Note: Okay. Therapy over. Next time, we kick off the sixth major arc. You can probably guess what it'll be from reading this chapter. But for now, after struggling to write complex back and forth character drama, we just wanted to write something simple and cute. So here ya go. Enjoy.

Deep breath. Stretch her limbs. Easy. Concentrate. Not too hard. Stay relaxed and ready, but not predictive.

Pyrrha straightened her spine. Heels flat against the floor, feet square. Shoulders back. Don't anticipate. That won't help. Pretend that nothing will happen. Just pretend. Calm. Think calm. Don't rush it. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Wait.

"Go!"

Pyrrha burst forward. She sprinted toward the edge and leaped. The two bodies appeared in front of her, flying through the air, two ropes hanging from their waists. She reached out, wrapping her arms around one of them and stretching for the other. She was so close. Mere centimeters. So damn close.

She missed. The figure sailed past her, and she only caught a fleeting glimpse of them before she crashed into the floor, defeated.

"Ow!" Nora screamed beneath her. "Still hurts!"

Pyrrha was only on the floor for a second before she growled and jumped to her feet. She didn't bother helping Nora up. The woman was a talented Huntress. She could help herself. Several meters away, Ren pushed himself back to his hands and knees, shaking off the impact from when he hit the ground. Jaune, from as far away as he was, could see the rare glimpse of frustration on his face.

It was very kind of the school administration to give Team JNPR access to the training facilities so soon after the God's Arm. They considered it an apology of sorts for almost getting them murdered through their negligence. Even though the training quarters had not been completely stripped of their renovations, the students were still allowed to use the room for whatever purposes they needed. It was Pyrrha's one, specific request, and admittedly, her teammates didn't know what she was planning, but they were more than happy to go along with what she wanted anyway. Pyrrha was very good at creating a training program for them. Her knowledge was impeccable in that regard.

What they didn't expect was for her to lose her mind.

There was no training regimen. No plan. Just a single, focused demand: to recreate a moment from the Trial as accurately as possible. And Pyrrha knew quite a bit about the details. She remembered everything so clearly; the precise inflections in the Reveler's voice when he discovered Yang and Blake's presence, the wisp of black hair brushing against her face when she saved the Huntress-in-training from sailing into the mouth of a giant toad, the exact parts of her flesh where her skin made contact with the ground. She was too slow, then, only able to save one life in that instance, and even though she went back and rescued Yang as well, she was still too slow. Too sloppy. Too inadequate. She needed to be better. So much better.

So she ran the moment through again. And again. And again. And again. And again. As many times as she needed to. Twenty-two, as of the last count. She would stand up in the viewing booth, which had still only been partially cleaned out of broken glass even so many days after the incident, and then she would wait as Ren and Nora took up positions far out of sight, pieces of rope tied around their waists to simulate the chains of the vengeful God. Then, they would use their Auras to throw themselves through the air when she least expected it and based purely on her reflexes alone, she would try to catch them. Both of them. She never did. She got close, time after time, but never once in the three hours they had been practicing was she able to grab both of them simultaneously.

And so she screamed, and stamped her foot into the ground repeatedly.

"Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!"

She clasped her hands around her mouth and screamed into them, her muffled cries echoing throughout the chamber. Nora rubbed the back of her sore head and crawled back to her feet.

"Hey, Pyrrha?" she asked uncomfortably. "Can we maybe take a break now?"

"No! I'm so close, I can feel it," Pyrrha insisted. "I just need to be a little faster. Just a bit faster."

"Pyrrha, that's what you said an hour ago," Ren reminded her, finding his peace before he said something he would regret. "Have you considered that the task you're trying to accomplish just isn't possible?"

"Of course, it is possible," Pyrrha said confidently. "I'm just… argh!" She stomped her foot again. "Why is this not working?"

"Pyrrha, please, let's just take five minutes," Nora asked desperately. "Like, I'm all for flinging myself across giant spaces, but my Aura's getting low and these landings are starting to pile up."

"We will take a break," Pyrrha said firmly, "when I know I will be able to catch the two of you together."

"Why does that even matter?" Nora wondered aloud, throwing her arms up above her head. "So, you can't catch us if we go sailing over your head. Big whoop. When is that ever going to happen again? If we are going to train, can't we at least practice something useful?"

"This is useful," Pyrrha stated. "This is about correcting mistakes. I could have gotten people killed, and quite frankly, the fact that you aren't upset about that is starting to annoy me."

"Pyrrha, I think you've built up too high of expectations for yourself," Ren said, trying to calm her down. "The fact that you were even able to save one of them is remarkable. And then you continued to save us all throughout the day. No one thinks any less of you because you can't defy physics."

