"Are we cool?"

"Jaune, I will stab you."

Ren was still in a surly mood the next morning, though that might have had more to do with what Beacon's rumour mill was throwing around than what actually happened. It turned out that when news had spread of loud banging, shouting, a torn-up dorm room, detentions with Glynda and then even more noise of pillows striking one another and straining mattress springs, people tended to jump to conclusions.

Terrible conclusions.

"So, was Ren topping or is he a power bottom?"

Jaune eyed Yang, his literal girlfriend, who looked far too excited at the idea of her boyfriend being pegged by another man for Jaune's liking. "What...?"

"That's the rumour," she said. "Team JNPR gets busted for huge orgy."

"What on Remnant is wrong with people here?" Ren groaned.

"Hormones," said Blake, listening in partially because she was there but mostly – Jaune suspected – because she was intrigued. He wasn't touching that with a ten-foot pole. "This is a school filled with hormonal teens who are being worked up everyday through combat and competition. Tensions are high, blood is boiling, and there isn't nearly as much sex as everyone thinks. So, they make up sex. Imagine it's happening in every dorm except their own. Wild and rampant sex."

"Blake has been in her books," Yang explained. "If you can't tell."

"We can tell," Jaune and Ren said as one.

"Nothing like that happened," Ren added. "We had a... disagreement."

"Isn't your dorm a complete wreck?" asked Ruby.

"It was a spirited disagreement."

"Like, the beds are gone and the janitor was carrying out the broken frames today."

"It was an exceedingly spirited disagreement."

"No kidding," said Yang. "Is the disagreement still spirited? Or is it fixed?"

"The fact that Jaune is eating breakfast and not clutching at my fork lodged in his left eyeball should answer that question."

The girls of Team RWBY stared at Ren. They were used to him being a quiet observer throwing in the odd comment to calm Nora down. None of them had ever seen him like this. Then again, no one had ever seen Pyrrha Nikos with a split lip and a bruise over her eyes, but Nora could get really spirited when she was pillow-fighting. And there had been a lot of anger – sorry, spirit – for them to work out.

Simply put, Team JNPR was a mess.

But a contented mess.

Ruby rubbed her jaw and hummed. "Hmmm..."

"NO!" said Yang, Blake and Weiss at the exact same time. "We have enough detentions to last us the year," added Weiss. "We are not adding more. I'm surprised Miss Goodwitch hasn't snapped and murdered us already."

"Eh. People get in trouble all the time."

"Normal trouble!" Weiss hissed. "How many times do you honestly think she's had to pick up students from a docks turned into an inferno? Or pick them up after crashing a mech through a major road? Or come and catch the ceiling of the cafeteria before it collapses because some students somehow turned a food fight into a literal demolition of a building!?"

"Eheh. Now that you mention it, Miss Goodwitch is really patient."

"Yes! And I don't want to see if her patience has a limit!"

Neither did Jaune. Glynda had been really angry at them last night, though he got the feeling from her messy hair and wrinkled clothing that it'd been because of the late hour. Glynda must have been forced to throw on some clothes and hastily do up her hair before confronting them, and she hadn't looked pleased about it at all. But Weiss was right – it really was amazing Team RWBY were somehow still in school, or at least not suspended for all the damage they'd caused. Their little ruckus last night was nothing compared to that.

It probably helped that he hadn't gone into any of their dreams last night. He'd ended up in the head of a transfer who had relived a trauma where her dog had died in a car incident that she clearly felt was her fault, all for the inability of a small child to hold onto a dog's leash. He'd intervened to have the dog be saved and give her a night of fussing and loving it again, but he could only imagine she'd wake up to more grief and tears.

Helping wasn't always easy. Sometimes there was no real way to help at all.

His team had been relieved when he hadn't been in any of their dreams, but they'd promised to eschew sparring this afternoon in favour of talking more about it. A chance for him to further clear the air. That was their decision more than his, but he knew better than to ignore it. They'd be annoyed at him if he did.

One thing they had agreed on before leaving their dorm this morning was that Team RWBY didn't need to know. Not yet. Jaune had assured them he would tell them one day, but ideally when he could have his Semblance under control. That way they wouldn't need to fear for being around him. His teammates had agreed, reluctant at the idea of lying but accepting that not everyone would be accepting of his Semblance as they.

Lessons went as normal, but Jaune stayed behind after history to tell Oobleck the development and have him pass it on to the other teachers.

