The library stretched up for what looked like forever. It was a roughly circular room, like a long tube, with the walls on every side covered with metallic bookshelves. Every tome within was bright orange in colour, and there were staircases at the north and south points on each floor. There was no floor itself in the centre, as he'd entered the dream on one of the circular floors around the outer edge. Jaune stepped to the metal balustrade and looked over and down. A vast, seemingly bottomless cavern looked back up at him.

And given this was someone's dream, it might very well be bottomless.

Stepping back, he looked about his floor but there wasn't much to see. There were books and bookshelves of course, but that was it. The books didn't even have titles on them. They were marked with codes. Jaune ran his fingers over one that read BA612FS19. The one next to it was BA612FS20. The numbers went up, each book placed perfectly in order in an almost satisfying manner. This was an obsessive compulsive's dream, and even if he wasn't that, he could appreciate the neatness of it all.

Jaune wondered if that means he was in the dream of someone who was very organised and disciplined. It was an interesting thought experiment; most nightmares demanded his attention immediately, and he didn't get much time to look around. Come to think of it, most dreams were blurry and indistinct around the edges, the dream fading into nothingness once it was out of sight of the dreamer. He couldn't see anyone here, but every detail was crystal clear. Though, to be fair, they could have been one floor above or below him for all he knew.

"This is creepy," he said out loud. The library was so quiet – absolutely toneless – that he needed to hear his voice. He didn't think he'd ever heard this level of silence before. Normally, there was always an undercurrent of noise wherever you were. Insects, animals, the wind, or just the hustle and bustle of people.

There was nothing here.

It was true silence if such a thing even existed. It was getting so bad that, when he stood still, he could almost hear the sound of his own blood rushing through his veins, or the roar of his breath being inhaled into his lungs. When he moved, his footsteps were deafening. The metal floor didn't help, but nor did it take away from the fact that there was zero sound to be had. None at all.

Where was the dreamer? Where was the nightmare?

Was this what it was like to be in someone's head when they weren't dreaming?

It was a possibility. He hadn't done it before, but maybe if no one in Beacon was dreaming, this was what happened.

That doesn't make sense, he thought. The psychology textbooks said that everyone dreams all the time – we just don't remember it. A person can have thousands of dreams in a single night. It's literally impossible for every single person in Beacon to not dream at the same time.

The textbooks could be wrong, of course, but it was much more likely he was wrong, and that he was just not understanding this nightmare. Isolation was a form of torture, right? Sensory deprivation, too. Maybe that was the nightmare. Someone might be trapped in this, utterly alone and frightened out their mind, with neither sight nor sound of other life. Jaune tried hard not to think that was him in this case.

"I'm not the dreamer." His voice echoed. "Stop freaking out. This is someone else's nightmare." Jaune shivered, even though there was no temperature that could be felt. "I guess I'll just head upwards. It'll give me something to do at least."

His footsteps rung out loudly on the metal flooring as he made his way to the first staircase. It, too, was metal, and not the industrial kind that might have been in a warehouse, either. It was sleek and smooth, clean, with sharp edges and shiny chrome finish. Jaune doubted anyone had ever walked on it before. Did the clean floor represent a clean mind? Or maybe it represented a desire for control over a normally cluttered life. It was all theory at the end of the day, but thinking about it helped take his mind off the isolation.

"I wish I could bring a voice recorder in and take notes." He let his voice dip. "Dream Log. Day... something. I find myself in a seemingly endless library with no sight of a potential dreamer. Organised shelves imply a high degree of mental discipline. Exploring further."

It wasn't funny but it amused him, and that was all that mattered. He travelled for what felt like an hour. His legs didn't hurt – nothing did – but he felt mentally tired. Or just bored. He'd given up counting how many floors he'd ascended when he reached one hundred. It was probably between that and two hundred at the moment. Still no sign of anyone. The isolation was getting to him too, to the point that he'd have been flat our relieved if Nora had come running around the corner chased by a serial killer, or if she'd come out as a serial killer. Either would have been fine.

"Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way." It was the only logical conclusion to be hard. He moved to the closest shelf and reached out for one bright orange book. "Let's have a read instead. Hm. MK761GQ91. My favourite short story." He thumbed open the book to somewhere in the middle. "What the-?"

This wasn't writing.

Or, well, it was, but it also wasn't. It was gibberish. The long strings of text in the book contained everything from letters to numbers, asterisks, percentage signs, fractals, copyright symbols and more. There were even weird things like blocked-out diamonds and hyphens, underscores and strange little sections in a slightly different style of font, usually short words like "if" and "label" connected with colons after them.

"Okay, second thought. Maybe I'm in the dream of someone with a learning disability. Could this be a representation of dyslexia or attention-deficit disorder?" It was a long shot, but a nightmare about impossible books sounded like it would only horrify someone who struggled with them already.

Or Blake. It would probably horrify Blake.

Before he could think of that, the bookshelf he'd taken it from flashed green. Not the books or the shelf on second glance, but the space behind it. The wall behind it. There was a green glow highlighting it, which cast illumination out from the many rows of books and, through the hole he'd left by taking one out, splashed green light over his face.

"Uh. My bad?" He made to place the book back, only for it to disintegrate in his hands and sprinkle to the floor as dust. Before that dust could stain the floor, it disintegrated as well, turning into nothing. "Oops." He glanced around. "I didn't do that."

Big, steel grates came down with an angry slam off to his left and right. He spotted them easily, the bars having come down in front of the staircases both up and down and blocking them off. That... didn't look ideal. Still no sign of anyone else, either. Was this actually his own dream? He really did doubt his own brain could be this organised, but it could have been a spatial construction based on his Semblance. Maybe the books represented the various links he could form to other people and their dreams.

"I'm really grasping at straws now..."

There was a light flowing from the central spire, the empty space in the middle of the endless cylinder he was inside. Jaune stepped over to the railing and looked down, only to see several... things flying up. They looked artificial. Not in the way a fantasy depiction of a monster did, or a sci-fi machine, but just... not real. They were blocky and clumsily shaped, with strange angles and weird mishmashes of colours. Predominantly, they were red, white, and yellow, but he thought he saw a strip of black over what might generously have been called their chests. They weren't shaped like humans or animals, and the more he looked at them the more oddities he saw.

They were... flickering... for lack of a better term. Inconsistent. Where everything else in this dreamworld was static, neat and perfectly organised, the approaching things were twitching with nervous energy, and occasionally flickering like the image quality on an old, broken down television set. They weren't flying normally, either. They were just ascending. Just rising without movement or any visible source of propulsion.

Jaune felt he ought to worry, and yet this was a dream. He'd be fine. They couldn't harm him and morbid curiosity had him stay and watch. Besides, this dream was driving him mad and he kind of wanted out of it as soon as possible. "Never thought I'd see the day I'd prefer a terrifying nightmare over a perfectly peaceful library, but this place is way too quiet and way too creepy."

The things finally reached his level but didn't immediately notice him. Instead, they floated to the edges, by the staircases. Up close, he could see that their colouring was almost too bright – artificially so, again, with no variation in colour. They were little more than vertical collations of blocky shapes – squares, rectangles, rhomboids. They joined together not into the shape of a person, but into the shape of an amorphous blob. A thin tube of sorts poked out from one and stabbed into the bookshelf to the side of the staircase. It glowed briefly.

And the bookshelf died.

That was the only way to say it. The shelf, made of metal, withered, and the books trembled and disintegrated. The whole thing collapsed into nothingness leaving a bare metallic wall behind. And yet, even as it moved on, he could see the briefest outline of a new bookshelf being made. Indistinct and ghostly. The creature moved onto the next bookshelf and began the process anew, while the others did the same all around the floor, destroying the shelves. To his surprise, they ignored him. In fact, they acted like they couldn't even perceive of his existence.

Jaune reached out to touch one of them as they moved past him and was surprised when his hand sank into the creature. Through it, even. It didn't feel of much, but he could tell the thing felt him doing it, because it went still and began flickering with nauseating shades of green.

