Jaune, Blake and Pyrrha were mid conversation when a blur of red and black interrupted them.
"Jaune! Blake! And... Pyrrha too?" Ruby Rose burst in like a thrown spark, silver eyes wide. Yang Xiao Long followed close behind, her stride long and sure, while Weiss Schnee brought up the rear with brisk, precise steps that somehow carried irritation in every click of her heels.
Moments later, Lie Ren, Nora Valkyrie, and Oscar Pine crowded in too, their voices filling the space until the sterile white of the medical bay felt almost alive.
Jaune sat up carefully, the monitor leads tugging at his skin. "Hey, guys."
"You texted 'I'm in LUCID's medical bay' and nothing else?" Nora said, throwing her arms up. "Do you like giving me heart attacks?"
Ren's gaze met Jaune's over her shoulder, curious more-so, than worried . Oscar hovered behind them, wringing his hands. "You're… okay though? Right?"
"I'm fine," Jaune said quickly. "Just… being monitored."
Ruby's brows pinched. "What happened?"
Yang folded her arms, gaze narrowing, watching all the machines he was hooked up to. "Yeah, because this doesn't look like a paper-cut situation."
Jaune opened his mouth, but Blake spoke first, her voice even. "It's classified. Goodwitch gave us strict orders."
Ruby's frown deepened. Weiss's eyes sharpened like a blade.
"Secrets again, from our resident anomaly." Weiss commented, eyes flicking between Jaune and Blake.
Jaune winced. "I'm not hiding anything from you guys. I just… can't say. Orders from above..."
"Blake?" Weiss asked her teammate, scanning her own hooked up machines.
The girl in question visibly winced. "Unfortunately, all three of us were caught up in the same... situation... so yeah, I can't give any details either. In any case, we should be out of here in an hour or so."
Ruby shifted, clearly unsatisfied but unwilling to push harder. Yang muttered something about how she should start keeping secrets too. Weiss, though—she lingered, her sharp stare like a scalpel, though she did move closer to Pyrrha to check on her.
Jaune tried not to squirm at their scrutiny.
Instead, he glanced toward Pyrrha. He'd half expected to see a group checking up on her too, but no one had. She must have noticed his confusion, because she offered him a small, almost apologetic smile.
"Oh, I don't have a squad," she explained quietly, though loud enough for the others to hear. "I'm a peak Rank 1. That grants me permission to patrol solo. My old team… they're Rank 2 now. And each of them have been transferred outside Vale."
Jaune blinked at that. "You go alone?"
She tilted her head, still smiling faintly. "It's not unusual. Our work requires it sometimes."
There was no self-pity or bitterness in her tone. Just fact. Still, Jaune thought he saw the faintest flicker of distance behind her eyes. He let it drop.
The room grew restless after that, filled with small talk and worried glances but little substance. When at last Goodwitch herself returned, her heels striking against the polished floor, everyone fell quiet.
"Your vitals are stable," she said, eyes scanning across the three of them—Jaune, Blake, Pyrrha—before flicking to the others clustered in the room. "There is no immediate danger. However, should anything change—if you notice lingering side effects, or if you discover anything else—you are to report it to me at once. Am I clear?"
The three of them nodded without hesitation.
"Good."
She cast a pointed look at the others, a silent reminder that their presence was tolerated but unnecessary, before striding back out.
One by one, their friends followed, though not without protest. Ruby lingered a moment longer, biting her lip before finally sighing and stepping out. Weiss left too, with a final wave to Pyrrha, though not without a final look over her shoulder. Yang waved back and Jaune and Blake, before the door closed behind her.
The room was quiet again.
Jaune let out a long exhale and slumped against his pillow. "I thought Weiss was going to dissect me with her eyes."
Both Blake and Pyrrha smirked at that. The invisible tension eased, just a little.
.
.
Later, when the three of them were finally released, the instructions were clear. No long patrols tonight. No pushing themselves. Rest, monitor their health and report anything unusual.
Jaune stepped out into the LUCID base with Ren, Nora, and Oscar flanking him. He could almost feel the weight of earlier still dragging at his chest, but the fresh air helped.
That night, after returning to the training hall, Jaune decided he couldn't sit idle.
Mocha was still in Dream realm's Beacon, undergoing orientation. He would probably meet her there when he next slept. For now, though, he needed to work and to sharpen himself.
The weakness he had felt earlier burned in his memory like an ember. It wasn't just shame—it was clarity. He'd been shown, starkly, how fragile he was against greater beings. And that weakness was something he couldn't accept.
So he trained. With Ruby's squad and even Pyrrha joining in, curiously enough. The incident had somehow pushed all of them together, today.
Ren drilled him in balance and patience and Nora cheered him on with energy that rattled the walls. Pyrrha had also taken it upon herself to spar against the members of Ruby's squad as well. Needless to say, she was quite exceptional in combat.