"They've accepted it, have they? That's good to hear." Doctor Oobleck chuckled. "And yes, I heard about the little debacle you had last night. It was prime gossip in the staffroom this morning. You may want to avoid antagonising Glynda for a few days. How do you see things changing now your team knows?"

"I'm not sure. We're going to have a team meeting this afternoon to sort things out."

"A good idea. I'd advise you stress to them that you may still end up in their dreams whether you like it or not. Be clear with them and ask what they would like you to do if that happens. Are you to reveal yourself and try to bring them to lucidity? Or are you to stay silent and not intervene? Ask them their preference and stick to it."

It was a good plan. Some kind of protocol or arrangement. "Do you think I can make them lucid?"

"It's impossible to say, and that's something to keep in mind as well. If they ask you to make them aware and you try but cannot – then what is next? Make sure there's a backup plan. If nothing else, you should confront them the morning after a dream and immediately come clean. Give them a chance to process that."

"Okay. Any other advice?"

"Only that you should listen to your gut. You did a good job navigating an impossible situation and saving your team." Oobleck looked at him proudly, and Jaune felt his throat tighten. "You have more than earned your place as Team JNPR's leader. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise, least of all your own self-doubt."

"T—Thank you sir..."

/-/

New beds had been provided for them by the time the afternoon rolled around, though they'd come with a note attached warning them that any further damages would see them whittling beds out of trees themselves if they didn't want to sleep on the floor. Miss Goodwitch was apparently still angry, likely from a lack of sleep.

"Okay, so, team meeting." Jaune sat cross-legged on his bed with the others on their own. "I think the best thing to do is to start by establishing some guiding rules for my Semblance. I've already had a bunch I've worked with, including not sharing secrets—"

"Like you did ours," said Nora.

"I said secrets. No one with a working pair of eyes wasn't aware of your and Ren's issues." Jaune's response had her ducking her head and Ren sighing. "But, other than that, my other rules have been to not take advantage of a dream for my own benefit, and to not allow any dreams I'm in to become sexual, even if the person dreaming wants that."

"Does that happen a lot?" asked Ren.

"More than you'd imagine, but it's not usually about me. Guys dream about girls and vice versa, and then there are naked dreams. I try to summon some clothing on them or just ignore them if I can get away with it. Honestly, I've seen more naked men than women since I unlocked this. I'm not sure if that means anxiety is higher among guys at Beacon, or if women are just more likely to experience anxiety-based nightmares in different ways."

"It's probably the latter," said Pyrrha. "I know when I'm stressed, my dreams – those I can remember – are often more focused around my fanbase. I don't think I've ever had one of those naked in the classroom dreams."

"Nora and I have worse memories to draw on than classroom embarrassment," said Ren.

"Yeah, trauma is a common them." Jaune sighed. "Not to name names, because that's one of my rules, but there is a serious amount of trauma in Beacon. Some worse than others. Oh, that reminds me." He took a deep breath. "Trivia is actually my friend and visited me a few nights ago, after she was chased out of Beacon."

Predictably, the team tensed.

"Visited?" hissed Pyrrha. "Where? When?"

"In our room. I woke up to her straddling me." Jaune pushed past their shocked and horrified expressions. "Yes, she managed to get into our dorm without waking anyone up, but I went outside to talk to her so there was never any risk to you."

"I'd say if a criminal could sneak into our dorm like that, then there's actually a lot of risk," said Ren.

"Trivia isn't... It's complicated but she didn't want to be on Cinder's side. She and her sister... that's probably not something she'd be okay with me revealing. Point is, she took the chance of Cinder being chased out of Beacon to break away from her and escape into the city. Trivia is pretty much on the run from Cinder, but she doubled back to let me know she was okay, and that we wouldn't have to worry about her."

His team still didn't look entirely convinced.

"What does this change?" asked Pyrrha. "She's still wanted by the school and Atlas."

"All it really changes is that in the very unlikely event you see her, you don't need to attack her. And if you see me with her then you don't have to worry about me being in danger. I'm just trying to be open about as many things as possible."

"I suppose that's fair. Is there more?"

"Not really. Atlas doesn't like me, Winter doesn't like me for being in Weiss' dreams, and the teachers sometimes ask me to use my Semblance to help them. It's mostly with the White Fang – and not dangerous!" he added, when they looked shocked. "It was literally an accident. They wanted me to go into the dream of Ruby and Yang's uncle, but my Semblance is random so they hatched a plan to fly us out over the Emerald Forest where we could go to sleep alone."

