Professor Arc

Chapter 24

Ruby wasn't sure whether she was in heaven or hell.

The answer should have been obvious. She was here, alone with Jaune – in his office, where she was going to be able to talk to him one on one for a good hour. It had all the markings of a first date to her, and to make it even better there was no way her big sister could come and somehow ruin this, be it through over-protectiveness or accidentally stealing his attention.

Ruby Rose. Professor Jaune. An empty room... it sounded perfect on paper.

The problem was that she had no idea what to do! Arghhh... she'd spent so long planning how to get to this point, but as usual she'd gone with the 'wing it' approach when it came to what she was supposed to do when she got there!

The dream was simple. She would find a way to spend time with Jaune alone, something-something, then they would fall madly in love and have a big family – and Ruby would never, never go away and fail to come back like her mum had.

What the something-something involved she had no idea, since in most romances she'd seen on TV (and those rare occasions where Yang forced her to sit through those awful romance movies), people just sort of... well, they just sort of fell in love. They never seemed to cover how to make someone fall for you, since they always started with the guy and girl madly in love.

Darn it...

What would Yang do? Okay, bad question... whatever Yang would do, she sure as heck wasn't going to do!

What would Blake do?

...

Who even knew!? Ruby loved the girl, and admired her – but she was a complete alien at times. I want to peacefully read my book, let's go fight terrorists, don't assume faunus are like animals, give me tuna or die. Okay, the last bit was paraphrasing a little, but still! Understanding Blake's mental thought-process was an exercise in insanity.

Weiss...!?

No... just no. She had seen Weiss' attempts at flirtations with that guy, Neptune. Even she knew those were bad.

Argh, why do I lead a team of people with no social skills!? I'm like... the most normal person on my team! Somewhere in the distance she almost imaged she could hear Yang bark out a single, loud laugh.

She just knew she should have asked Pyrrha. She was kind and smart, not to mention she knew how to deal with people since she'd confided that she needed to do that with sponsors and fans. Ruby found that a little weird, since obviously the fact that Pyrrha had won all those tournaments and was on a cereal box was kinda cool... but it really wasn't as important as the fact that her weapon had three different forms.

Three, and they were so different oo! Ruby needed to find the man who had built that, how it could fluidly flow between each form without the mechanisms getting stuck was just incredible. The engineering genius that would have been needed to shift each form without any of the mechanisms jamming or-

"Ruby...?" Aaaand she had spaced off again... and was now sat with a blank expression as the man she respected so much waved his hand before her face. This just wasn't fair.

"I'm awake!" she yelled, wincing at her own volume almost as much as the fact that she'd gone with her automatic Professor Port excuse. "I mean... I was distracted, I'm sorry..."

"That's fine," he laughed. He was one of the few teachers to actually laugh along with her – or any student, really. Sometimes Port would laugh, but it was always a boisterous one, like he was having his own personal joke that no one else could understand. Jaune would laugh with them, which made him all the easier to get along with. Maybe that was just something about him being closer to their age? "This isn't a lesson Ruby, so you don't need to worry about paying so much attention. I'm sure whatever you had planned for the evening would have been more exciting than this, anyway."