Cardin is bullying Velvet... AGAIN.

They heard the all-too-commonplace commotion from Cardin's table. He had found Velvet again and had decided to make fun of her again. Uncreative as he always was, he had once again grabbed her by one of her ears.

The two teams saw all of this, glowering at the display of open prejudice. Blake was furious. The amount of times she tried working up the courage to rush over to the two and beat Cardin bloody was uncountable now. Each time, she got more frustrated at herself for not standing up and doing something, always electing to sit, hide and run unnoticed, instead of confronting a problem.

Instead, all she could do was badmouth him from her stool.

"Cardin is so cool, bullying Velvet like that," said Blake, simmering as she glared daggers at him from over her shoulder. It wasn't until a moment afterward that she realised what she had said. She hadn't meant to say cool, had she? She wanted to say lame.

Yet, as she thought on it, she began to doubt herself. Maybe 'lame' was the wrong word? Cardin wasn't lame.

No, Blake rejected that thought, inwardly scoffing at herself. Of course Cardin was lame. He was a jerk that threw his weight around, had a terrible ego, cared only about his perverse idea of glory. In addition, the way he would treat the faunus was repugnantly offensive and Blake would always believe that, faunus herself or otherwise.

Put... when Blake saw him pulling poor Velvet's ears and talking down to her, all of the prior judgements eroded away.

He... he looks so cool, when he bullies Velvet.

Blake hadn't taken her eye's off of the far-off couple in a while, but she heard her friends continuing their talk. She was continuing to listen passively. Briefly, Blake panicked that admitting how cool she found Cardin's treatment of Velvet would lead to some awkward confrontation at the table, but thankfully, with the scornful tone she (for some reason) delivered the opinion, they must have taken it for a sarcastic jab.

"Yeah. I can't stand that tool," Nora said, tapping one of her feet against the floor as she watched, agitatedly, with Blake.

"Tell me about it," Ruby said, "It seems that, since he stopped picking on Jaune, Velvet's become his main target now."

"Awesome," said Yang, annoyingly picking through a box of salad, as the entire table turned to her.

"I MEANT AWFUL. I don't know why I said awesome,"

Yang had a bead of sweat on her brow and her eyes were wide. She had been genuinely startled.

"I-I mean... It was awesome for Jaune, here. Not to be his target anymore, right? That must feel good?"

"I... guess," Jaune replies, "that's a messed up way of looking at it, though. If I had known it was going to cause problems for Velvet, I'd have let Cardin keep on me."

"Oh Jaune. That's so noble," said Pyrrha, putting a hand to her heart.

"But stupid," Nora adds on, patting his back firmly, "No body deserves to be bullied and Cardin shouldn't have the right to bully anyone."