As the music continued to play, more and more people gradually made their way into the ballroom of Beacon Academy, filling the large open space with laughter, conversation, and the soft rhythm of shoes against polished floor.
The night had already taken on a warm, celebratory feeling, and the whole room seemed to move with it, as though the music itself was carrying everyone along.
Among all the couples and groups gathered there, Tsutsumi and Pyrrha stood out almost immediately.
The two of them were dancing in each other's arms, moving with a grace that felt almost unnatural to everyone watching. Every turn, every step, every small shift of weight between them looked effortless, as though they had been practicing together for far longer than they actually had.
Tsutsumi's usual calm expression had softened just enough to make the moment feel different, while Pyrrha looked brighter than she had all evening, her eyes gentle and full of warmth as she followed the music and trusted him completely with each movement.
At first, it had started simply enough, with Tsutsumi offering his hand and Pyrrha accepting it with that quiet smile of hers. But once the music began, something changed. The two of them fell into the rhythm naturally, and neither of them seemed eager to let go.
Tsutsumi guided her through the steps with surprising care, his hand steady at her waist, while Pyrrha moved with him as if she had already memorized his pace. They were not just dancing in the same space. They were moving as one, their motions so closely matched that it made the rest of the ballroom feel a little farther away.
Even among such a large gathering, the two of them were impossible to ignore.
They stood out like cranes among chickens, elegant and striking in a way that drew the eyes of nearly everyone nearby. People who had been chatting moments before gradually began to quiet down, their attention shifting toward the center of the ballroom as they watched the pair move across the floor.
It was almost unreal, seeing such a breathtaking performance from someone as unstable and dangerous as Tsutsumi and someone as powerful and composed as Pyrrha. The contrast only made the scene more memorable. It should not have felt so beautiful, and yet somehow it did.
Pyrrha's expression slowly changed as the dance continued.
At first, she had simply been smiling, enjoying the moment and the closeness, but the longer they moved together, the more relaxed she became. There was a softness in her eyes now, something tender and a little vulnerable, as if she was quietly holding onto the feeling of being with him without wanting the moment to end too soon. Tsutsumi noticed it, though he said nothing. He only kept holding her a little more carefully, guiding her through the music with a patience that he did not often show to others.
For once, neither of them needed to speak much.
The dance itself carried everything.
Pyrrha trusted him enough to let herself be led, and Tsutsumi, in turn, seemed more aware of her than anyone else in the room. Every time the music shifted, he adjusted his steps to match hers without hesitation, and every time she leaned toward him, he steadied her without making it seem like work. It was a quiet exchange, but an intimate one, and anyone looking closely could tell that something deeper than simple dancing was happening between them.
Nora, who had been watching from the side with a bright smile, clearly thought the same thing.
She stood beside Ren and held up her camera, snapping several pictures of the two as they danced. Her grin only widened every time she took another shot, as though she was enjoying the moment almost as much as they were.
"It seems that our powerful leader has really been conquered by Pyrrha," she said, still smiling as she kept taking pictures.
Ren stood beside her in his usual quiet way, watching the dance without interrupting. Even he could tell that this was different from the way Tsutsumi usually acted. There was no harshness in his movements right now, no cold distance, no feeling that he was simply going through the motions. Instead, there was a rare kind of gentleness in the way he held Pyrrha, and it made the whole ballroom feel a little quieter, a little warmer.
As the music reached its next verse, Pyrrha looked up at Tsutsumi again, and this time her smile carried something deeper than before. It was not just happiness. It was relief, affection, and a little bit of the emotion she had been holding back ever since they had entered the ballroom together. Tsutsumi saw it, and although he did not say anything aloud, the expression in his eyes softened in response. For a brief moment, he looked less like the Destroyer people feared and more like someone who was simply there, present and real, holding onto a moment he did not want to lose.
And for as long as the music kept playing, the two of them continued dancing, wrapped in the glow of the ballroom lights and the quiet attention of everyone around them.
...
After that day, the relationship between Tsutsumi and Pyrrha quietly grew closer than when they had first met.
There was no sudden confession or dramatic change between them. Instead, it was the little things that changed. Pyrrha naturally stayed by his side more often, and Tsutsumi had also begun accepting her presence without questioning it.
They spent more time together, whether it was training, eating, or simply walking back to the dorms after class. Neither of them brought it up, yet everyone around them could see that something between the two had slowly become deeper.
Life at Beacon soon returned to its usual rhythm.
Team TNPR accepted several more missions over the following weeks, partly to gain practical experience and partly to prepare themselves for the upcoming Vytal Festival Tournament.
Most of the assignments were routine, clearing Grimm nests, escorting civilians, protecting villages, and assisting local Huntsmen, but they still treated every mission seriously, knowing that real experience could never be replaced by classroom lessons.
