Author's Note: In case anyone is curious, the usually rambling AN at the end also includes what roles the older OW staff have a Beacon. Just thought I'd lay it out.

"Satya Vaswani, Mako Rutledge, Genji Shimada, and Jamison Fawkes; the four of you retrieved the white queen pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team SJGR, led by Satya Vaswani."

Up on the stage, Satya allowed an expression of pride to grace her features. The pleasant feeling she got from being confirmed as leader, however, dropped very quickly when Junkrat threw a congratulatory arm around her shoulders.

"Blimey, I knew Satya was gunning for team leader, but I don't reckon she wanted this." Lena commented to her partner, applauding politely. Nobody had missed the emphasis Professor Ozpin had put on the word 'together'.

"Fifty lien says she publicly yells at Jamie this semester." Emily remarked quietly.

"Emily, that is both a terrible thing to say about potential friends, and a terrible bet for me to take." Lena couldn't quite suppress a giggle as she pretended to chide the redhead.

"One thing I don't get though," Emily carried on in a much more casual tone, "how does he get 'Sugar' out of S-J-G-R?"

"Oh, that's easy, the J is silent."

Emily might have argued the point, but went silent as their team was ushered onto the stage next. It was the first time Lena had seen the headmaster up close, and she took the chance to examine the legendary Professor Ozpin. Tall and lean, and dressed in a dark green suit with a forest green scarf, the man didn't really look like an educator or a master huntsman. He certainly carried with him an aura that commanded respect, but beyond that he was inscrutable. While his hair was fully grey, his face had a youthful quality. If pressed, the young huntress honestly didn't think she could pick an approximate age for the professor.

"Fareeha Amari, Angela Ziegler, Emily Darke, and Lena Oxton; the four of you retrieved the black queen pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team FADE, led by-"

Lena stole a glance at her teammates. After everything that had happened in the forest, she would gladly follow any of them. It wouldn't be her though, not after putting half the cohort in such danger, and Lena was okay with that.

"- Fareeha Amari."

Lena nodded, joining in to clap for her new leader. The hawk-faunus's tactical skills had been clear for all to see. Little wonder as she had apparently grown up in the academy, having a professor for a mother. Lena saw Fareeha standing tall and proud, steadfastly ignoring the fact that Beacon's resident doctor had abandoned applause in favour of hollering her daughter's name.

Once the noise died down, the four of them rejoined the audience as the next team took the stage.

"- Team SHZM, led by Hana Scarlatina."

And with those two words from the headmaster - her own name - Hana's world came to a grinding halt. She froze up.

She froze up, in front of Professor Ozpin. She froze up so badly, that by the time she regained some awareness of the world around her, Hana had been walked off stage by her new team-mates.

She caught the end of the local boy, Winston, talking, thought not to her.

"- see the doctor?"

"No no, I'm okay." Hana managed to say. Zenyatta smiled softly - not that that was unusual - while Winston and Mei looked at her with concern and skepticism, respectively.

"You didn't look okay, 'team leader'." Mei said sharply, and nobody missed the way she winced at those words.

"I just-" Hana choked again, looking from one to the other until her eyes met Zenyatta's. "It should have been you!"

Zenyatta raised an eyebrow, but made no move to speak.

"Like, I know I saved the day and everything, but you're all wise and caring and stuff, I thought for sure you would be the leader."

Zenyatta considered for a moment before speaking, while Mei and Winston watched from the sidelines.

"I appreciate your kind words, miss Scarlatina, but I doubt it is concern for my missing out that has caused such distress."

Hana sagged. Of course the monk wasn't going to let her make this about him.

"I'm not a leader Zen. I'm not saying you should do this; I'm saying I can't."

Hana stared glumly at her feet, not reacting when Zenyatta placed an entirely predictable comforting hand on her shoulder. It was, however, Mei who spoke first.

"We are at a school, you know. They have those, back in Vacuo?" the ice-witch sniped.

Hana couldn't muster the energy to be angry, but she still stared at the other girl in confusion. Thankfully, Zenyatta stepped in to play diplomat.

