Jaune scythed through trees five at a time with a sword made of burning white fire. He was larger than life, faster than light, stronger than anything that existed – because he didn't exist, and because rage and aura made him manifest in the murderer's dreams.

In what was fast becoming a nightmare for them.

The hooded figure ducked and dived around trees and shot across the forest as fast as they could, but they couldn't hope to escape him. Not here. Not in a world he controlled. Jaune threw out his hand and warped the very world itself, making forward back and turning them around so that they were suddenly sprinting toward him. They realised at the last second, panicked, and got their hands up in time for him to swing his sword for their chest.

Aura flashed, tanking the blow. This person was instinctively using it even in a dream. No one else had, as far as he could remember. The whole reason he'd had all those problems early on was because he'd been using aura in his sleep and leaving himself exhausted. Other people didn't because their dreams weren't real. Even when Nora had been hit by Grimm in her dream, she didn't use aura because it wasn't really happening, and she woke up just fine.

This person was actively using their aura.

Intentionally.

"Who are you!?" roared Jaune, swinging at them again.

They ducked the blow, but he undid that, believing them standing. He heard their shocked gasp as they seemed to teleport back in front of his still swinging blade. They were launched away with a startled scream. It was a woman, but then he'd known that. They used the momentum of his blow to take them further away, or so they tried. Jaune simply willed them to land where he was standing, and back they came.

But they adapted. Tucking her limbs in, the woman twisted and transitioned into a spinning kick that would have struck his neck with force enough to break it if he wasn't literally infused with aura. It struck between shoulder and neck, and he grunted. The damage he took was as real as the damage he could do to them, but the difference was he could warp the way this world worked.

Case in point, the trees surrounding them turned silver grey, rising up and stretching out to become thinner and taller. They shot up like bamboo reaching for the sky, then closed in above them. A cage of vertical bars forming a large square, with them trapped in the centre of it. Metallic branches spanned out left and right to cut off the narrow gaps between the bars and trap the two of them together.

There would be no escape.

Grabbing the ankle still pressed into his neck, he twisted and slammed her down, then reached for her hood. His hand was batted away desperately, and the woman yanked the hood down harder still, desperately hiding her identity.

Why—?

Any random person having a nightmare shouldn't care about that. He was a monster to them, a bogeyman, and yet here they were hiding their identity. Was it an automatic part of her dream? She'd obviously done her best to remain hidden from Qrow, so maybe this was triggering the same need to hide her identity. Or maybe it was the fact he was trying that had her automatically defending herself.

He wasn't sure he bought that.

Flames erupted from the floor and burned all around them, making her shy back. The cage became an oven cooking them both, except that he used his aura to protect himself and she thought this was real. In a sense, it was to her. He only meant the flames to try and burn her cloak away and reveal her, but she thrashed in them, screaming and flailing her arms around, too afraid to stop, drop and roll because that would mean rolling around in the fire.

"You killed Amber," he seethed, fury quashing any guilt he might have felt. Jaune stalked through flames that were as tall as he was. "You murdered her. And she did nothing to you. Nothing!" A blade came his way, summoned from nowhere. He'd almost think she could control dreams as well, if not for her inability to escape the cage.

Either way, he swung his burning sword up and shattered the weapon in her hand.

Around her, the flames closed in, no longer burning every part of the cage but congregating toward her like Grimm closing in on a wounded huntress. Her screams increased in pitch, and he heard the sound of sizzling flesh. He might have considered the possibility of death if he'd been in his right mind, and whether that would was something he could ever truly do.

But he wasn't in his right mind.

This forest...

He could still remember Amber dying in his arms.

Jaune reached through the flames and closed his hands around a pale neck, forced her down and straddled her, pushing down and squeezing as fire burned at her. Choked sounds escaped rosy lips and painted nails scrabbled at his face to try and tear at his eyes. A shield of aura forced them back, and he ignored the knee burying itself in his crotch to try and knock him off because pain wasn't real. His body wasn't real.