Instantly, the others descended on them – abandoning their work. They moved rapidly, far faster and more urgently than they had before, and Jaune hopped back in fright. They ignored him, though. Instead, they surrounded the one he'd touched and stabbed it from six sides at once with their tube-shapes. It didn't resist, even as they pumped it full of whatever poison they had the bookshelves. The poor creature, innocent and ignorant, stood in place as it was killed by its peers. It never once resisted, even as it decomposed before Jaune's eyes.

"Holy..."

And then they moved on from it, back to their shelves, as if nothing had happened.

"Okay. Note to self: do not touch anything." Jaune swallowed, and silently reminded himself that whatever had just died wasn't real. It was a dream manifestation. "I shouldn't feel bad... but... let's not try that again either way. This didn't happen until I touched that book."

It didn't take long for the bookshelves to be replaced. The creatures hovered in place, flashing lightly, and then a wave of orange light flashed over the books. It was like a wave from left to right, moving in a pattern not only on their floor, but every floor up and down. It circled around and up for what felt like an infinite distance.

The creatures then stopped flashing, floated over the central spire and drifted peacefully down. Seconds later, the steel bars that had blocked off the entire floor rose upward, disappearing into the floor above despite that there wasn't room enough for that. Jaune eyed the empty central spire again. The creatures had been able to fly in it, and while he obviously wasn't capable of that normally, he wondered if he could push himself to it with a little aura.

The idiot's play was to jump, try it, fail, and fall screaming to his "death". Jaune knew he could be dense at times, but he wasn't an idiot. Or he liked to think he wasn't. He tried pushing his feet off the ground while still on the edge, where even if he fell, he'd fall an inch or two back to the floor. The proper flight test in the centre could come when he decided if he was capable of it or not.

Flying, it turned out, was hard.

He didn't know what to do and his body – or his Semblance – didn't know how to respond. He'd watched cartoons about flight where they tried to explain it away in science terms. One of them had involved martial artists with internal energy, and the excuse they'd used was that the heroes could force that energy out and down as propulsion. It was nonsense, obviously, but at least they tried explaining it as more than just "they can fly; get over it" and he'd appreciated that. Jaune tried to mimic the same thing but found he just couldn't believe it.

And it felt like an issue of belief. Or faith. This was a dream, he knew that, and he knew he could force a change on a dream if he wanted to. He had with Ruby and Coco's in the past, at the expense of aura, but each of those cases had come when he lost his cool. Anger had driven him to push harder and break through the dream. That meant it was possible, but he just wasn't doing it right.

"It's because I don't believe," he said. "I'm doubting flight is real and my mind is holding me back. I need to believe it fully and wholly." Which wasn't easy when you knew for a fact you couldn't fly. "Come on. This isn't real. This is a dream. Gravity doesn't even exist here; I'm just imagining that it does. The same as I'm imagining that I need to breathe."

He forcefully held his breath.

And he was fine. Holding your breath was easier than forcing your feet to let go of the ground. It helped, though. It helped convince him that he could break the rules of the universe. Letting it go, and taking a deep breath, Jaune turned to the open gap and sprinted out into it. He jumped, planted a food onto the railing, and leapt into nothingness.

Gravity took hold-

But then it didn't.

He hung in the air, suspended, and let out a laugh. "Yes! I knew I could do it! Whoah!" He rolled, unsure how to steady himself without anything to press down on. "Upright! Upright. Damn it, this is like balancing on a golf ball." Except there wasn't even a ball. He held his arms out. "Steady. Steady. Okay, that's better." He looked toward the infinite ceiling. "Up, up, and away?"

He rocketed upwards. It was wild and uncontrolled for a few moments, but luckily he had all the space in the world to work with and soon got it under control. People talked about how amazing flight would be, but it was nothing here. There was no wind pressure, no sense of moving fast due to a lack of any friction or resistance. He might as well have not been moving at all, except for the floors flashing dizzily past his eyes. This flight was neither as fun nor as comfortable as he imagined real-world flight would be. That was a shame. He'd have liked to have used the dream moment to indulge in such a thing.

