brother, to glare at the owl faunus who had her gun pressed to her forehead.

  "And what exactly do you think you're doing with my partner?" Chroma asked.

  Pyrrha glared back at her.

  "Sibling bonding," she said, through gritted teeth.

  Chroma blinked a few times, before lowering her gun and coughing into her hand.

  "Very well," she said. "Carry on."

  After Chroma put her gun down and turned away, two things happened simultaneously.

  Atlas, having just heard Pyrrha's claims that what they were doing together was a simple matter of sibling bonding, and not an actual fight, felt a wave of joy pass through him at the realisation that everything was okay and that Pyrrha wasn't actually mad.

  Pyrrha, though she had intended her response to Chroma to be somewhat sarcastic, she came to a similar realisation that even though there wasn't much bonding going on, the young man that currently had his arms around her was indeed her brother.

  As Atlas readjusted his arms around his sister to squeeze her tight once more, Pyrrha dropped her weapons to the ground beside her, though not out of pain. Milo's tip bounced harmlessly off the aura that covered her brother's shoulder, but the fat tears that fell from her eyes fell onto his clothes and soaked into them.

  Though Atlas couldn't see her crying, it didn't take long before he felt the sudden dampness against his shoulder and pulled back.

  "Pyrrha? What's wrong?" he asked. "Did I squeeze you too hard?"

  Though Pyrrha opened her mouth with the intent to answer the question, the only thing that came out was a heavy sob, saturated with the hope that kept hidden inside of her for so many years.

  "Pyrrha?" Atlas asked, quickly growing panicked when he realised he didn't know what to do. "Pyrrha?"

  "I missed you," Pyrrha blubbered before she quickly decided that she wouldn't be able to form any more words and buried her face into her brother's shoulder, using it to muffle her wailing screams.

  "I missed you too," Atlas responded. Realising as he said it, that he hadn't seen Pyrrha for over six years, Atlas started to cry too, throwing his head back and wailing into the sky.

  As the two siblings reconnected, one not yet forgiving the other, while the other only began to understand how much he had hurt the one, the audience of the ten students surrounding them seemed to differ greatly in their responses, though none of them were comfortable with speaking too loudly and interrupting the moment.

  Ruby tried her best not to make any choking sounds as she divided her attention between wiping the sympathetic tears from her eyes and trying to squeeze her arm in between her neck and the arms wrapped around them to give herself some room to breathe, while Yang seemed too distracted by the display of sibling affection in front of her to notice that her anxious hugging was close to causing the loss of her own.

  Nora and Ren looked silently upon the display, both of them surprisingly still, hiding their expressions behind masks of neutral impassivity, tightly gripping each other's hands, as if afraid the other would disappear if they let go. Neither of them knew who had initiated it, but neither of them was willing to end it.

  Jaune promised to himself that he would call his parents and each of his siblings at the first chance he got. He wasn't sure about what he would talk to them about, or even if he was ready to admit that he had lied about attending culinary school in Vale and was going to Beacon against his dad's wishes, but he really just wanted to talk to them about anything.

  Blake felt mostly uncomfortable with the whole situation, feeling something like a voyeur who was peeking into a moment that she wasn't supposed to see, but she found herself pleasantly distracted by watching the Schnee heiress's reaction to the whole display, not understanding why such a complex range of emotions flitted over the face of the girl who was born to be her enemy, or and why the heiress looked so guilty.

  Weiss felt dirty, feeling something like a voyeur who was peeking into a moment that she wasn't supposed to see, and more significantly, hating herself for tainting what was obviously a beautiful moment between family with her unspeakable thoughts.

  Emerald didn't know what to feel. She glared at the sight, feeling happy for her friend, but scared of what change this revelation might bring to their lives. Emerald knew she was a petty person, and she usually didn't care, but as she watched Atlas reconnecting with a sister she hadn't known that he had, she couldn't stop herself from wishing that Pyrrha had never existed in the first place. She hated herself for it, not wanting to admit to herself that she was scared that she might take Atlas away from her, too scared to admit that she wanted to be more important to him than his biological sister was.

  Mercury, though he knew he should be feeling a wide assortment of things at the revelation that his best friend was in fact not an orphan, and was actually super loaded, the only thing he could currently feel was overwhelming fear. It had taken a moment for him to connect the dots, he couldn't help but remember that he had actually met Atlas six years ago in the streets of Argus. Mercury didn't like thinking of Argus, with it being the place that his father made his base in, but for the first time in the six years after he had run away from his hometown with his best friend, he couldn't help but think that maybe he should do his best to keep that little fun fact a secret that he took to his grave.