Ren's eyes widened. "Because if he's the only sleeping person in your range then you should have entered his dream. You didn't, did you? You were in someone else's."

"That's right. The White Fang were in the Emerald Forest plotting an attack on Beacon. It was just luck mostly, but there's always a chance they ask me to do a flyover like that again. It shouldn't be a risk, though. The White Fang want to stay hidden and the worst way to do that would be to shoot at a Bullhead."

"Does Blake know?" asked Pyrrha.

"No."

"That's... probably for the best..."

"Yeah." Jaune didn't want to imagine her reaction. "Anyway, I spoke to Doctor Oobleck and he said we should come up with a team protocol for what happens if I end up in any of your dreams. Basically, what do you want me to do?"

"Leaving isn't an option?" asked Ren.

"No. If I had the control to do that then I could just keep leaving dreams until none are left. I'm stuck in one until I or the person wakes up. I can try and wake the person up, but I'm not sure how good an idea that would be. The last person I did that on was Cinder, and it was by causing her massive amounts of bodily harm."

"Let's avoid that," said Pyrrha. "It might not be healthy, either. If our sleep is being interrupted like that then our grades will suffer. And I think I've heard of people dying because they were woken up too suddenly from a dream. What else is an option?"

"The options as I see it are a) I do my best to tell you I'm in your dream and bring you to lucidity, b) I try and ignore everything I can and not intervene, and c) I carry on as I have been, which is to try not to cause trouble but to intervene if it means stopping a nightmare."

Ren was the first to speak. "I'd prefer option A myself."

"Lucid dreaming could be fun," said Pyrrha, "But I feel like a lot of the charm of it would be lost if you knew someone was there watching. Still, I'd prefer A as well."

"Um." Nora bit her lip, glancing at Ren and Pyrrha. "Yeah. It's option A for me as well."

"Okay." Jaune nodded. "But Doctor Oobleck raised the idea that even if I try that, you might just refuse to become lucid. I'm sure you all know how unrealistic dreams can be but you still keep being afraid of them."

"Yes." Ren chuckled. "Like nightmares of being hunted by a single Grimm when you could turn around and backhand it to death in real life." The others laughed as well. It was a common theme in many ways. And the fact that trained huntsmen and huntresses still had nightmares about monsters was somewhat comical. "But you're saying there's a chance we'll be so locked into the dream that you can't wake us up at all? I'd still want you to try, but if all else fails then I suppose it's not your fault if you see or hear anything."

"I'd talk to you the morning after," Jaune promised. "I can come clean and tell you what I saw and give you all a chance to ask me to stay quiet or explain things to me."

"That'd be appreciated. As long as it's done in private."

"Same," said Pyrrha. "But you're welcome to step in and stop me from having a bad dream if you can't make me lucid. Just... nothing embarrassing, okay?"

"Any preferences? I could take you to a beach."

Pyrrha's face lit up. "That sounds good! How about a Team JNPR beach trip?"

"Are you asking for that in a dream when we could easily do it in real life?" teased Ren. "But she raises a good point. I wouldn't mind a peaceful mountain scenery. Somewhere I can relax and just rest."

"You want to sleep while you're asleep and you call me unoriginal?"

The two of them laughed, but Nora still looked a little nervous. Jaune mouthed "later" to her, and got a quick, relieved nod in response, and then she joined in with the joking. They covered a few other things, such as what he could and couldn't do and also some safety precautions for if his Semblance injured him again. They also wanted to set some rules on what he should do around Team RWBY, so that they could tell them they'd set boundaries once they all came clean about this.

It was later, when Ren was finishing up some homework and Pyrrha was taking a shower, that Nora crept over to Jaune's bed. Ren did his homework with earphones on, mostly to block out whatever the team might loudly be doing with calmer music. It let Nora sneak over, though.

"So, um. Can I make a request for my dream?"

"A request, huh? You know, I imagined this when I first got it – except I was imagining people paying for a service where I help them relive moments with loved ones. But yes, sure. I can do anything you ask. Uh..." He winced and looked to Ren. "It's not—?"

