They needed a chainsaw to get Pyrrha out.

That sounded ridiculous, and it was, but it turned out that when human hair had quite a lot of strength when it was several metres thick. Scissors could cut it, but only a bit at a time, and it would have taken a full day to get her out. That would have then involved having to ferry food and fluids to her, since Pyrrha couldn't move due to the weight of her hair. A lot of it had grown over her arms and legs as well, pinning her down.

It took some Port an hour to cut Pyrrha out as it was, carefully moving the chainsaw around her body and even deciding to cut through the bed to free her. Eventually, she was able to scramble out, with a jagged haircut, leaving a room full of bright red hair behind her. The second she was out, Ren was on his knees clutching his stomach.

"I deserved that," he rasped.

"You're lucky I'm too desperate to do more!" Pyrrha hissed, and sprinted off before Ren could receive his full punishment.

The door to the closest toilet slammed shut behind her.

Their room was pretty much screwed. Pyrrha's hair was bunched up like vines, tangled and clinging to everything, and it had smashed its way out the window as well. Their beds couldn't be seen for all the hair. When Jaune had realised what happened, he had to fight his way out of it, and then crawl over the top of her hair like he was on some soft mattress. Glynda had not been amused when she finally got there, though Oswald certainly had been if his guffaw was anything to go by.

"You will all be serving detention for this!" she hissed. "Really, experimenting with Mr Arc's Semblance when you know the risks—"

Nora raised a hand. "I wasn't even there."

After Ren and Jaune confirmed it was true, Nora got removed from the detention – not that it saved the rest of them.

"We're going to have to burn this out," Glynda said, crossing her arms and scowling darkly. "There is simply no way we're untangling this much human hair, let alone moving it through the corridors. It would take hours to cut it into smaller pieces."

"We might be able to save some of the furniture," Oswald said, still smiling to himself. "Cut around it and drag it out before putting the rest of the room to a blowtorch. Luckily, hair burns quite easily, so we should be able to manage it without starting a fire."

"Should is not good enough," Glynda snapped. "I'll need to arrange for a professional fire safety team to make sure we don't set the whole wing alight. That means this room is quarantined until further notice." Sighing, she pinched the bridge of her nose. "You'll be assigned a new dorm. Permanently. This one is unlikely to be inhabitable until the new year."

Ouch. He hadn't realised it was quite that bad. "Sorry..."

"I'm sure Doctor Oobleck will be thrilled with your experimentation. Report to him this evening before your detention. And I needn't say this, but do not mention what happened here." Glynda paused as Pyrrha came sullenly back. The girl's eyes were ringed with red, and she sniffled helplessly.

It looked like she'd seen her savage new haircut in the bathroom mirror.

To be fair to Port, he'd done it with a chainsaw.

Glynda let out a dramatic sigh. "Skip the day. You've missed half of it anyway. Take your teammate to a hairdresser in the city and get this sorted out. It's up to you all to come up with an excuse for all this that explains away the matter."

/-/

Miraculously, Pyrrha's hair came out of it all okay.

Professor Port had made sure to cut her hair longer than it had been, so all the horrifically angled and jagged cuts had been snipped out at a hairdresser in the city and brought back to what was pretty much a mirror of how she'd looked before. It was maybe half an inch shorter.

That probably saved Ren's life, since Pyrrha was happy to spend her time stroking her hair and holding her ponytail in front of her rather than kill him.

"So, our excuse is that Ren was practicing with his knives, tripped and accidentally cut off some of Pyrrha's hair," Nora said. "Pyrrha then went crazy and the room was trashed."

"It's more believable if you ruined her hair," Ren said.

"I'm not taking the fall for something you guys did without me!"

"She has a point," Jaune chipped in. "It's unfair to make this Nora's issue when she's the only innocent one in this. We'll share the blame. Say Ren and I were wrestling and we spilt something in Pyrrha's hair. If nothing else, Yang will accept Pyrrha was justified in destroying the room."

Nora's head rose. "Wrestling with oil...?"

"No." Ren tapped her on the head with his fist. "Stop making things worse."