"I think what miss Zhou is trying to say, is that you will have much more opportunity to learn and grow from this appointment than I would."

"... learn and grow?"

"This is just a school." Winston chimed in. "The professors probably chose you because they want you to learn those kind of skills now, rather than out in the Grimmlands."

"... I'm being a massive idiot, aren't I." Hana bit out.

"Yeah," Mei agreed lightly, "but you're an idiot with a badass robot suit. I'll stand behind you in any fight."

"You may be our leader, but we are all a team." Zenyatta stepped back, casting his arms out to encompass all four teenagers. "Stumble, and we will catch you. Rise, and we will lift you."

Hana stood up straight, took a deep breath, and showed her team a genuine smile.

"Thanks guys. I guess we can all be awesome together."

"You see," Winston directed his statement at Mei, "I told you the professors know what they're doing."

Earlier

Professor Morrison stared blankly at the sheet of paper lying before him, as he had done for almost the last half hour. He had no idea what to do.

After initiation, he and the rest of the senior faculty had retired to the staff-room for a most tedious ceremony: the naming of the new teams. It was a tradition as old as Beacon Academy itself - which was now entering its eightieth year of operation.

As with every other hunting academy, Beacon organised its students into team of four, and since the beginning those teams had been named by taking an initial from each member, and using them to approximate a word. After the Colour Revolution it had become 'the thing' to also have that word be, in some way, a colour, just as had become popular with the naming of children. He had read somewhere that almost forty percent of all people born after the Revolution had a colour for either their first or last name, with a particularly high concentration among hunting families. However, as one might be able to discern from his own name, Jack Morrison did not share that particular inclination, and besides, he struggled enough just to make any word fit.

Morrison could only glare at the paper, as if trying to summon an acronym through sheer willpower. If anyone ever manifested that semblance, Morrison would ensure they immediately gained tenure at Beacon.

The staff-room was almost empty now; besides himself, only professors Port and Lindholm remained, each scribbling away furiously as they tested different letter arrangements. Morrison looked down at his own paper, and the names on it: Tekhartha Zenyatta, Harold Winston, Mei-Ling Zhou, and Hana Scarlatina. He also had a dictionary beside him, propped open to 'Z' for inspiration - as the obvious choice for leader, Zenyatta's initial had to be the first.

But nothing begins with a 'Z'...

Morrison scanned the pages.

Zebra... no... zineb?... no... zygo-NO!

Morrison pushed the dictionary away with a huff, and looked around the room for inspiration. His eyes fell on Professor Torbjorn Lindholm, who was muttering under his breath.

"Hrmm... can't have too many vowels... I am NOT using the Z," Morrison snorted at that, "... AHA! If I use Emily's last name, I can make FADE! Eureka!"

Torbjorn slammed his pen down - and how he wrote using the prosthetic clamp that was his left hand, Morrison never worked out - and stood from his chair; an act which left Morrison's colleague considerably shorter than he had been while sitting. As the world's shortest huntsman (Mantle's Book of Records confirmed) strolled past, Morrison bit his lip in thought. Normally, the grizzled veteran was not one to request help outside of combat, and NEVER one to try and put his problems on someone else. But, he had been working fruitlessly for forty minutes, and Torbjorn was one of his oldest friends - a member of his own team, in fact. Surely he wouldn't mind.

"Hey, Torb-"

"Sorry Jack, I can't stay. Lots ta do ta prepare the workshop, ye know!"

And the traitorous dwarf fled the staff-room. Morrison noted the direction he turned would definitely NOT lead his former comrade to the weapon workshops. He sighed in resignation, then jumped when a meaty arm planted itself on the table beside him.

"Having trouble there, my boy?" A loud voice followed.

No no no NO, I do NOT have the time or the patience for a conversation with Peter Port. NO!

"Please." His mouth betrayed him.

"Not to worry, old chum. You happen to be looking at a veritable master of this particular task. Why, I remember the first team I named, they went on to-"

"Peter." Morrison interrupted. It wasn't rude; it was necessary. "Why don't we swap for a minute, see if fresh eyes can help us both?"