After several minutes, something caught his eye ahead. It was dark, but not pitch black, more of a dark grey. There was even a ring in the centre. It was slightly lighter in colour. It's a ceiling, he realised, eyes lighting up. The cylinder isn't endless after all. It's just really, really long. That meant there would have been a floor as well eventually, but he wasn't about to go all the way back down not that he'd come this far.

Jaune slowed down even though he didn't think he could crash and hurt himself. He twisted so that his feet touched first, and felt an odd vertigo as up became down and down became up. Closing his eyes, both to help concentration and ward off the dizziness, he imagined himself sinking through the floor – ceiling, he reminded himself – and coming out the other side. Sure enough, he began to sink through, and had to force himself not to panic and get stuck halfway. It didn't feel bad, thankfully, and after a few seconds he popped out the other side.

Into a sight he had no words for.

He stood atop the cylinder, which was still huge to him, but which now felt very, vert small. Small, because it was one of hundreds of others of the same size, each connected to a single black bar soldered onto a circuit board. Wires criss-crossed through the sky, each as thick as a tree trunk, and in the distance he could hear a huge wind turbine turning. Several of them, in fact. There were clicks, whirrs, and beeps all around him, the difference between the absolute silence of before and this being almost deafening.

"What the fu-"

Suddenly, everything became... more. The sounds were louder, the turbines turned faster, and bright light began shining from hundreds of little LED lights dotted around the place. The ground under him rumbled as well, and he realised that, whatever this was, it was being turned on. Activated. There was a lurch as the machinery reached its peak, and then a flash of white, a gasp-

And Jaune sitting up in his bed.

Thrown from the dream.

A dream that hadn't even been much of a dream at all, and which, if it had been real, had been a... machine...? No. That didn't make sense. How had he entered the dream of a machine? What did that even mean? A screensaver? He knew computers could have a "sleep" mode but he was fairly sure that wasn't literal.

"Jaune," grumbled Ren, sitting up with a yawn. "You're up early." The words drew Jaune's eyes to the clock. It was 6:00am. At least he'd woken up at a reasonable time for once. Ren was sleepy, but still found the time for concern. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah. I'm fine. Just... I just had a weird dream is all."

"Bad?"

"No. It was just..." He had no better word for it. "It was just really weird."

"As weird as Nora's?"

"I'd say so." He didn't think it would hurt to share this one. "I guess I can tell it over breakfast and give her a chance to eat for a change."

"Sounds good. Just try not to embellish it too much."

"Nora will have your head if she hears you talking like that, Ren."

The other man laughed. "As if she'd be awake at six in the morning."

Sure enough, Nora was snoring merrily away.

/-/

"That's a weird dream," said Yang, grinning as she poked at her breakfast. "Can't say I've ever dreamed about being stuck in a machine before, but I've had dreams where I'm tiny. I think I had one where Ruby was eating cookies and didn't notice me on one. Any of you?"

"Oh. Oh." Nora raised her hand. "I dreamt I was a tiny huntress who had to fight Grimm-lice once."

"Grimm are horrifying enough as they are without imagining microscopic variants," said Blake. "I don't need that image in my head."

"In my dream, they sucked a village dry of blood and left mummified bodies."

"Nora, please," whined Pyrrha, placing her fork down. "We're trying to eat."

"Eh. It's fine." Nora bit into her pancakes with a happy sound. "Ish jush a dweam. Umph. It's not like it's real or anything, and if they were real then imagine how long it'd take them to actually hunt someone down. One stride for us would be, like, an hour of walking for them."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," said Ren.

"Sorry!"

They'd all listened to his dream but more out of boredom than any real interest. That was fine, since he didn't think he needed to look into it too deeply anyway. Whether his Semblance had a hiccup or not, he'd come out okay, and the more he thought on it, the more he'd convinced himself it was someone's nightmare, and that he'd just bumbled into it and failed to find them. Maybe they were in the next chip over, having their own adventure, and they'd just passed each other like ships in the night. He'd been more curious to see if anyone piped up to say they had a similar dream, but no one had.