The woman beneath him choked and trembled, air cut off from her lungs.

It wasn't real air, nor real lungs.

But her mind thought it was. As her eyes rolled back, Jaune sensed the creeping end of this world and realised his mistake. He'd suffocated her, choked her out, and her body was about to wake up in absolute panic.

And take her away from him.

"No!" he snarled, reaching for her hood. "NO!"

Too late.

The world exploded in white light.

/-/

Jaune's eyes snapped open.

Fury and dismay gripped him for a second, but only that. He rolled out of bed, landing on all fours and yanking on his trainers. He rushed for the door and let himself out, drew his scroll and instantly called Oobleck. Even if he hadn't seen who it was, he must have caused damage. They could be found, located, and if anyone called in sick today then they'd become instant suspects.

Jaune moved away from his dorm so as not to wake his team, first to the common room, then he decided to head to the central tower instead. Ozpin needed to know as well, and he might as well deliver the news in person. They'd criticise him for losing his cool and not exposing Amber's killer, but he was sure he'd given them enough to go on.

The killer should be red-handed. Not with blood, but with burns.

Oobleck's scroll connected but he didn't answer. It was two in the morning so he was obviously asleep, but Jaune called again. He'd wake up with enough noise, and this was important enough to be roused for. As he held the scroll to his ear, he kept marching toward the main entry hall. He wasn't even sure if Ozpin had a bedroom in the tower close to his office, but it was the only place he knew to find the man. Jaune jogged out the corridor into the main hall and toward the golden-doored elevator.

A heavy weight slammed into his left leg and kicked it out from under him.

Jaune hit the floor hard, shock lasting for a fraction of a second before sharp pain lanced from below his waist. A gasp, rather than a scream, slipped from his lips. His aura came up, almost instinctive at this point, and that saved his life. Another blow hit him straight in the throat and left him gasping for air, but the long, black object bounced off, spinning in the air before landing and punching down into the carpet.

An arrow.

There was one in his leg, too. A black shaft with black feathers, piercing through his left leg and coming out the other side stained red. It was as if realising he'd been shot with an arrow gave permission to his nerves to fire off, because suddenly he could feel everything. How it had gone through his muscles, how it had scraped his bone, how it had come out the other side and how much that hurt.

"Arghhhhh!" Jaune screamed.

The archer sprinted toward him and threw the bow aside, causing it to shatter into motes of dust. They jumped on top of him, one gloved hand clamping down over his mouth as the other grasped at his throat and pushed down. It was a reverse of the position he'd been in moments before, in the dream, and as his eyes met hers he knew immediately it was the same person.

They'd attempted to hide their face with a pathetic black mask, little more than a theatre mask over their eyes, but he could recognise them – and anyone could now, because the left half of their face from their neck up past their chin to their cheek was blistered and burned. Scarred irreversibly.

"C—Cinder," he choked out, grasping at her arms. "Y—You—"

"You couldn't leave well enough alone!" she hissed, eyes wide and wild. "You simply had to stick your nose where it didn't belong."

"M—Murderer..."

"It's my power!" she snarled. "I won it! I earned it! I killed her!" Now that she'd choked him enough to silence his screams, she brought her other hand to his neck as well. "I won't let you ruin everything I've achieved because of a stupid, pointless little Semblance!"

Jaune scrabbled for her. It was a complete reversal. In the dream, he'd been all-powerful. Here, he was the weakest student in Beacon. His fingers scratched at her face, but she smiled cruelly down on him and drove her weight into her hands, pinching his neck against the cold floor. Darkness crept in at the edge of his vision. She was choking him so fast he was going to pass out, and then die, and be discovered tomorrow morning.

A—Amber, I'm sorry—

"Get off him!"

A barefoot struck Cinder in the side of the head, sending her rolling off Jaune's body. That foot, and a lot of bare leg, stamped down on the other side of Jaune, before a pale hand came down and grabbed his collar, dragging him back.

