Jaune kicked Nora's foot under the table.

It didn't accomplish anything.

"Your father and I are disappointed in you," she said, in what Jaune could imagine was an accurate representation of what Blake's mother might have said, but which, at the same time, wouldn't calm this nightmare of Blake's down any. "We didn't raise you like this. At least I don't think we did."

"You raised me to be weak," Blake argued. "You raised me to imagine the humans would befriend us and let us be if we showed them that we weren't a threat." Blake smacked her smaller fist on the table. "That! Isn't! Working!"

"Don't you raise your voice at me."

"Blake, N—Kali. Why don't we both calm down?" Jaune, in the guise of Ghira, leaned over the table between them with an awkward smile. "We're supposed to be talking this out as a family and—"

"What do you think I'm doing?" asked Nora. "We're talking!"

"You're shouting at me is what you're doing."

"I am your mother!" Nora cried. "I gave birth to you!"

"I'm an adult!"

"You're a teenager! And you're making a stupid decision to join a bunch of psychopathic terrorists because... because I don't even know why! You live on Menagerie. There aren't any humans here who could have been cruel to you."

"But there are humans on the mainland. Faunus, too. And they don't have anyone to protect them. I won't sit back and abandon them. I – we – owe them more than that. If you won't do something about it, I will."

"What you'll do is end up massive regretting this!"

Jaune groaned. Nora was going overboard in browbeating Blake for mistakes she already accepted were mistakes in the waking world. He'd accept this if Blake still held to the White Fang's creed, but she didn't. "Blake, daughter, give me just one second with your mother. Okay?"

Blake snorted. "Yeah. Whatever. Maybe you can pull the stick out her butt—"

"Blake!" Nora snapped. "I'll have you know your father has never been in my butt! We only have missionary sex, and only—"

"Ewww! Mom!"

"One moment!"

Jaune picked Nora up by her armpits and dragged her out the room with her feet trailing on the floor. He knocked the door closed with his hip and stood her up. "What was that?" he asked. "I thought we were going to act natural!"

"That was me acting natural."

He didn't know how to process that. "What?"

"Isn't that how a family would act?"

"No!"

"Really?" Nora sounded more surprised than upset. "Huh. I always imagined this is how it'd be. Is this a good moment to remind you that my family is dead and I'm an orphan? Because I'm winging the hell out of this."

Right. Orphan. Jaune slapped his hand to his face. Of course Nora would have to make up what she thought a real family would act like, and of course she'd take ideas from trashy TV shows. Just his luck.

"First of all, your parents aren't dead. I'm right here."

"Ew. And I thought we agreed to never acknowledge that fact. I can't call a guy my age daddy. People would think we're a thing. A kinky, weird thing."

"Secondly, Blake did have parents, and the more out of character to them we act, the more likely she is to realise something is up. We need to blend in with how they would have acted."

"How? We've never met them. For all we know this is how they acted."

That was true, of course. Jaune had seen Kali Belladonna in a dream of Blake's before, but only as a visage of a woman blaming Blake for being a murderer and dragging her down. A nightmarish vision of guilt and self-hate. Blake's mom obviously wasn't going to be like that in real life.

"Just try and be a little more understanding. Let's talk to Blake like she's an adult and try to reason with her. And remember, we don't have to win. Blake did join the White Fang. Whatever her parents said to her, it didn't change her mind. We shouldn't either."

"Because it'll cause a paradox?"

"No." Ozpin had already confirmed his Semblance couldn't rewrite the past – and that was a huge relief. "Because Blake will wake up confused, remember all the details, and start asking why the two of us were playing the roles of her parents in a dream." Jaune turned Nora around and pushed her back toward the room. "Now, let's go back in there and deal with our daughter."

"Ewww. Nooo."

They returned to an irritated Blake and, suddenly, Adam Taurus. Jaune recognised him instantly, having been in his dreams before. He was younger. The mask was still there to cover his brand, but it was also smaller – which made sense. He had to update his mask to grow with him. Nora, of course, did not know who Adam Taurus was.

"Who the hell is this!?"

"Mom. Dad. This is my boyfriend, Adam."

Nora threw her hands in the air. "I thought we were talking about you becoming a terrorist. Did this change to a meet the parents scenario while we were in the kitchen!?"

Jaune kicked her leg. Thankfully, the subconscious tendency of the dreamer to accept impossible changes as normal kicked in. "Adam was always here," she said, not lying but just being incorrect. In her mind, he'd always been there.