"What do you think such a dream means?" asked Blake. "You've been reading a lot of psychology books lately, haven't you?" All eyes were on him again. Jaune shrugged.

"I don't know. It probably just means I went to sleep with low battery on my scroll and subconsciously panicked about it."

"See, I can believe that," said Ruby. "I hate it when my battery is at less than 10%. It freaks me out. I don't think I could sleep without plugging it in."

Weiss scoffed. "You're both clearly too indoctrinated by consumerism. Life won't end if you turn your scrolls off and disconnect from the internet for a day."

That was the wrong thing to say when almost everyone turned on Weiss. Even Blake, who had plenty of her favourite novels downloaded onto the device. Jaune watched them go at it, with Weiss angrily defending herself and trying to win despite the overwhelming support against her. The dream hadn't been bad, and his aura was hovering around 95% so he didn't feel too tired. It turned out that a little bit of flight didn't take much aura compared to, say, breaking an entire dream in half to control what happened. It must have been because he hadn't interfered with the real dreamer, so, as far as they knew, nothing in the nightmare changed.

And nothing in Beacon changed, up until a pair of Atlas soldiers stepped into the cafeteria and approached their table. Jaune saw them coming but didn't think anything of it, them being here for the festival, until they stopped at their table. Everyone stopped eating and looked at them. "Can we help you?" asked Weiss, waspishly.

One of the two looked at him and Ren. "We're looking for a Jaune Arc."

Jaune set his fork down. "That's... uh... me, I guess. Why?"

The two soldiers nodded at one another and then stepped behind him. Without warning, he found his head pushed down and an arm wrenched behind his back. "You are under arrest. Failure to cooperate will result in-"

"What the hell!?" shouted Nora, rocketing to her feet. "You let go of him!"

The one holding his arms cursed under his breath and pinned him down harder – as if he'd done anything. Jaune's cheek was squashed against the wood as a pair of metal cuffs were locked around his wrists. The other soldier made to point his gun at Nora, which proved to be a mistake when Ren's arm snapped up, wrapped around it, and pulled it down. His other hand darted out, pushing a button and jettisoning the magazine from the weapon. All in the space of two seconds.

"Stand down!" barked the soldier, who still had one round in the chamber.

Not that it would do him much good.

"Perhaps it is you who should stand down!" hissed Weiss, slapping her hands down. "Do you know who I am? You dare come here and arrest someone at my table without cause or explanation. This is not Atlas! This is Vale! Where is your warrant?"

"A warrant was issued-"

"Let's see it then," said Yang, slowly standing up. There was silence in the cafeteria. Of course, there was. No one expected one of them to be arrested like this. Jaune still couldn't move, and his thoughts were a miasma. What had gone wrong? It couldn't be his Semblance when Ozpin had already warned Atlas about it.

"Sir," the soldier spoke to someone else quietly. "Target is resisting arrest. Reinforcements requested."

"I'm not doing anything!" growled Jaune.

"Stand down!" barked the soldier, shoving down on the back of his neck. "All of you will stand down now or you shall be charged on-"

"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!?"

Professor Goodwitch's voice boomed out over the cafeteria. If it had been silent before, it was deafeningly so now. No one dared speak and earn the wrath of the woman storming her way into the cafeteria. Her crop was out, her half-cloak fluttering behind her, and her eyes blazed intensely.

"Ma'am," said the soldier with the disarmed gun, turning to her. "I will have to request you- whoah!"

The gun was whipped out his hands with a brief application of her Semblance. Another sent the man's right leg skidding away as well, dropping him onto one knee. The second released Jaune and turned, but his own weapon flew up into the air backwards, landing in a waste bin by the door. He stood, unarmed, and raised his armoured hands before him in surrender.

"Making a scene in our cafeteria, at breakfast, and attempting to arrest one of our students in front of everyone here – what could James possibly be thinking? Nothing intelligent, that much is clear. Release my student."

