Professor Arc

Chapter 26

It was heavy, rhythmic breathing which woke her up. Not that her body wanted to give in. Her face scrunched up as she clung tighter to her blanket, rolling over so that she could snuggle further into the bottom bunk of her bed.

Only to find a surprising lack of bed... or anything really.

Normally Blake's reflexes would have kicked in with ease. Yang might joke that it was her catlike nature, but in truth it was just natural agility and training... as her eyes snapped open and she noticed the floor rushing up to meet her. Even half-asleep her arms moved, legs curling as she prepared to land on knees and hands.

Which was right about the time she realised she was also wrapped up in a blanket, and couldn't move her arms. Well crap... the faunus sighed, cold wood slapping into her cheek as 130lb's of prime-grade Huntress-in-training became one with the floor.

For a single moment she even considered ignoring it, closing her eyes and going back to sleep face-down on the wood. It was only the fact that it was wood which stopped her. Her dorm was fully carpeted after all... A tired sigh escaped her, blown out the side of her mouth as she freed her hands to push herself back up, discarding the odd blanket that had been wrapped around her. Any initial fear of foul play was quickly whisked away with the knowledge she was both fully clothed and unharmed. She'd always been an analyser... someone who thought things through rather than reacted on first impressions.

Admittedly she hadn't always managed to stick to that ideal – namely where the White Fang was involved... but even so, she wasn't going to freak out and start screaming because she'd woken up in an unfamiliar place. She imagined that would be more Weiss' thing. Though woe betide any man who tried to take advantage of her...

A quick look around provided the answer to her immediate location. If the office wasn't already more familiar to her than it had any right to be, then the couch she'd laid on the previous night was just behind her... no doubt what she'd rolled off of. Beyond that, the rhythmic breathing she'd first noticed came from the man asleep opposite her, who was sat back in his own seat, head resting to the side as he lightly snored away.

I... fell asleep? She must have, through the exhaustion that clung to her still, she could remember meeting him in his office and giving him the details she'd managed to find out about the Fang. The papers of which were still scattered across the coffee table and his lap. Beside them lay a half-filled mug of coffee too, though that had obviously run cold.

They'd been... doing an exercise, hadn't they? One where she had to lay back and close her eyes to imagine how Adam might have acted... she could remember doing so, the bitter memories – but also the warm comfort of the cushions beneath her... the constant lull of his voice.

Very sneaky Professor, she sighed to herself, sitting back down on the couch as she rubbed her forehead, I must have been more exhausted than I thought to fall for something that obvious. How embarrassing... not that she'd fallen asleep in his room but that she'd fallen for such a transparent trick in the first place. Close her eyes and lay down indeed...

Did Yang ask him to? She'd been the one most on Blake's case about the whole sleeping issue... constantly badgering to know if she would be coming to the dance, trying to make her slow down and stop... this whole scenario had Xiao-Long written all over it. And yet, Blake wasn't so sure. Whatever her partner's feelings might be for the guy, and Yang was so on and off she honestly couldn't tell, whenever there was a problem within the team she seemed to want to keep it within the team.

Yang wasn't the kind of person to go and tell on you to someone else, least of all someone like Professor Arc. Which meant that this was his doing, that he'd seen her and decided she needed more sleep.