"Of course," Jaune agreed, before Nora could freak out. "I suppose we were too shocked at your reveal to give him any attention." He forced Nora into one of the seats and sat next to her. "How do you do, Adam?"

"Well, sir."

The young man's voice was gruff and tense, and the "sir" had just the slightest derision in it, hinting at some bad blood between him and Ghira. Typical. Jaune stared at the young man and tried to imagine how Blake's father must have felt. A lot of fathers were protective of their children and didn't like meeting a daughter's first boyfriend. Jaune personally thought it was because they had been young men as well once. They knew how dating went, and they knew a boyfriend at this age was less a romantic partner and more of a hormonal idiot looking to get their leg over.

At least that was how parents seemed to see it. Maybe they were lumping every bad romantic experience they'd had in thirty-plus years into one image and projecting it onto the person. Did that mean he should be rude back? Jaune liked to think he'd be a chill dad one day, but then didn't everyone imagine that? There probably weren't a lot of guys rubbing their hands together and looking forward to being a bad parent. But come the hour, come the teenage boyfriend to his beloved daughter, and he had no idea how he'd act. Except that if said teenager was a terrorist, Jaune felt he'd be justified in being a little cagey.

"What are your intentions toward my daughter..."

Blake's forehead stuck the table. "Dad, nooo!"

"I intend to protect and look out for her," Adam said, quite calmly. It was a decent answer in some ways, but not in others. "I notice there was no mention of loving her in there, Adam."

"I assumed you wouldn't want to hear about what your daughter and I get up to."

Blake choked. "Adam!"

"You assume correctly," Jaune said, eyes narrowed.

"Are you using protection!?" Nora blurted out.

It was Jaune's turn to choke. Blake wasn't pregnant and hadn't ever been as far as he knew. Of course, he couldn't claim to know every little thing about her, so it was entirely possible she had laid with Adam in the past and come with child, only to lose it in one way or another, but he highly doubted it. That really felt like something that would have come up in either her or Adam's nightmares.

"Mom!" Blake squawked. "Yes! God! And stop talking about it!"

"Good." Nora coughed into her fist. "That's good. You should keep using it. We wouldn't want there to be any sudden and inexplicable pregnancies. Would we, Ghira?"

His Semblance. Nora was referring to his Semblance. "I doubt there would be," he hissed back. "Because no one was even referencing pregnancy until you brought it up, dear wife. Please stop bringing up things like this because you're just increasing the chance they'll suddenly and inexplicably happen!"

"I'm covering our bases!"

"Um." Blake raised her voice. "What are you two talking about?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing, sweetie!"

Blake looked at Adam for help. He shrugged back as if to say they were her parents, and he was just along for the ride.

"Can we get back to you shouting at me for being a terrorist?"

"That's probably for the best, but we're done shouting," said Jaune.

"Speak for yourself," Nora mumbled.

"—and now we're going to talk this through like adults. First of all, Blake, why do you feel you need to become a terrorist?"

"To stop the inequality and cruelty being aimed toward faunus."

"Fine." Jaune nodded. "And how do you see terrorism stopping that?"

"It'll create consequences in their minds," she said, surprising him with an actual reason. He hadn't believed there to be a good one. "Right now, companies like the SDC and others get away with mistreating faunus because no one cares to provide consequences, legal or otherwise. There's no justice, so we have to create our own system of punishment so that they and others will think twice before abusing faunus."

Well crap. That wasn't a bad reason. It wasn't a good reason, and he knew with the benefit of hindsight that it wouldn't work, and that Blake would come to hate it later, but it wasn't something he could just push aside and call stupid. It was a reason.

"I'll give you that the world could stand to have a few more consequences for bad people. We'd live in a better world if cruel people were punished. However, we don't live in that world. Do you not imagine that innocent faunus might suffer for your actions? There will be bad people who want to get revenge on you for the actions you take, and if they can't target you then they'll target the faunus they can. Have you considered that?" Adam opened his mouth, but Jaune stopped him. "I'd like to hear my daughter's thoughts, please."

"My thoughts and his are aligned," Blake complained.

"But I'm not his father so I don't have the right to question them. I am yours."

Blake grumbled something under her breath but did, eventually, answer. "I know that some faunus might be blamed, and I know this will make people like us even less, but they're already enslaving us. People are dying in SDC mines, dad. We can't just ignore that. Your approach hasn't worked. You've been at it since before I was born and it's achieved nothing."