They struggled against her and the passive effect of her rune. When asked what it did, she simply smiled and said she wanted to keep it a secret. However, she did mention that she had reached comprehension in the rune and was only waiting to reach comprehension in her second rune before she would be ready to Rank up.
Jaune could only be amazed.
In any case, most of Jaune's own sparring was against Oscar.
Oscar wasn't sure how to feel about hurting Jaune, however, after beating him enough times in combat, he got used to it, and they soon enough fell into a comfortable rhythm. The clash of practice blades rang across the hall. Their movements were skilled at times and clumsy at others. Not so much Oscar, but Jaune. There were no dream physique enhancements or overwhelming strength. Just them—Rank 0 pure mortal flesh—straining against each other with sweat and sheer willpower.
Oscar ducked under a sloppy swing, his short blade smacking against Jaune's rune frame. "Point!" he said, grinning despite the panting.
Jaune groaned, rubbing his ribs. "You're enjoying this way too much."
"Maybe," Oscar admitted, still smiling. "But… you're getting a lot faster at reacting. You weren't this good two days ago."
Jaune blinked, surprised by the earnestness in his tone. He tightened his grip on the training blade, then gave a faint smile of his own.
"Guess I'll take that."
They reset. Blades clashed again, feet slid across polished floors, breath came ragged and hot. Every strike Jaune threw was another promise to himself. Every stumble was a learning opportunity, and every time he rose again, was both another lesson in perseverance. A vow that he would not let himself—or anyone else—feel that helplessness again.
When at last he collapsed onto the mat, chest heaving, sweat dripping, he found himself staring at the ceiling.
"Skies beyond skies." Jaune sighed and pushed himself up. "I have a long way to go."
.
.
Later, when Jaune finally made it home that night, it was well past dinner. The lights downstairs were off, save for the faint golden glow spilling from the kitchen, where his dad sat at the table with a mug of something steaming.
"You're late," his father said mildly, not even looking up from the tablet he was scrolling through.
Jaune replied smoothly. "Club meeting ran later than I thought it would. You know how they are."
That earned him a skeptical glance over the rim of the mug. But only that. After a beat, his dad grunted and went back to his reading.
Jaune exhaled silently, slipping upstairs.
Before heading to bed, he checked his phone again. Still no update about Mocha waking up in the real world. The pod technicians at LUCID had told him she was stable, but still "asleep." Still adrift in the Dream.
He stared at his darkened ceiling. He hated not knowing.
He closed his eyes—and let himself fall.
The transition came like plunging into water.
The familiar ripple passed through his body, and when he opened his eyes, he was standing in the designated entry chamber at Beacon Academy's Dream base. Rows of crystalline monitors hummed quietly, manned by the respective personnel.
He flexed his hands. The faint tug of strength in his limbs was comforting—the quiet hum of his Dream physique.
At the armory, his equipment waited for him at a designated locker, black plated Rune Frame trimmed in white accents. He suited up piece by piece, the motions now muscle memory, and attached his blade onto his hip.
One of the stationed support staff, a woman in a grey LUCID coat, glanced up from her console as he approached.
"Mocha Fiore," he asked. "She's here, right?"
The woman tapped her screen. "Oh. That girl that dropped in out of nowhere? Orientation tent, north quad. Rank 2 Operative, Bartholomew Oobleck is overseeing it."
Jaune blinked. "Oobleck? The history professor?"
"He volunteered," the woman said dryly, already returning to her screen.
Jaune shook his head with a faint, bemused smile. Somehow that fit.
He found the orientation tents at the edge of the quad, where the pale stone courtyards of Beacon's Dream layout met the misty forest beyond.
Canvas walls billowed slightly in the soft breeze, and runic lanterns cast gentle light.
From inside one tent, rapid, articulate speech spilled out like machinegun fire.
"…which brings us to the significance of the first recorded containment failure, which—ah, yes, dates back to the Great Vacuo Breach of 67 AE, though I digress—!"
Jaune hesitated, then rapped his knuckles lightly against the tent frame.
The torrent of words cut off instantly.
"Come in!" called Bartholomew Oobleck's voice, chipper as ever.
Jaune ducked inside.
The interior was lined with floating projection-screens, each displaying snippets of Dream cartography and historical data. And sitting at the center, legs crossed on a cushion, was Mocha.
She looked… different.
Her usually relaxed posture was stiff, her amber eyes wide and shining in the lantern glow. There were dark circles under them, yet a spark of something electric—wonder, fear, maybe both—buzzed just beneath her skin.
Oobleck, leaning on his cane, perked up. "Ah, Mister Arc! Come to check on our new initiate, have you? Excellent timing! We were just discussing the early frameworks of Dream venture theory—"
"Professor," Mocha said quickly, "could we… maybe take a break?"