"Are you okay?" asked Blake, voice low and harsh.

"M—My leg—"

"I can see it. Apply pressure."

Blake, still in her sleeping yukata, stepped over his body and took a stance on the other side of him. Cinder was climbing to her feet and summoned her bow and arrows once more. With Gambol Shroud in the weapons lockers with everything else, Blake was unarmed, but she didn't appear overly frightened. Instead, she brought her hand to her lips and inserted two fingers into her mouth.

"Fweee-Fweeeeeeeeeeee!"

It was a sharp, two-toned blast. A whistle painfully sharp and loud as one might release to try and call back a dog that had run after some sheep. In the silence of 2am Beacon, it might as well have been a fire alarm. Blake repeated it, making sure everyone within two hundred metres or more knew this wasn't a one-off occurrence.

Cinder fired an arrow but Blake simply took it on her aura, and continued whistling, alternating the pitch and length until there was no way she hadn't been heard. Caught between finishing her and Jaune or fleeing, Cinder had no choice. There was no hope of killing them both before someone investigated this.

The burnt woman snarled and turned away. "You will die, Arc!" she shouted, as she raced for Beacon's main entrance. "I'll make sure of it!"

Blake kept her guard up until Cinder was well and truly gone, and then until people, many in their pyjamas, began to appear in the hall wondering what the hell was going on. Professor Port was among them, looking angry, until he saw Jaune rolling on his front hacking and coughing for air while bleeding from an arrow still through his leg.

"Everyone back!" he barked, showing a level of discipline he wasn't normally known for. "You two!" he pointed at random. "Go to the infirmary immediately and help Tsune bring a stretcher. You and you, to Glynda's office right now. Inform her there has been an attack. The rest of you either go back to bed or watch the entrance. Make yourselves useful!"

He came jogging up to them.

"Miss Belladonna. What happened?"

"I don't know. I heard Jaune stumble out his room and decided to follow." She realised how strange that sounded and added, "I was returning a favour. He... I thought he needed some fresh air or something had happened so I stayed out the way, but then someone attacked him with a bow—"

"Cinder," he choked out. "C—Cinder Fall!"

"I hear you," said Port. "I'll remember the name, now stay quiet and rest your throat. Miss Belladonna, keep his leg in place and to the side – don't let the arrow drag or catch on the floor. Hands on his thigh. Mr Arc, I'm going to have to wrap your pant leg around this wound to staunch the bleeding. I can't withdraw the arrow here."

Jaune nodded, tears in his eyes. He'd thought himself used to pain after training with Pyrrha, but there was such a difference between hard knocks in training taken on aura and an arrow literally through your leg. It burned.

But Cinder had burned, too.

That brought with it a grim satisfaction.

/-/

It was a gruelling few hours in the time it took him to be taken to the infirmary and for Tsune to remove the arrow from his leg. She'd commented that the broadhead coming out the back made it easier on him, cutting that off and sliding it back against bone. The painkillers made sure it wasn't agony but he still felt the grating within his leg and even though it didn't hurt, it made him feel queasy. It was stitched up and he was put on a drip, but the assurances that he'd keep his leg and make a full recovery helped.

By the time Ozpin had finished with whatever he had to, his team and also Team RWBY were awake, though the latter were being kept out so as not to crowd him. He'd had a short time to talk with his team, and to ask them to deliver his gratitude to Blake for literally saving his life before Ozpin and General Ironwood arrived and ushered his teammates out. Tsune left with them.

"Mr. Arc," said General Ironwood, nodding down on him. "Good to see you're alive. You should know Cinder Fall and her team have abandoned Beacon and are currently being pursued through the Emerald Forest. However, they are likely to escape. That said, they shall be hunted across Vale if needs be. They will not escape justice."

"Moving swiftly on," said Ozpin, stepping in. "I'd like to ask a few things about Miss Fall if I may. When you met her, anything she said that might in hindsight have seemed suspicious, and what exactly happened in her dream that had you nearly murdered in the entrance hall. Please spare no details."