Fixing racism wasn't easy. Who could have guessed?

"Don't talk about your father's lack of accomplishments that way," Nora said. "He's very sensitive about it."

Jaune kicked her under the table. "Thank you, my love. You're always so supportive. Ahem, Blake. Just because we haven't fixed the issue doesn't mean the method is flawed. Harming others will do nothing but breed further conflict."

"We won the last one..."

The faunus rebellion. It was a little galling to think he'd been so dumb as to not know about it before Beacon. It was less that Ansel had substandard education and more that it was all vocational. There wasn't much point studying history in a frontier village.

"Times have changed. Atlas is a big deal now. They could do us some serious harm."

"I don't care!" Blake snapped. "My mind is made up. I'm not asking your permission. I'm telling you what is going to happen!"

The world began to blur, indicating a change in the dream sequence. Blake considered this part of her dream over.

"Don't you run away from this conversation, young lady!" Nora shouted. "I've not even criticised your lame boyfriend yet—"

/-/

The world was on fire.

People were screaming.

"Uh..." Nora looked around nervously and stepped closer to him. "None of this is real, right?"

"No. It's all a dream. If we search for the screaming voices, there's a good chance we'll never find them. Voices is all they are."

"Good. Good. Geez, that daughter of ours—" Nora shook her head violently. "Of theirs. Ugh. I was right to say Blake is literally the worst of our friends anyone could have as a daughter. Imagine Weiss instead. I bet she'd have been so cute! And probably an overachiever, too."

Probably. He knew Weiss had a poor upbringing but that was down to her parents. Had he and Nora replaced them, they wouldn't have had to be so cruel. Of course, they might have had to take it to nor raise suspicion. That might have felt even worse.

But he definitely didn't envy Blake's parents.

A beast roared overhead.

"That's not a Grimm," Nora said, eyes narrowed. "It sounds more like... an engine?"

An aircraft shot by in the sky, dropping a payload that exploded into a rain of fire. Napalm. Jaune had a moment to stare, eyes wide, before Nora's panicked shout brought him back to reality. With a sweep of his arm and a flex of aura, Jaune mimicked a character from a cartoon he'd watched as a child and summoned a barrier of solid rock up from the ground. It curved over them like a protective roof, and the napalm splashed harmlessly against it.

"What!? How?"

"It's a dream. Nothing here is real and everything can be changed."

"Then... can I?"

"Probably not. This is Blake's dream, not yours. The only reason I can do this is because my Semblance is granting me some control over it." He pulled Nora close, making her squeak. "It's probably best if you stay close."

"Uh. I do like you, as a friend, but—"

"I mean so you're not hurt, Nora."

"Oh. Eheh. I knew that." Nora lied as easily as she breathed. "A—Anyway, what's all this? I don't think Atlas ever napalmed a place with the White Fang. And I can't see Blake having survived this if she did."

Neither could he. Jaune looked around at the buildings but didn't recognise them. That didn't mean they weren't telling, though. The architecture was tropical, each building small with no skyscrapers. The place wasn't built up like a major city, and he could see ocean in the distance dotted with numerous battleships.

"I think we're still on Menagerie."

"Heh? Oh wow, it's like an invasion. But Atlas never invaded—"

"They didn't. This must be my fault. My parting line was about how Blake's decision to join the White Fang could push Atlas to cause us harm. I meant faunus in general, but if her nightmare is all about the guilt of leaving her family and hurting them, then she might have translated that to Atlas coming for her parents or killing them."

"Stupid guilty cat!" Nora groaned. "Blake's going to murder us in her own dream because she feels bad. Wait, can we die in real life if we die here?" Jaune's face was grim. That was probably answer enough. "Oh, for the love of— Blake, you suck so much! Imagine guilt-killing us in a dream because you can't stop the angst over a mistake you've already rectified. Ugh!"

Pretty much his thoughts entirely, but Blake was definitely one to bottle things up and catastrophise about these things. He wondered if she'd even called her parents to let them know she was okay. Something he'd love to ask if it wouldn't make her suspicious.

"Let's just focus on not dying," he said, making the shield above them turn into a full bunker. There was a pounding on the outside that was probably artillery, but Jaune had already hardened the rock to be impossibly strong. "This is the kind of nightmare you wake up from when the people you love die. That means it's going to come at us with everything it has."

"I need a weapon."

Jaune summoned a sword for her.

"Uh. Not for nothing but I'd really prefer a hammer..."