Oobleck blinked, then glanced at Jaune, then back at her. "But of course! Orientation is, after all, a marathon, not a sprint. Hydrate, reflect, and all that. Well, not that food and water exist here, but you get the allusion." He zipped past them in a blur of motion, leaving the tent flaps fluttering in his wake.
And then it was just them.
Jaune let the silence settle a moment, then stepped closer and sat opposite her on the other cushion. "Hey."
"Hey," she echoed, a little dazed. Then she abruptly leaned forward. "Jaune, I can hardly believe it—this is real. All of this is actually real."
He nodded. "It is."
"I mean—" she flung a hand toward the floating maps, the softly humming runic lamps— "I thought it was some hazy nightmare at first, or like… a really intense hallucination. But it's not. There is a system! Rules and even history!" Her voice trembled, though her grin didn't fade. "There's an entire organization dealing with this. Like—secret dream hunters. Actual dream hunters!"
Jaune chuckled softly. "Welcome to LUCID."
Mocha's grin faltered, then collapsed entirely into a trembling exhale. She buried her face in her hands.
"I don't know whether to laugh or cry."
"That's normal," he said gently.
Her voice was muffled. "I think... I'm scared, Jaune."
He didn't rush to answer. He just let the words sit between them until she lowered her hands, eyes rimmed red but dry.
"I thought I was going crazy," she whispered. "After that thing... when I first woke up in this place. When they told me I'd… awakened. And that it was an anomalous situation... that...it was not supposed to be possible..."
"It's... rare, yeah. Beyond rare, actually." Jaune admitted. "Almost never happens, I guess."
Jaune wasn't sure how rare exactly, considering that he was also an anomalous awakening. Two of them in the timespan of a week and a half?
"So?" Her gaze searched his face. "How did this even happen? Clearly that ritual worked, but... how?"
"I don't know," he said honestly. "Sometimes, it's not about how. Sometimes… things maybe just happen by chance. Well, maybe in this case it wasn't exactly chance, considering the...uhh... that deity... answered. But the thought still sticks, I guess?"
That didn't seem to comfort her much. She stared down at her hands. They were trembling faintly. "I didn't really expect... this to be the eye of insight."
"Eye of insight? Oh, right... your ritual was to see the hidden world. Forgot about that." Jaune rubbed her forehead in thought. "Well, what exactly were you expecting? To be able to see ghosts or something?"
"I don't know!" Mocha complained. "I started all this just to see if the occult was real. You know how many 'rituals' I've conducted? Tons! Even the weird ones that Maurice and Jenna were interested in."
They stared at each other... and both of them cracked a grin.
"You're weird too." Jaune couldn't help but state. "All three times now that I've been into your clubroom, something crazy has happened."
She chuckled at that. "Well, to be fair, very few people are interested in the occult club." She sigh at that and stare outside the tent, where the broken Red Moon laid bare—a celestial object that stared at the world below in a seemingly endless hate.
"I don't want to die here, Jaune."
He wasn't sure what to say to her, regarding those words. In essence, Mocha was actually very lucky. If the ritual had been conducted at anywhere else except beacon, she might have already been dead.
Not everyone could be lucky enough like him to face a beowolf and come out on top due to extreme luck.
But he couldn't very well say that to her.
"You wont," he said softly, instead. "You're still here and that counts for something."
Her lips pressed thin. Then, quietly: "But if I can die here again… in this rotten dream world... then what's even real anymore?"
Jaune leaned forward slightly. "That question never fully goes away. But the fear does. Eventually. You learn how to live with it—and how to fight back. LUCID will teach you."
Mocha gave a small, watery laugh. "You sound like you know what you're doing."
"I don't," he admitted with a crooked smile. "But I've been where you are, so I know how it feels."
Something in that must have reached her, because her shoulders loosened just slightly.
They sat in quiet for a while, the hum of the lamps the only sound.
Then Mocha wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and said, "They said I'll get to pick a Rune soon. Like… a cool superpower."
"Yeah," Jaune said. "Once you start... killing grimm, you'll be able to condense a rune at 100 fragments. I haven't personally done it... but its really not as weird as it sounds."
"I feel like I'm going to screw it up," she muttered.
"You won't."
"You don't know that."
"I know you, Mocha. You'll be fine." Jaune said simply.
That caught her off guard. She blinked at him, then laughed again—softer this time, fragile but real.
"…Thanks."
"Anytime."
Mocha straightened her posture, took a long steadying breath, and then met his gaze again. There was still fear there, yes. But something else, too—something solidifying.
Resolve, maybe.
"Alright Jaune, I'm counting on you." she said. "Teach me how not to die."
Jaune grinned. "Deal."
"Oh and one more thing."
"What's that?" Jaune asked, curious.
"I f*cking hate that you are a part of a secret organization that fights monsters in a dream realm and didn't tell me!" She accused him, pointing a finger in anger.
Jaune stared at her in astonishment, before a bubble of laughter erupted from his stomach.
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AN: Advanced chapters are available on patreon.