  Chroma had barely even noticed the exchange. Aside from mistakenly trying to rescue her partner from a situation where he hadn't actually been in danger, she was more interested in watching the edge of the Emerald Forest as a small horde of Grimm exited it, having been agitated out of their home after the damage that Atlas had done to it with his wild charge, and Weiss with her accidental forest fires.

  Chroma waited for a lone beowulf to step out of the cover of the treeline before she raised her arm and pulled her trigger.

  Though the siblings remained as they were, sobbing in each other's arms, the rest of the onlookers jumped at the sound as they were pulled back into the reality of the situation.

  "Oh, looks like there's a bunch of Grimm heading our way," Mercury said first, sprinting towards the horde and away from the invincible girl as fast as he could. "Let's go gang. Nothing like a good Grimm culling to prove our worth as Huntsman and people, am I right? Ha ha."

  Before anyone could respond, Mercury had already run off into the distance, becoming a grey speck that charged into the first Grimm he could find.

  "I guess we should go too," Blake said.

  "Yes," Weiss said, gripping the edge of her skirt as tightly as she was the hilt of her rapier, for some reason. "Lets."

  The rest fo the students filed slowly towards the Grimm in turn, rushing off at varied speeds besides Chroma, who seemed content with standing in one spot and picking off targets as she saw fit, and Jaune, who had tripped over the massive pile of discarded revolvers surrounding Chroma's spot and had been easily convinced to collect them all for her in exchange for a ten lien note.

  The culling of the Grimm horde didn't take much time at all, and after only a little more than ten minutes, they'd managed to kill enough Grimm to scare the rest off, and after Jaune grabbed a random chess piece from the ruins, and Chroma accepted the one that Mercury had hand-picked for her, the large group made their way back to Beacon.

  A few hours later, gathered in the auditorium once more with the older students, and the one other first-year team that had also passed the initiation exam, after calling up team CRDL and RWBY, led by Cardin Winchester and Ruby Rose respectively, he called up the next team to pass.

  "And our next team, Jaune Arc, Nora Valkyrie, Pyrrha Nikos, and Lie Ren. Will you please approach the stage?"

  Though Atlas had to approach the stage with Jaune, Nora, and Ren, with Pyrrha refusing to remove herself from his back, tightening her grip around his neck and waist whenever she vaguely felt like someone would try to remove her, Ozpin didn't bat an eye.

  "You four, excluding Mr. Nikos, will form team JNPR, led by Jaune Arc."

  "What?" Jaune said. "But I didn't do anything. Literally."

  "I understand you must be excited, young man," Ozpin said, taking a sip from his mug. "But I would ask you to make your celebration off of the stage. There are more teams to be named."

  Though Jaune opened his mouth and raised a finger, Nora casually hooked an arm around his and dragged him off the stage.

  "Would Mercury Black, Emerald Sustrai, Atlas Nikos, and Chroma Sky approach the stage, please?"

  Stepping back on the stage, Ozpin, once again didn't comment on the fact that there was an additional student that he hadn't called for, sucking the remnants of apple juice out of a crushed tin can with bloodshot eyes and a surly expression on her face.

  "You four, excluding Ms. Nikos, will form team MACE, led by Mercury Black."

  Though the powers of pattern recognition had prepared Mercury for the announcement, after Ozpin had called his name up first, it didn't stop him from having his eyes nearly bulge out of his head from the announcement.

  "Are you senile?" he asked.

  "And those are all the new teams coming to Beacon this year," Ozpin said, taking another sip out of his mug. "And with that, I invite you to explore your new home as you wish. The location of your new dorm rooms have been sent to your scrolls, with instructions on how to access them. Goodbye."

  Though Ozpin dismissed them to their dorms, none of the first-year students ended up heading anywhere but the cafeteria, too hungry to think of doing anything else. The conversation at the dinner table was limited, and while some of that was due to the heavy air that still hung around the two Nikos siblings, it was also a simple case of the fact that everyone was tired.

  It was this same tiredness that made most of the students elect to head to the communal showers immediately after eating, too eager to get to bed clean and fresh to wait for their respective turns in the dorm room bathrooms, but that in itself created its own set of problems.