"Do you think Blake's mom uses a hammer, Nora? I could give you Magnhild but then she'd question why her mom was using it."

"Oh sure, let's prioritise secrecy over our lives! Real clever!"

Chuckling, Jaune fell into a boxing stance. Ghira was big enough for it to make sense. "You shouldn't underestimate me here. I may be weaker than everyone else in the real world, but here in a dream...?"

Jaune's impossibly strong wall came up against a cheating subconscious that wanted them to die. A hole was immediately blown in the side and a legion of Atlas robots poured through with red, burning eyes. Jaune met them with a lunge, punched his fist down, and made Nora yelp as a fissure opened up and swallowed a hundred robots in one go.

"In here, I might as well be a superhero!"

"And this isn't going to be suspicious to her either!? I'm pretty sure her dad isn't capable of this!"

"Yeah, but this doesn't scream Jaune Arc either," he said, kicking one robot so hard it destroyed several more on its way to crash into the wall. "I don't mind if she's confused. I just don't want her to recognise us." He swept his hand and caused a hail of bullets to float in the air like a scene straight out of a movie. With a snap of his fingers, they were launched back into the machines. "Besides, doesn't every young woman see her dad as a superhero?"

"Uh. Orphan? How would I know?"

"Technically—"

"Shut up! I'm not calling you dad!" With a growl, Nora leapt in and wielded her sword like a hammer. It was a good job he'd made it to be unbreakable because it would have taken a beating from how she used it. The flat, the edge, it didn't matter in her opinion. "Let's just finish these losers off and get out of here."

It didn't occur to Jaune that casually smashing aside the robots might backfire on them, at least not until they'd cleared their number and left the dream feeling a little stupid. Not that it had such personality, but it did have a purpose – and that purpose was to provide a nightmare of Blake's parents suffering.

And if the army of Atlas robots couldn't do it...

The ground began to tremble. Fire and lava spurted up from the very fissure Jaune had created, spilling out over the ground. The screams intensified and Nora rushed back to him. Jaune had them both float off the ground, just in case Blake's mind wanted to go full ten-year-old and tell them the floor was lava.

It didn't.

A hand shot up from the fissure instead, easily ten feet wide and twenty long as it slammed down and cracked the ground. Nails dug into dirt as a gargantuan figure slowly and inexorably pulled itself up from the ground to tower over them. Only its waist and up were visible, its lower half buried. Like some terrible, demonic creature, it smashed two fists down, opened its mouth and roared. As it did, fire came spitting out into the air, jetting from its mouth as if it were a dragon.

Jaune would have accepted a demonic vision of Adam Taurus, to represent Blake's feelings for him and what he'd become. He would have also accepted Jacques Schnee for the racism angle, or General Ironwood to represent Atlas. He'd have even nodded at some generic, evil monster-like creature that didn't resemble anyone.

This, though. This was new.

"Glynda fricking Goodwitch!?" Nora cried, looking up at their former deputy and new headmistress. "A two-hundred metre tall, demonic Glynda Goodwitch. Blake, girl, I love you like a sister, but you have issues."

"To be fair, Team RWBY have had a lot of detentions this semester."

Demon Glynda roared and shot fire out toward them, forcing them to fly to the side. Like an eldritch abomination version of her real self, Glynda raised her hands, palms open, and rubble and rock telekinetically rose and flew at them like bullets. Jaune deflected them with his own telekinesis, a bastardised and cheating version of Glynda's Semblance.

"Can we kill her?" Nora shouted. "Does she die in real life if we kill her?"

"No! This is Blake's dream. Glynda isn't here."

"Cool. Give me a weapon." A rocket launcher appeared in her hands. "Okay, what the hell. A hammer is off limits but a rocket launcher is okay?" Clicking her tongue, she shouldered it and took aim. "And I thought my dreams were crazy."

A jet of smoke burst from the back of it as the dust-infused payload shot forward. Missiles could have all kinds of effects in real life, but this wasn't real life, so Jaune had decided to play the theme. When the missile hit, it burst and released water everywhere.

Holy water.

The demon Glynda shrieked and wailed, smoke rising from her skin as she began to shrink and wither. Nora set the rocket launcher down and huffed, watching as the demon version of their teacher (who wasn't even that unreasonable as long as you weren't constantly causing trouble like Team RWBY was) withered and died. With a final howl, the beast fell back into the fissure that had birthed it, which then closed behind her with a mighty slam.

"What's next?" Nora challenged. "Atlas invasion, bested. Demon teacher, banished. Come on, Blake. What's next?"