"Oho, no need for that! I'm just trying to decide between 'Surge', 'Sugar', or 'Suffrage',"

What.

"but here now, let me see what you're working with?" Port leaned over Morrison's shoulder and examined the paper, eyes furrowed under bushy brows.

"My leader's name starts with 'Z'." Morrison waved towards the discarded dictionary. "Nothing halfway decent starts with a 'Z'."

"Couldn't you just use the 'T' from Tekhartha? Seems like it would be much easier."

"It's apparently more like a title. Cultural thing, can't use it."

"Ah, well then." Port glared at the names, more focused than Morrison had ever seen him in the lecture hall. "If you were to make miss Scarlatina the leader, you could get S-H-Z-M, or 'Shazam'."

"Hana isn't ready for that kind of responsibility. She's strong in her mech, and her tactical transcripts were flawless, but she is arrogant, and unused to working with others."

"Oh, call it a learning experience, I'm sure the girl will be fine!" Port chortled.

"No, Peter." Morrison leveled his best glare. It was better than Port's any day, not that the Grimm Studies professor cared. "This is an Academy for graduating monster hunters, not the damn mathletes. If Ozpin heard I'd made someone who wasn't read a team leader-"

"Ozpin? HA!" Port cut in with a mirthful snort. "You can't seriously think the headmaster would care. Or do you think 'Team RWBY lead by Ruby' was some flash of inspiration. Ozpin had the exact same problem: nothing good begins with a-"

"No." Morrison cut in, resting his head in his hands. "Peter, thank you, but no. You go on and finish up, I'm going to keep working until I get this right."

"Suit yourself old chap. I think I will go with Team Sugar."

Thank the Mercy for that, Morrison thought to himself as the other professor packed up his papers and left. He stared furiously at the papers, intent on finding a way to make Zenyatta the team's leader.

Ten minutes later

"Hell with it, I'm sure they'll be fine."

Author's Notes: And that's that; initiation done, I can finally get my own narrative rolling...

/remembers he has to go be a teacher or something now/

... assuming I have any free time for writing for the next five years.

The earliest of early readers might remember this as the original chapter 2. It was also the first scene I wrote for this fic, and I posted it early when I had to go on hiatus because I'd taken on a management role. How history repeats.

Fun fact, this is more or less my actual thought process when naming the teams. I knew WHO I wanted teamed together, but the names were an utter pain to sort out. In the first version, I even when so far as to change Junkrat's first name to 'Ulysses' for Team SUGR, but I reckon the J being silent has a bit of comedic value. SRJG 'Surge' was another contender, and SFRG 'Suffrage' was my cue to go to sleep.

On a related note, in the initial version of this chapter, the one I posted more than a year ago, the AN's mentioned three additional team names that weren't revealed due to spoilers. One I'll now say is Jack Morrison, Ana Amari, Gabriel Rojo, and Torbjorn Lindholm, and I'm tossing up Team JARL for being cool in my head, or Team JART (pronounced 'Art') to make the J thing a running gag. The second is still spoilery, and still the one I'm most proud of, and the third I honestly don't remember who they were meant to be.
It's not Hanzo's team, they're HJZL ('Hazel', first version had Angus McCree but the J thing works so well), and after that I'm out of characters that actually have teams. I have NO IDEA who the third hidden team was.

While many of the beats and gags are the same, the chapter was re-written entirely, mainly because, when I posted the new chapter 2, I didn't realise one could download copies of posted chapters. Still, it is expanded somewhat, but I think it offers an interesting sample of the feel I was going for when I first started writing it, in late 2016. So much has happened since then, in life, that I feel there was never any hope of this second attempt being the same thing.

[Names and Skins]

Torbjorn (Professor Torbjorn Lindholm) - Classic

[Jobs]

Morrison/Soldier:76 - Battlefield Tactics Professor
Torbjorn - Mechashift Weaponry Professor / Workshop... Keeper? Curator? Person who makes sure students don't break everything.
Ana - Chief Medical Officer, Former Aura Studies Professor
Moira - Aura Studies Professor