Nora blushed. "It's not that. Asking you to involve Ren, even if he was just a figment of my imagination, wouldn't be fair to him. Or you. It's just..." Nora looked away again. "You know I'm an orphan, right? Even before our village was destroyed. My parents didn't die then. Or maybe they did. I don't even know who they were." She bit her lip. "I was wondering... I..."

"If I could help you find out?"

Desperately, she nodded. It was a tall ask. He wasn't sure what Nora wanted from this because there weren't going to be happy answers. The two obvious answers were that she'd been abandoned by parents who didn't want her, or that her parents had died. Neither was good. It wasn't impossible for there to be some other outcome like Nora having gotten lost, or being stolen away, but they were just so unlikely compared to the first two.

"I can try," he said, hedging his bets. "But I can only push you in the direction of a dream. The best I can do is try and mimic your home village – but even that's only going to be based on what I've seen of it. And given what happened there, I feel like if I show you the village, you're more likely to start a nightmare involving the Grimm attack."

"Yeah. That... That does sound likely..."

"Are you sure you want me to risk pushing you into a nightmare for this? You might not even have any memories of them if you became an orphan when you were a baby."

Nora shook her head. "How could a baby have survived on her own? I must have been older."

"I guess. Still, if throwing you back to your village triggers a nightmare instead. What then? Can I step in and make it stop?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's fine." Nora smiled awkwardly. "And, um, don't bother trying to make me lucid. Just... Just make it a nice dream. Make it something I'd like. I trust you."

"You don't want me to let you know it's a dream?"

"No. I know the others do but it'd just make me feel awkward. I think I'd prefer if you just kept it to yourself. I know I'm in the minority on that one..." She trailed off, then shrugged as if to say she couldn't think of anything to add.

Jaune nodded. It wasn't going to be easy, and he wasn't sure if it could work at all, but Nora had come to him hoping he could use his Semblance to help, and he'd be damned if he didn't try his hardest.

"I'll do my best, Nora. That much I promise."

/-/

It would have been too convenient for him to end up in Nora's dream, wouldn't it?

Jaune knew instantly what kingdom the dreamer came from because he was walking slowly in the middle of an armoured column of white-clad soldiers, on the right flank of some obnoxiously slow-moving vehicles. Jaune looked down to the rifle in his hand and the armour on his body and sighed from under his helmet.

Atlas military.

Great.

General Ironwood was going to have even more reason to hate him now.

He looked around for who he might be dreaming from the mind of, but there were a lot of people in the convoy and they were almost all wearing helmets like he was. It could have been any one of the soldiers here, serving as an escort for General Ironwood on his trip to Beacon. It could even be the driver of the convoy, who might at that very moment be sleeping in a borrowed dorm in Beacon. Jaune glanced around to see if Winter Schnee could be spotted, assuming she wouldn't be in armour like this as a huntress, but he couldn't spot her.

Probably not her dream, then. Unless she was in the vehicles or on the other side of them. Jaune quickly brought his aura up and clutched his new weapon tight. He didn't know for sure this was a nightmare yet, but he'd played enough games to know that slow-moving escort quests didn't usually involve a peaceful journey.

And if this moment was memorable enough to come back in a dream... well...

Best to keep his aura ready.

The forest was a thick one, with tall evergreen trees and rugged bushes. They weren't on a road but rather a wide, hollowed out path between trees, with the lead vehicle being forced to shovel snow out the way, and likely being the cause for why the rest of the convoy was moving at a snail's pace.

Jaune considered leaving the convoy to seek the dreamer, but before he could pick a direction, a gunshot cracked through the air ahead of them, then more, and then suddenly it was a horrific noise – like ten firecrackers going off at once.

"Cover!" shouted an officer. "Take cover behind the vehicles!"

The other soldiers rushed to obey, some firing back but most unable to spot the enemy. They were disciplined, Jaune had to give them that. They held their weapons out and scanned the trees but no one fired blindly. They backed up, boots crunching in the snow as they worked their way to cover.

"One-nine-six!" shouted a female voice. "One-nine-six through to one-seventy!"

The soldiers knew what that meant even if Jaune didn't, and soon they were returning fire on what he had to assume were coordinates. Or maybe they had a compass system and that was just their way of directing fire. What was drilled into them was not drilled into him, so there was nothing he could do but follow their lead.

Is it the White Fang? It can't be Grimm if there are gunshots.

"Ahhhh!"