Even so, while Team TNPR continued moving forward, the relationship between them and Team RWBY slowly began to crack.
The friendship the two teams once shared had become awkward, and almost all of it centered around Tsutsumi.
From Team RWBY's point of view, they believed they had not done anything truly wrong. Yes, things had gotten out of hand, but in their eyes, Tsutsumi's response had crossed a line. They believed he had gone far beyond what the situation required, and because of that, they found it difficult to look at him the same way they once had.
Team TNPR saw things differently. Unlike RWBY, the four of them had personally witnessed the aftermath left behind by the stolen mech rampaging through Vale. They had walked through streets buried beneath collapsed buildings, helped pull injured civilians from the rubble, and fought, injured, and killed the White Fang members attacking the city.
The destruction did not discriminate.
Neither did the people causing it.
Although Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora also admitted that Tsutsumi might have gone too far in the way he dealt with Roman and the White Fang, not a single one of them blamed him for making that decision.
After all, the three of them were realists, much like their leader.
Pyrrha had grown up in Mistral, a kingdom that was far less peaceful than many people imagined. Despite her fame as the four-time Mistral Regional Champion, she had seen enough of the world's darker side to understand that there were moments when taking another person's life became unavoidable. It was never something to be celebrated, but neither was it something that could always be avoided.
Ren and Nora understood that reality just as well. The two of them had lost their home when they were still children. Their entire village had been wiped out, leaving them with no choice but to survive together from an early age. Long before they ever entered Beacon Academy, they had already learned that the world was not kind enough to spare everyone. Becoming Huntsmen and Huntresses only reinforced that belief. Fighting Grimm was one thing, but there would eventually come a day when they would have to fight people as well.
Because of their upbringing, the four members of Team TNPR viewed the world very differently from Team RWBY.
Blake believed that becoming a Huntress would allow her to atone for the mistakes she made during her time with the White Fang while helping mend the relationship between humans and Faunus.
Weiss wanted to become a Huntress so she could change the Schnee family from within and prove that the company did not have to continue following the same path as her father.
Yang mostly wanted the freedom that came with being a Huntress. She enjoyed the excitement of combat, but at the same time hoped that her journey would eventually lead her to her mother.
Ruby's dream was perhaps the simplest of all. She wanted to become the kind of hero she had always admired as a child, someone who could save people with a smile and protect everyone without exception.
None of those dreams were wrong.
But neither were they realistic in Tsutsumi's eyes.
Team RWBY wanted to reach their dream, but besides relying on hopes and their wish to become huntresses. They aren't willing to do what is necessary to achieve their dream. Because they are afraid of change.
Conflict is inevitable; to mend the relationship between humans and faunus, the quickest solution is a common enemy.
To change the situation of the Schnee family, the change must happen from the inside, with their member first.
To search for a missing mother who abandoned you when you were little, hoping isn't always going to work without taking action to search for clues and traces.
The moment you start trying to be a hero, you've already been disqualified.
When you consciously focus on "being a hero," your motivation shifts from genuinely helping others to wanting praise, recognition, and the heroic title itself. Purely heroic acts are done out of necessity or compassion, without any thought of how the action makes the doer look.
Still, despite everything that had happened, Team RWBY did not completely cut ties with Team TNPR.
Ruby still greeted Pyrrha whenever they crossed paths.
Yang occasionally joked with Nora.
Weiss could still hold a normal conversation with Ren.
Even Blake, after recovering from her injuries, remained polite whenever she spoke to the other three.
The only exception was Tsutsumi.
Whether intentionally or not, the four girls naturally kept their distance from him. Conversations became shorter, eye contact became rarer, and the atmosphere whenever they happened to be in the same room always felt noticeably colder.
Tsutsumi, however, could not bring himself to care.
If he truly wanted to, he could simply open an Aurora Curtain, step into another parallel Remnant, and become friends with another Team RWBY altogether. There were countless versions of them scattered across the multiverse, and building a new relationship would not be difficult.
But he found no reason to do something so meaningless.
He had already obtained all of their Cards.
There was nothing left that he needed from them.
More importantly, Tsutsumi had never developed any romantic feelings toward any member of Team RWBY to begin with.
After seeing how they reacted to everything that had happened, and how easily they overlooked the consequences of their own actions while judging everyone else's, he found himself losing what little interest he might have once had.
It was like their believe themselves to be some main characters that could do no wrong, being shielded from the consequences of their own actions, and thanks to Ozpin's help in dealing with the aftermath, it only seemed to reinforce their strange belief.
Because of that, Tsutsumi simply accepted the distance between them without resentment.
If they truly believed that they were correct, then he would simply let them drown in their own ideas and fantasy.
He isn't their guardian angel or caretaker; without realizing that their actions also affect others both positively and negatively, he isn't going to waste his breath on trying to convince a bunch of idealists; the world will soon break them itself without needing him to do it.