"I mean, we nearly died by asphyxiation-by-hair. I'm not sure how you two naked oil wrestling is worse."

"We were only wrestling with oil a moment ago! Stop adding new things!"

"Or taking things away," Jaune said. "Namely, our clothes. Ugh. Miss Goodwitch looked like she wanted to rip us in two."

"We did trash a whole dorm. Not even Team RWBY have done that."

It was a dark sign when the measure of how crazy you were was to be compared to Team RWBY, and an even darker sign that their own team had eclipsed them. Jaune had always thought they were the sane ones.

"Doctor Oobleck will be happy to hear about this at any rate," Jaune said. "He's been curious as to how it feels to be brought along into a dream with my Semblance. You'll probably want to prepare for a long meeting with him later."

"Joy." Ren leaned his elbow on the table, and his chin on the palm of his hand. "I'm not sure what there is to say. It felt... normal. I didn't notice anything unusual – other than the things we saw in Pyrrha's dream—" His elbow was swept away by Pyrrha, causing him to fall. He managed to stop himself before his chin hit the table. "—ahh!"

"Which we will not be mentioning," Pyrrha said, smiling brightly. "No one needs to know what you saw in my dream. We don't even need to talk about it."

"I wasn't about to," Ren protested. "I'm just saying nothing felt odd. I didn't feel like I was floating, or immaterial, or less real in any way. Did you...?"

Pyrrha considered. "No. And I felt things."

"Things...?" Nora teased

"I mean I felt wind and touch," Pyrrha said, though the way she blushed bright red didn't help her argument any. "I'd have thought I wouldn't be able to feel anything tactile in a dream. Isn't that the idea? You pinch yourself because you don't feel pain."

That was the old adage. Jaune had felt pain in his dreams, both emotional when Amber died and physical when he'd been stabbed. However, those might have been more real because of his Semblance. Pyrrha... well, she had to mean that she'd felt the other Jaune holding her. No wonder she was blushing.

"Did you feel the sun on the beach?" Jaune asked Ren. Pyrrha tensed, but since they were just talking about temperature she didn't stop them.

"I think so...? It's hard to say whether I felt it or I imagined I felt it."

"I think that's the problem," Pyrrha said. "If our dreams are controlled by imagination, then it makes sense we can imagine everything in them – including tactile sensation. That's how... well... you know." Her face heated up again. "Pleasurable dreams happen."

"Man," said Nora, grinning. "You're just not helping yourself today, are you?"

"S—Shut up."

"Pyrrha is right, though." Even Ren looked a little embarrassed to be talking about it. "If wet dreams can cause someone to... well, experience a physical reaction—"

"Renny, we're seventeen. You can say orgasm."

"—then it makes sense they have a physical effect on the body," he continued, valiantly ignoring his partner's commentary. "So, us feeling things in Pyrrha's dream isn't unusual. The only question is whether we'd have felt them normally if not for Jaune's Semblance. And I think we would have. I feel like the only thing Jaune's Semblance is adding is a vehicle to reach other people's dreams."

Pyrrha frowned. "And a means of transferring dream concepts to reality, lest you forget my hair this morning!"

"That's what I mean. It's a vehicle yet again. It takes Jaune to places and takes the changes he makes back to the real world. It acts like a bridge." Ren looked almost excited. "Think about it. If Jaune's Semblance actually had the power to change reality, it would be the most powerful Semblance in the world. Bar none. The aura expenditure alone should kill him on the spot. But if his Semblance is just to form a connection, a bridge, then maybe it's the dreams of people doing all the heavy lifting."

Nora, Pyrrha and Jaune shared confused looks with one another. Ren may have sounded excited, but the words didn't make much sense.

"Isn't that the same thing?" asked Jaune. "You're still just saying my Semblance makes dreams real."

"It's... I'm not sure how to explain what I'm saying. That Jaune's Semblance is like a driver steering a vehicle, but that he doesn't ignite the engine. That might be the closest I can get. He doesn't provide the fuel or the means. He just turns the engine on." He frowned. "Or lays the road for the car to travel. Maybe that would be a better way of putting it..."