Pyrrha sneered at him, marching her way toward her. "So, you're telling me that if it was Nora that I failed to catch, you wouldn't be mad?"

Nora immediately chased after her. "Hey, that's not cool!"

"No, I'm serious," Pyrrha said aggressively. She stood right in front of Ren and his calm demeanor, and pointed at the redhead trailing behind her. "If she had been there, and I let her die, you wouldn't say that I had done enough. You would never forgive me. I would never forgive myself. We are Huntresses. We have to save people. If none of you care enough about human lives to work to make yourselves better Huntsmen, then that's on you."

Ren didn't move. Pyrrha was panting in front of him, her shoulders hunched and tense. He breathed in through her nose as Nora came to his side, wrapping herself around one of his arms.

"Pyrrha," he said calmly. "I think we should take a break."

Pyrrha rolled her eyes and turned away. "None of you get it."

She stormed toward the exit, and perhaps guided by pure stupidity or genuine kindness, Jaune moved to intercept her. "Pyrrha, are you all right?" He reached for her right as she approached the exit, but she swatted him away.

"I don't care, Jaune."

She left the training room in haste, and Jaune awkwardly glanced back and smiled at his teammates, who were clinging to each other with angry, scrunched up faces as they looked at the door still swinging on its hinges.

"I'm going to, uh…" Jaune said nervously. "I'm going to check on her."

Jaune quickly ducked through the door and glanced down both ends of the plain hallway searching for Pyrrha. He found her several feet down the way to the right, pacing back and forth, head tilted forward, palms pressed together in front of her face. She was muttering something he couldn't hear, and he hesitated for a few seconds before he started walking toward her.

"Uh… Pyrrha? Can we talk?" he asked. She didn't hear him, or if she did, she ignored him. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and he could start to make out what she was saying as he stepped closer.

"Stupid, stupid… so stupid…"

"Pyrrha, I think we should talk to each other about this. You've been acting kind of strange since the Trials ended. Are you feeling okay?"

"Need more force in my heel," Pyrrha muttered. "Aura redirect. No. Not enough time in real life. Not good."

"Um, Pyrrha? Hello? Pyrrha?" Jaune said gently. He tried reaching toward her again. It was a terrible idea just a few seconds ago, but he felt the need to do so. Something was very wrong. She had never just flat out pretended he didn't exist before. He needed to break through. Just a simple touch. That's all it would be. Just a touch.

His fingers didn't reach her. Without warning, Pyrrha screamed, and with all of her might, she drove her fist directly into the wall, cracking through the concrete. Jaune jumped back, startled, and he let out a confused, "Whoa!" Pyrrha stood still, her fist buried into the wall, shaking in rage. Her jagged breaths were the only sound in the entire hallway, and her eyes were shut so tightly that they hurt. A trickle of blood began to drip down the wall from her knuckles, and she trembled as she slowly removed her fist from the concrete. She grabbed onto her wrist, and one-by-one, gently moved her fingers, trying to regain feeling within them as the blood continued to flow from her broken skin. She suddenly turned around and threw herself back first against the damaged wall, and slid down it, falling onto her hips and collapsing into her hands. She released a breathless sob, and Jaune, stunned and clueless, cautiously took a seat next to her.

"Pyrrha… what's wrong?"

She struggled when she tried to respond to him. She breathed through her teeth, shivering, and he was concerned that she was about to cry. He would have no idea what to do if that happened. He never had to console anyone before, let alone someone like Pyrrha Nikos. He didn't try to reach for her again, even though he was surer than ever that she needed a hug. She seethed and contracted her limbs up to her chest, and tried to control her sobs.

"I don't… I don't belong here," Pyrrha whispered.

It was maybe the most baffling thing Jaune had ever heard.

"You don't belong in… here? Like… Beacon here?" he asked, confident that he was misunderstanding her. Yet, she nodded solemnly.

"I shouldn't be here," she said hoarsely. "I'm not good enough. I thought I was good enough but I'm not and I'm so stupid."

"Pyrrha, you aren't stupid," Jaune assured her.

"If I wasn't, I would be able to do this!" Pyrrha growled. "I know what I have to do, but I keep messing it up. I just… argh, why am I not doing it, right?"

"Pyrrha, it's okay. What you're trying to do is really hard; of course, you aren't going to do it correctly immediately. It's just going to take more practice."