"Arf! Arf Arf!"

A small, cute dog wagged its tail at them.

"Jaune...?"

"I think Blake is afraid of dogs."

"Arf!"

"Woof!"

"Bow-wow-wow!"

The sounds increased in volume, and soon there were ten, twenty and then thirty dogs of various shapes and sizes. A normal person might have dreamed of them frothing at the mouth and snarling, but violent dogs were less of a concern for Blake than affectionate ones. Blake could kill a rabid dog. No one would fault her for putting it out its misery.

But you couldn't kill cute puppies and big, shaggy, grinning dogs with their tongues lolling out.

And as the small flock of adorable fluff assaulted them and dragged them down, Nora's shrieks of pure joy drowned out his own. A small pack of Labrador puppies smothered Jaune and began attacking his face with their cuteness.

To Blake, such was a nightmare – absolute horror movie material. To her subconscious mind, which lacked the ability to reason or think too deeply about things and just acted based on Blake's own fears, there was no greater threat than this.

"Jaune!" Nora cried, giggling. "Do not resuscitate! Do not resuscitate!"

Weirdly, the screams in the burning version of Menagerie only intensified as more cute puppies appeared and begged for their attention. Shadows loomed behind them, stretching out like wicked monsters, but all that ever came was cute fluff and boundless love.

Sadly, even that was cut short as Jaune and Nora were catapulted out the dream without warning.

One bedroom down, someone screamed.

/-/

"It was awful," Blake complained, at breakfast. "I dreamed of my parents being tortured in the worst ways imaginable. Everyone was trying to kill them and I... and it was all my fault. "

Team RWBY rubbed her back and told her it was all okay, that her waking them up at six in the morning was forgiven. Team JNPR did their best to do the same, except that they knew what had happened and Ren was struggling to keep a straight face.

"And it was so weird, too."

Jaune and Nora tensed.

"Weird?" asked Pyrrha. "How so?"

"My dad was fighting really strong somehow. He beat back an entire army of robots, then a... a..." Blake stumbled. "A big monster." Miss Goodwitch was eating food several tables down. Nora elbowed Jaune and smirked. "But even they couldn't withstand what came after. The last I saw was them being buried alive by those... those creatures."

"Grimm?" asked Yang.

"Worse." Blake refused to say it, of course she did, because she knew everyone would laugh at her. "It was the worst monsters imaginable. I just... Hah. I know why I dreamed of it and it's so silly, too. I left the White Fang. I shouldn't feel guilty anymore."

"Maybe you feel guilty for not making amends with them," Ruby said, saving him and Nora having to find a way to subtly do so. Good old Ruby. "You did call them to let them know you were okay after you abandoned the White Fang, right?"

Blake didn't answer.

Weiss' eyes narrowed. "You did tell them, didn't you?" she pressed. Ruby was doing the same. "Because it would only take a call on the CCT, and there's no way you'd have failed to do so when you know they'd be worried about you."

A bead of sweat ran down Blake's face.

"Welp," said Yang, standing and hooking her hands under Blake's armpits. Ruby and Weiss knelt and picked up a foot each. "We'll catch you guys later. Blake has a date with the CCT and we're going to meet her parents, if only over a long-distance call."

Nora saluted them. "God speed, soldiers! Do us proud!"

The three girls carried their fourth member out the cafeteria.

"That girl has issues," said Nora. "Monstrous creatures, my ass. That was the most glorious experience I've had all year!"

Pyrrha sighed whimsically. "I want to be covered in puppies and married to Jaune..."

Ren coughed.

"What?" asked Pyrrha. "It's just puppies."

"I think you said the quiet part loud," he replied. "But never mind. At least you both came out her dream alive, and without biologically becoming her parents too. That's progress there."

Nora bounced a crumb of toast off Ren's nose. "It was awful, Renny. Jauney was a terrible husband."

"I didn't do anything!"

"Exactly. We were married for one night and not a single romantic gesture." Nora's response had Pyrrha giggling. "Worst husband I've ever had."

"I'm also the best husband you've ever had by that logic."

"Also, her dad," Ren pointed out.

"Ewwwww! Noooooo!" Nora pushed her pancakes away. "You've ruined my appetite now. Ew, ew, ew. I did not just spend a night married to my own dad. Blurgh! Ughhh! Yurkkk." Nora gagged on the finger she was holding in her mouth. "Blurghhh!"

Assholes. He was surrounded by assholes.