"Ma'am, I have orders-"

Glynda cut him off with a grunt. Jaune felt the cuffs around his wrist vibrate and then peel apart. They didn't snap or break off because that might have harmed him. Instead, the metal was warped and pulled open slowly, allowing himself to slide his hands out and sit back up massaging his wrists.

"Mr. Arc," she said. "With me. You two as well. I shall get to the bottom of this personally. Team JNPR, remain. RWBY as well." Her eyes cast over the many other students, some of whom had actually gotten up and approached. Jaune saw Vanille nearby, legs tensed like a spring ready to jump, and all four members of Team CFVY were on their feet. "The rest of you will forget anything you saw here. If I hear foolish rumours of one of our own being a criminal then I shall be most displeased. Beacon would have been notified of any legitimate warrant for the arrest of one of our students." Her gaze flicked back to the two men menacingly. "And we received no such ultimatum. With me, gentlemen. No. Leave your weapons. I am afraid only capable adults are allowed to carry them in our halls."

They were rushed out the hall quickly, but not quick enough to stop the rumours from already starting. It would be a mess by the time he got back, which was doubtless why the professor was rushing them now. He appreciated the effort, but it was too late the second they put the cuffs on him. Why even had they? What the hell was going on? Jaune wanted to ask but kept quiet. Professor Goodwitch obviously didn't have the answer, and she was in a foul mood without him wasting her time. The three of them were pushed into the elevator with Glynda behind them. The soldiers remained stoically silent as it ascended.

When the doors opened, she ushered them all out into an office where a man in a white coat was talking to the headmaster. Ozpin held up a hand, silencing the man for a moment on seeing them. "Glynda," he said, "I was just having a meeting. I trust this is important."

"I believe so, sir," snapped Goodwitch. The man in front of Ozpin turned, scowling as he saw Jaune. "After all, I just had to step in and prevent these two soldiers here from arresting Mr. Arc in the cafeteria in front of the entire study body and taking him who knows where. I would like an explanation immediately."

"Is that so?" Ozpin turned to the other man. "I would appreciate an explanation as well, James. Mr. Arc is a student of Beacon, a citizen of Vale, and quite outside whatever jurisdiction you believe you hold."

The man – James – stood. He was large and broad, with black hair flecked with white. "Jaune Arc. You are under arrest for espionage and unauthorised access to military secrets. You will remain silen-" The chair he had rose from moved on its own, slamming into the back of the man's knees and knocking him back into a seated position. "Oof."

"Wrong answer," hissed Professor Goodwitch. "It will be over my dead body when one of my students is abducted in front of his peers and taken from Beacon on trumped-up charges. You will sit down and discuss this like an adult or I shall petition Ozpin, and the Council if needs be, to have you and your men removed from Beacon's grounds."

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," said Ozpin, standing and stepping between them all diplomatically. "This sounds to me like one big understanding. Why don't you dismiss your soldiers, James, and we can discuss it together."

"That boy has accessed confidential-"

The elevator door pinged open again, and Doctor Oobleck came out, striding into the office urgently. "Headmaster, I would like to lodge a protest- ah, I see you have already dealt with the issue." He kept moving, coming up behind Jaune and planting two hands on his shoulders. "Mr. Arc is my student and his uncontrollable Semblance was made aware to you in good faith, General Ironwood. Faith that you have failed to live up to. I am prepared to take the battle to the courts of Atlas if I must, and there shall be no extradition allowed until that is over."

"Gentlemen. Gentlemen." Ozpin waved his hands. "No threats of legal action will be necessary because nothing is going to happen to Mr. Arc. Please, let us all sit down and talk like the adults we desperately like to portray ourselves as."

Jaune didn't think it would be that easy.

And sure enough, Ironwood began shouting.

I'm not going to get back in time for first class, am I? He sighed. I can't wait to see how crazy the rumours are going to be after this...

Jaune avoiding the anti-virus but getting flagged up either way as malware. Rip.