"No, no, no," Pyrrha insisted. "Because it's not just the dive. I wasn't quick enough when fighting the frogs and almost got eaten, and my strategy on the wall didn't work, and I almost let Yang die, and I was better and smarter then I would have done that better and… dammit…"

Pyrrha trailed off and breathed in sharply, curling her hands into fists and grinding her knuckles against the floor. Jaune tried to smile, acting as warm and forgiving as possible. He had never seen Pyrrha so distraught, and quite frankly, it was terrifying—but he had to do something. He had to use his-Jaune Arc charm to make her feel better, even if it had never worked on anyone in the past.

"I think you're putting too much pressure on yourself," he said slowly. "You saved all of our lives a dozen times over. Honestly, I should be buying you a car or something with how much I owe you. I don't know why you're caught up in the negatives."

"It's all negatives, Jaune," Pyrrha stated, looking at him tearfully. "I should be so much better than this. This school is supposed to make me better, and I thought I was ready for Beacon but I'm not, and I'm never going to be no matter how hard I try, because I was never that good to begin with, and this is all just a huge mistake, and—"

"Okay. That's enough for now," Jaune said matter-of-factly, and before Pyrrha had time to protest her, he pulled her into his chest for a gigantic hug. She didn't resist nearly as much as he thought she was going to, and maybe she couldn't even if she wanted to. She was so tired and frustrated with herself that she barely had the strength to move at all. He lightly patted her on the back, and she allowed herself to sink into his neck. "Look, Pyrrha, you are an incredible person. Every time you fight I go numb because of how starstruck I am. But I think you've put too high of standards on yourself. No one is thinking any less of you for any of the things you're saying, and we are, like, really thankful that we have you when we need you, because we're pretty sure we'd all be dead. You are the best teammate any of us could ask for."

"No, I'm not. I'm not, I'm… I'm such a disappointment," Pyrrha said, but Jaune was having none of it.

"Pyrrha, you are the best Huntress in Beacon. Probably the best Huntress in any Academy in the world. There's no reason for you to be upset. You can't expect yourself to be perfect literally all the time."

"But I have to be," Pyrrha said desperately. "If I can't be, then—"

"Then you'll save all of our lives anyway, probably," Jaune said confidently. "Look, I'm going to grab a bandage for your hand, then I'll be right back, okay?"

Pyrrha sniffled. "Okay."

"Don't go anywhere."

Jaune felt fairly comfortable leaving Pyrrha by herself in the hallway. It would only be for just a moment, and it was a briefly necessary step. He ducked back inside of the training room while Pyrrha tried to straighten herself against the wall, and he jogged over to Nora and Ren, who were standing in the center of the room amid a private argument.

"Should we go and confront her?" Nora asked, worriedly.

"What would we even say?" Ren responded.

"We have to say something. She had no right to talk to you like that. The nerve on her."

"You don't have to defend me."

"I don't want her to—oh, Jaune! Welcome back! What's the update?" Nora said, switching her tone on a time.

Jaune awkwardly scratched the back of his head. "Uh, Pyrrha is crying in the hallway."

"Crying?" said Ren.

"Yeah. I think she's having an anxiety attack," Jaune explained. Immediately, Nora softened her stance.

"Wait, really?" she asked fearfully.

"Yep. I think all of the pressure has finally gotten to her," Jaune explained. "You know, because everyone has such high expectations for her."

"And that's why she's been—"

"Yep."

"And why she said—"

"Yep."

Nora pouted. "Aw, man. That sucks. Now I feel bad for getting mad at her."

"She probably still shouldn't have said those things," Ren reminded her.

"Well, yeah, but," Nora said defensively, "now I know she didn't mean it. Jeez, I don't want to be mad at someone who's having an anxiety attack. That's just awful. Plus, you don't get mad at me during my anxiety attacks."

"True," said Ren.

"Wait," Jaune noted, "you get anxiety attacks, Nora?"

"Pfft. All the time," Nora said with a smile and a wave. "I'm just a big ol' bundle of terrors. Usually I wake up fine, but sometimes—blammo! The world is on fire and my entire brain is about to turn to mush."

Ren nodded. "I've been trying to get her to do more yoga."

"Yoga is for nerds!"

Jaune cleared his throat. "Hey, back on topic. Can you guys help me calm Pyrrha down? I think she needs the support."

Nora beamed proudly. "Don't worry, Jaune. I know just the thing to make her happy."

"Thanks, guys," Pyrrha said softly. She approached the five scoops of mint double chocolate chip ice cream the same way she would approach an enemy combatant, only while an encounter against another Huntsmen or a criminal or even a literal God would end with her stabbing her opponent vigorously. The fight against the ice cream just ended up with her getting mint double chocolate chip on her nose, which she then had to wipe off with a napkin. "You didn't have to do this, though."