Jaune did the best he could to recall everything. It was a rambling, messy conversation with far too many segues into his own thoughts, not aided by the painkillers running through his system. Ironwood and Ozpin were patient however, letting him ramble and listening to everything. He told them of Cinder's first dream, her latest one, her – as Ozpin said, suspicious in hindsight – repeated questions as to whether he'd been in her dreams since the first, and what he knew of her team. He also spoke of Trivia with regret and confusion, his feelings in his throat and confusion settling in.

"I'm sure she isn't the same," he pleaded. "She was always nice to me, and I know she wasn't faking it. I... I don't believe she would do this."

"An investigation has not yet begun so we cannot say one way or the other," said Ironwood. "You mentioned she was physically scarred?"

"Yes. Doctor Oobleck thought my Semblance might be able to leave marks. It turns out it can. I only made fire appear to try and burn her cloak so I could see who she was, but she reacted to it extremely and I... I wanted her to suffer. I burned her. I didn't realise it would stick in the real world, but it definitely did. Half her face was a ruined mass of flesh."

Ironwood didn't seem bothered. "That'll make her easier to identify."

"We will increase security on the school, but I don't expect your life will be in immediate danger," said Ozpin. "Cinder obviously sought to kill you to keep her crimes a secret and now that they're out the only motivation remaining would be revenge. Which we will take seriously," he added. "But I must ask that you stay in Beacon as best you can. If you need to go into the city, please inform myself or General Ironwood so an escort can be made. Either Winter Schnee or Qrow Branwen—"

"I'll stay," Jaune croaked. It wasn't like he was feeling up for it either. "But what do I do if they come back?"

"I will install a panic button on your scroll. It will contact myself, Glynda and James immediately. If you have any dreams involving them, implying they are close to you, then you should alert us immediately. In the meantime, the corridors will be monitored and Atlas soldiers will hunt for them through Vale. Ideally..." Ozpin let out a heavy sigh. "Ideally, your part in this will have come to a close, Mr Arc. That is my hope."

Jaune hoped for it too.

"How the hell am I going to explain this to my team...?"

"Tell them that Winter Schnee, on my behalf, sent you an image of the suspected person who attacked Amber," said Ironwood. He said it so quickly and so confidently that Jaune wondered how he was so good at lying. "And that you recognised her as a transfer student here and realised who it was late at night. An epiphany of sorts, that woke you up. You rushed to inform us, but she intercepted you and attempted to silence you. Your friend intervened to save your life. We shall back up the story."

Ozpin shrugged, but smiled, agreeing without words.

It was a story with holes, but Jaune figured his friends wouldn't spot them since they'd be so busy staring at the hole in his leg and trying to figure out how a criminal had gotten into Beacon. Jaune posed that question.

"We can't comment on that," said Ozpin. "But rest assured an old friend of ours has answers to give, and that a failure to provide good ones might lead to his arrest. We are coming down on this hard. One does not grievously wound one of my students and get away with it."

/-/

"This has got to stop!"

It was Pyrrha who said it, losing her patience after almost an hour of explanation and exasperation. Jaune flinched, almost imagining she was about to call him out on his lies. "What does?"

"You ending up injured in here!"

Tension left him and he laughed, sinking back into the cushions. "That's not exactly an intentional thing on my part, Pyr. I didn't strap a bullseye on my leg and go sprinting across a room as target practice."

"I thought your aura control was improving with our training..."

"He didn't have a chance. No one would have." It was Blake who came to his rescue. "It caught me by surprise as well. One moment he was walking, looking down at his scroll, and the neck a streak of black hit his leg faster than anyone could have reacted. Even I didn't realise what it was until he fell on his side and I saw the arrow. He got his aura up after, blocking the second, but you can't react to an attack you don't know is coming."

"Why were you following him anyway?" asked Pyrrha.

"Not—" Nora interjected, "—that we are complaining."