A soldier in white was knocked back by a round impacting his shoulder. It wasn't a normal round, either. The shell exploded in a burst of ice, the dust igniting and making spikes of ice stained red spear out from his skin. He screamed and wheeled away, collapsing into the snow clutching his shoulder.

"Shit!" cursed another. "Pull him into cover!"

"I've got him!" Jaune threw his gun down and dashed out. He knew his aura would keep him safe, so he positioned his body between the downed man and the trees and stooped to pick him up. Snow around them was sent spraying up as fire pierced down left and right of their position, but none hit him. "I've got you," said Jaune, pulling the man up over his shoulder.

He waded back through snow and gunfire to bring the wounded person behind the carrier.

"Good work," grunted a man in slightly different armour. His helmet was striped with dark blue, probably marking him an officer. "Get him into the truck and out the snow. The medics are inside. We'll deal with these traitors!"

Jaune picked him up again and carried him to a ramp that had been opened up by others. They were using it to get fresh ammunition from inside. Stooping, Jaune carried the man in and quickly spotted a few other wounded soldiers on beds. He still didn't know if the wounded soldier was the dreamer, or the medic, one of those outside, or anyone else, but playing along with the dream made sense, so he carried the man over and set him down on a bed.

The medic looked frazzled. "What hit him?"

"Dust round, I think. Ice. In the shoulder."

"Fucking hell." The man swore harshly and dragged the wounded man's hand away from the injury. "It went in and didn't come out. Discharged inside his body. Fucking ice dust should be banned! Can you hear me, son?"

"C—C—Cold," whispered the soldier. "S—So cold..."

"His body is going into shock. You can't introduce temperature like that so suddenly. Hold him down. I'm going to have to pull this out if he's to have any chance." The medic wasted no time, grasping the thick shards of ice with both hands and pulling.

It was all Jaune could do to dive onto the soldier and hold him down as he started screaming.

The procedure, if one could call it that, was horrible. The ice wasn't surgically removed – there was no time for that. Instead, it was dragged out his body, tearing flesh and rupturing blood vessels as it went. Jaune recalled being told to leave things in a body in situations like this, but he wasn't a medical practitioner and this man must have known better.

It must have been because this was dust and not glass, metal, or wood.

The ice dust would have been continuing to react within the soldier's body, freezing his blood and spreading through his system.

"Don't you have painkillers for this!?"

"That's the last thing he needs right now! The pain will keep him awake!" The doctor finished his gruesome business, bringing out a small metal pellet with the last chunk of ice. He'd found the dust round itself, sealed and frozen with the expanding ice.

To Jaune's horror, the ice continued to expand and crackle even as the doctor set it down on the floor. The bloody ball of icy spikes was still reacting, with dust still being used to make it spread and coat the metal floor with hoarfrost.

"I can't save his arm."

Jaune whirled. "What!?"

"The arm has to go. Having ice dust expand inside his body like this – it's as if his whole limb has developed frostbite. Some of it is already entering necrosis, and that's inside as well as out. Once that's in his bloodstream, he's gone."

"Doesn't frostbite take time!?"

"A fire dust round burns at six-hundred degrees in the first few milliseconds. Ice is the same in reverse. This isn't like having a shard of ice punching through your shoulder – that, he could survive for some time assuming it staunched the bleeding. This is like having a liquid at negative 200 degrees injected into your body. It's like a bomb going off inside you!" The doctor talked as he rummaged for tools and turned around with a horrific looking power tool with a serrated edge. "Hold him down. We get one shot at this."

Jaune cursed and pushed down on the man's body, fully laying on him. The soldier kept trying to look, so Jaune yanked his face back to him instead, forcing them to meet eye to eye. With the helmet off and face revealed, Jaune realised that he still didn't recognise the person. They were young, understandably terrified, and shaking with a combination of fear and their rapidly dropping internal temperature.

"I'm going to die," rasped the young man. "Aren't I...?"

"No. You'll be fine." Jaune ignited his aura and began pouring heat into the body beneath him. It wasn't real, but it felt real and that was what mattered. "You're going to be okay." He heard the power tool whir to life and quickly tried to distract him. "Hey. What's your name? I'm Jaune."

"J—James," stammered the young man, pinching his eyes shut in preparation for agony. "P—Private James Ironwood."

Jaune's eyes widened. "Oh, fuck me running."

Young James Ironwood didn't get a chance to respond as the tool bit down into flesh.

And all that remained in the dream was screaming.