  "C'mon, Pyrrha," Nora said, silently accepting the role of being the one to try and pry the invincible girl-shaped barnacle off her long lost brother, as the only female member of her team. "We'll just take a shower real quick, and he'll be right back where you left him. He's not going to disappear this time, right Atlas?"

  "I shall not," Atlas promised.

  Pyrrha furrowed her brow in consideration of the promise, and after a moment, took her arms off of Atlas's neck, and hopped off his back. Though Nora let out a sigh of relief at the sight, Pyrrha didn't follow her immediately when she tried to tug her away, reaching up to her head instead.

  Taking off her bronze circlet, she grabbed Atlas's arm and slipped the circlet around it, pushing it up as high as it could go, which was about midway up his bicep. Focusing for a moment with her hands cupping around it, Atlas blinked when he felt the circlet unnaturally tightening around him, digging deeper into his skin.

  Tugging it a few times to make sure that it was properly secured, Pyrrha finally stepped back.

  "C'mon, Chroma, you too," Nora said, hopping up to grab Chroma's ankles and yank her off of Atlas's shoulder. The sleeping owl faunus let out a startled squawk flailing around as she tried to catch herself, but Nora caught her in a bridal carry before she could fall to the floor.

  As Emerald followed the impromptu trio without a word, Yang sighed, suddenly jealous of how reasonable the other girls were compared to her own teammates.

  "C'mon, Rubes," Yang said, rolling her eyes. "There's nothing embarrassing about communal showers. Haven't you ever been to a gym?"

  "No?"

  "Well, there's your first mistake."

  "C'mon, Princess," Blake said, rolling her own eyes in an entirely different conversation. "Sorry you couldn't bring your servants over, but you'll just have to get used to washing yourself, amongst us common folk."

  "I can wash myself just fine, thank you very much," Weiss said with an angry flush, even if her tone of voice didn't seem to portray a level of anger that was properly proportional to how intense that flush was. "I can assure you it's for an entirely different reason. Besides, I don't see why it's such a crime for me to want to use our private shower when you're requesting the exact same thing."

  "Oh," Blake said, wincing and running a hand through her hair out of nervousness. "Well, I have a good reason for it."

  "As do I."

  "And what would that reason be?" Blake asked.

  "It would be none of your business," Weiss said. "What would your reason be?"

  "It's private."

  As team RWBY's voices faded down the hall, the four boys made their way to the showers without any fuss. A tired silence hung between them, broken only by a few yawns, and the clinking of armour as they changed out of their battle gear, until Jaune's eyes widened.

  "Dude," he said. "What?"

  Atlas tilted his head, not sure of why Jaune was staring at him, before Ren coughed into his hand.

  "Jaune," he said. "I believe that is a gross violation of the 'bro code'."

  "Yeah, Jaune," Mercury called, yawning into his hand as he turned on a showerhead. "Eyes to yourself."

  "Sorry."

  Though Atlas, Mercury, and Ren showered relatively fast, with the first two leaving the locker room immediately after towelling off, while Ren waited back for Jaune to finish, Pyrrha still managed to finish her own shower faster than either of them did, silently climbing onto Atlas's back regardless of the curtain of damp hair that hung down across it.

  After stumbling across Chroma and Emerald, passing by a still arguing Weiss and Blake along the way, they headed towards their dorms.

  The dorms were nice, much nicer than any place that Atlas, Mercury, or Emerald had slept in for a long time for the former, and ever for the latters, and after debating on how to arrange the beds for a moment, they ultimately decided on combining the beds together and placing them against the wall.

  Before they could settle in enough to actually fall asleep, they heard a knock on their door to see Nora and Ren, who were just dropping by to confirm whether their teammate would be sleeping in the JNPR dorm room or with her brother, but once Nora got distracted by the sight of the big bed and jumped in the middle, claiming the spot as her own and promptly falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, team MACE silently accepted the new addition to the pile, and another when Ren was dragged into a full-bodied grapple by a sleeping Nora when he tried to wake her.

  About an hour later, Jaune dropped by the room, nervous about where his teammates might have gone while he had been on a call with his oldest sister, and though he wasn't too enthused about the idea of sleeping in a giant pile at first, too used to the comfort of having his own bed, the alternative of having an entire dorm room to himself proved to be too lonely of a concept for him to turn the cuddle pile down.