Another quick look showed no one had caught on.

"Maybe this would be a theory best shared with Doctor Oobleck," Jaune said. "He's more likely to get what you're saying than we are."

/-/

"A genius theory!"

Doctor Oobleck did, indeed, understand Ren's theory, and very much like it. He'd been asking questions nonstop since they arrived, desperate to know more about how it felt to be a passenger in a dream.

It was only when Oobleck's scroll buzzed and he read it did he lean back and, uncharacteristically, blush.

"Ahem. My apologies. I forgot to mention to Mr Arc that Oswald wishes to see him in his office for some remedial combat training. I meant to tell you fifteen minutes ago. Well, you can head off. I've had your account of being in dreams multiple times now. It's your teammates I want to hear from."

Jaune nodded and left, heading to Ozpin's new office. He got there late, but Ozpin – or Oswald's – amused smile said he knew why that was.

"I assume Bartholomew is excited to have new guinea pigs?"

"Ren had a theory about my Semblance and Doctor Oobleck likes it. Please don't ask me to explain as I don't fully understand how the theory works. What did you need me for, sir? Is this about what happened last night?"

"No. No. I think you've learned not to experiment like that after what Glynda said to you. This is... This is a request from me – and it could be quite dangerous, so I would like you to listen carefully to what I have to say." He gestured. "Take a seat as well."

Jaune did so. "I'm listening."

"You've discovered that your Semblance has a tendency to target those who you most have on your subconscious before falling asleep. More recently, it has the potential to take others you're thinking about along with you. This provides us an unprecedented opportunity. But, also, a dangerous one."

"You're referring to Cinder or Salem, I take it."

"Salem, specifically, in this case. I would like to sit down and tell you stories of Salem and all she has done, and of my eternal war against her. It's my hope this will fill your head enough to force a dream to Salem, one that might take me along with you."

Jaune swallowed. "You want to strike at Salem's dreams..."

"I do." Ozpin nodded. "I realise this is a tall ask, which is why I am giving you the choice. I said before I would wait for your graduation before making any moves, but with Salem here in Vale...? it's an opportunity that might never come around again."

Jaune didn't doubt that. If she was immortal, she might be tempted to avoid Vale until Jaune died of old age, just to not run the risk of his Semblance. Eighty years of peace sounded like a fair trade in his head, and yet Ozpin wanted more than that. Of course he did. Unlike Jaune, he would survive beyond eighty years and have to keep on fighting.

"Do you plan to assassinate her?"

"I'm not sure that would work, and I don't want to run the risk of playing with things we don't understand." Ozpin said. "Rather, this would be to gather information and try to discover what it is she's doing. To undermine her work, and also to find where in Vale she is hiding."

Jaune relaxed a little. That sounded a lot less... well... final. Less dangerous, too.

"What if I end up in your dream instead?"

Ozpin shrugged. "Then no harm is done. Similarly, if you go to her dream without me, I'd advise you avoid detection – or even force yourself to wake up if you're able to. My goal here isn't to put anyone at risk, though I admit it may do so. If this works, however, we might try it again with Cinder and relay information to Qrow on where she is hiding. The only reason I wish to start with Salem is that I can recount for you thousands of years' worth of stories of her. I can fill your head with thoughts of her and I, whereas I know next to nothing of Cinder Fall."

They'd need to find information on Cinder before they could, and truthfully Jaune knew more about her than most. When it came to Salem, there was no one who knew more than Ozpin. It seemed almost certain he'd dream about one of them if Ozpin lectured him for an hour before sleep on their past.

But did he want to? It was a risk, placing him firmly as the enemy of this person. And yet it was Salem's fault that Amber was dead, and Pyrrha and Ruby and everyone else he loved and cared for were going to end up as her enemies as well. This was the person who controlled the Grimm.

"Fine," he said. "But I'll need to let my team know I'm staying here tonight."

"Tell them it's an experiment on your Semblance. I appreciate this, Mr Arc. And I assure you I would not dare risk you if the situation did not warrant it."