"Of course, we did," Nora said eagerly. "We don't let teammates sulk when they're feeling down. Also, I've been looking for an excuse to come to this place for the last two weeks, so… you know…"

Nora had good reason to want to go to the New Vale Creamery. It was easily the highest-rated ice cream spot in the entire city, and after nearly getting murdered by a literal God, they all deserved to screw over their diets and splurge on something sweet. It was almost amazing just how quickly the tension resolved itself once they had something good to eat. Nora bought her entire team the goods, and they each sat tightly packed in a small red-ish booth, each with several scoops in hand. Some part of them knew that they probably shouldn't have been there, and it wasn't just the fact that they had finals coming up that they were woefully behind in studying for. It was also that all the other people in the store had very young children with them, and they were getting weird looks for being a bunch of Beacon-attending teenagers who were acting quite beneath their age range. But since they had ice cream, they didn't really let anything bother them.

"Can I say something?" Pyrrha asked.

"Anything you want," Jaune said, eating a strawberry cone of his own.

"I know I haven't been very good as a teammate," Pyrrha admitted. "I think I tend to overshadow people, and I know I haven't treated you with as much kindness as I could have."

"Pyrrha, you don't have to worry about it," Jaune said encouragingly. "We get it. You know, you have a right to be aggravated."

"But I don't want to be mad at anyone," Pyrrha said somberly. "I want to get along, it's just… sometimes, I feel like I'm hearing these voices telling me that I would be better off without you. That'd you're just holding me back. And I don't want to feel that way about anyone. I guess I've spent so much of my training as a Huntress alone that I don't really know what to do when I'm stuck with others."

"Growing is part of the process," Ren reminded her, taking a bite of his own mocha ice cream.

"Yeah. It's totally natural," Nora agreed, taking a massive bite of her hodgepodge of flavors that could generously be called a tower of ice cream. "Stress can make you do and say all sorts of weird things. Ren can tell you that."

"I can," Ren said with a nod, "but I won't. That's private."

"True," Nora stated "Honestly, I'm less worried about you saying mean things and more worried about you not understanding it's wrong. You feel me?"

"Yes. I think," Pyrrha said humbly. "I really am sorry that I hurt your feelings, and that I made you practice instead of working for our finals. That was selfish and wrong. I'm still… I'm still working a lot of that out. How to say the right things."

"Yeah, we know," Jaune said kindly. "But you're trying. And honestly, the thing that was worrying me more was the things you were saying about yourself. You don't really believe any of that, do you?"

"Do I?" Pyrrha wondered aloud.

"I mean, because you shouldn't," Jaune clarified. "No one who saved our lives so many times should ever feel down about themselves. Heck, if it wasn't for you being on my team boosting my grades, I probably would have been expelled from the school by now. I kind of need you."

"Yeah," Nora said proudly. "At first, I actually didn't want you on my team. Like, the super famous Mistran girl? Who cares if she's strong? Why would I want to have to deal with all that baggage? But now that I met you, you're awesome! Who cares if one time out of a thousand you let someone get eaten by a giant frog? Ninety-nine lives saved if ninety-nine more than most people!"

Ren sighed. "Personally, I think Nora made a terrible argument just now. But I agree with the overall sentiment. You're undoubtedly a great asset to the team. You need to let go of your unrealistic expectations."

"Or, you know, bury those expectations in ice cream until tomorrow comes," Nora suggested. "That's what I'm doing."

Pyrrha shrugged. The logic made as much sense to her as anything else did. She supposed she was rather fortunate to have JNPR as a team. Even if they didn't always express it, it was nice to know that someone else in the world cared about her. She could sit and ponder her actions more, dwell on her discontent. It was something that she certainly liked to do—the one time where she was one hundred percent certain the correct thought would always be expressed. But, as Nora stated, that was a problem she could ultimately deal with at another time. Perhaps during finals. After all, the teams would be reassigned in their aftermath, and getting JNPR back into the top position over Team CRDL would definitely perk up her spirit. She still wished that she could take back what she said to them, but there was nothing she could do now except sit and eat her ice cream. Taking another lick, she had to wonder why it was that her parents kept her away from the frosty treat for so long.

"Nora, you had a good idea to come here," Pyrrha said gladly.

Nora grinned. "Oh, yeah. I love ice cream. And cakes. And just other general sweet things. Honestly, for the amount of sugar I consume per my body ratio, it is a miracle that I have abs."

"How do you have abs?" Jaune asked, curiously. "Like, what's your workout tip?"

"Oh, I seriously mean it's a miracle. I have no idea," Nora said wildly. "My gut theory is that it all just goes right to my hips and my boobs. Honestly, I am okay with that."

"You know what?" Jaune groaned, strawberry ice cream dripping down his hand. "Forget I asked."