"No! Of course not!" Pyrrha blushed bright red. "I'm just trying to understand."

Blake crossed her arms defensively, awkwardly, and even had the gall to glare his way as if it was his fault his team's complicated issues were trickling toward her.

"I was awake at the time and heard him leave his dorm," she mumbled. "So, I followed."

More than a few eyebrows rose.

"Blake and I have been on late-night walks together once or twice," said Jaune, saving her. Or trying to. Yang's eyes lit up and Blake looked horrified. "Platonic walks. Damn it, Yang. How is my girlfriend more eager to tease me over cheating on her?"

"Because I know it's fake and it's funny," Yang said, unrepentantly.

"It's nothing like that," groaned Blake. "I had issues sleeping a few nights back and Jaune heard and kept me company. I heard him and assumed it was the same. I was just trying to return the favour. It's not like I expected him to be attacked, or I'd have gone out in something more substantial than my sleepwear."

Nora giggled. "Get a nice view, oh fearless leader?"

"Yeah, sure. In between being shot and nearly strangled to death, sure."

That killed the mood.

"I can't believe Cinder's team would do that," said Ruby. "I thought they seemed nice."

"I can't believe Trivia would do it at all," Jaune said, sighing heavily. "I really thought she and I were friends."

"I think we all thought that," said Pyrrha. "I'd have said she loved you like a big brother from how she acted. Either she was the greatest actress we've ever seen, or it wasn't entirely her choice."

"Might have been Cinder that opted to kill you and didn't tell them," said Yang. "Maybe she ran to keep her safety but wouldn't have hurt you. Probably doesn't matter, does it? If she ran then she's as guilty as Cinder is. Big question is what they wanted here." Yang flashed him an apologetic smile. "I know you said they're the ones who killed your friend, but why come here after? Why come to Beacon and pretend to be students?"

"Maybe they weren't pretending," said Ren. "Maybe they were students before they were killers, and this was just them keeping their cover."

"That must be what Ozpin meant about getting answers," Jaune mumbled. Everyone looked at him odd so he explained. "They said they'd be demanding answers from an old friend. It must be the headmaster of the school in Mistral."

"Leonardo Leonheart," said Pyrrha. "I almost went there, so I met him. He seemed nice enough." She shrugged. "Maybe he didn't know. It's not like they would have advertised their crimes."

"Well with any luck this will be the last time Jaune gets himself nearly killed," said Ren. "I think we might need to hold you to that, Jaune."

"Ahah. Yeah. I'll do my best. They don't think she'll come back for me. Ozpin thinks this was her trying to silence me rather than avenge herself. Now the cat's out the bag, there's not much point. But I think I'll be sleeping with a locked door either way."

"You can always trust Blake to magically know when you're awake or asleep," chirped Yang.

"Stop making that sound so suspicious!"

"What's suspicious about it?" asked Weiss, smirking faintly. "Certainly, there's nothing odd about a woman keeping an ear to the door so she can rush out and follow a young man walking alone late at night to conveniently have a late night walk with him. Nothing suspicious at all."

Blake stared at her, horrified.

Everyone else just cackled.

/-/

"C—Cinder..."

Emerald held a hand out to the woman, not knowing what to say or do. Cinder was marred, scarred, and shaking with rage. Emerald shook with grief, while Mercury was wisely keeping quiet and Neo... Neo was dangerously still.

"Silence," hissed Cinder. "This... This changes nothing. Amber is dead. I have the maiden's power. Beacon... Beacon is no longer necessary. The plan continues. Beacon will fall, Vale will burn." At the word, she trembled, one hand rising to touch her ruined cheek. "And Arc shall burn as well. He'll burn to ash."

Neo blinked, her eyes changing colour, but they were gone a moment later.

As was she.

"Neo is gone," said Emerald.

"Probably back to Torchwick." Cinder dismissed the issue with a wave of her hand. "It doesn't matter."

Emerald wasn't so sure.