Zach was pulled from a nightmare, swinging wildly at were he thought the nightmare creature was. The vision covered his eyes even after he woke, and maniacal laughter rang in his ears, the voice that of his father, taunting him.

His vision finally cleared, the last of the laughter fading. To one side of the beds stood Bonny and Jason. They were looking at him with something approaching fear, and he said in a shaky voice "wha-what happened?"

Bonny tried to say something, but couldn't find the words. Even Jason was dumbstruck, but after a moment, she said 'you were having a nightmare, and I felt you start to, to ... You started to fade. It was like you were, you were going to die.'

Zach shook his head, trying to find the truth in her words. But as he did, nausea struck him hard, and he flung himself from the beds, rushing into the bathroom. He didn't make it to the stall, and vomited into the sink. To his horror, large amounts of blood were mixed into the stomach acid and dinner gruel. A sudden pain struck him hard in the stomach, and he collapsed, shaking as he curled into a ball.

The two girls grabbed him, and together, half carried him out of the room. They ran into Jewel and Billy in the hall, and together, the four rushed him to the infirmary. His aura was fading fast, and the school doctors had to sedate him to keep from doing more damage. Apparently, a large hole had been ripped into his stomach. With some help from Bonny and the school healers, the hole closed. But there was no evidence to suggest how it got there.

The teammates were allowed to stay, but Jewel was told to return to bed. The nurse gave her a suspicious glare when she asked to stay, and said "why were you out of bed, miss?" She had given a guilty look to Billy and left. Once Zach was sleeping soundly, Billy asked "what the hell happened?"

Jason, for Bonny's benefit, began to sign out what happened even as she spoke to Billy.

'I sensed Zach was having a nightmare, some sort of battle, or duel. I couldn't make out his opponent, but suddenly he cried out in pain as something stabbed him. I woke him up, and suddenly he threw up blood. We rushed him here, and...' She shrugged, not sure what else to say.

Bonny began to pace, a troubled expression on her face, her eyes closed as her thoughts raced. An old legend from her village, about an assassin from the Putnic wars, began to invade her thoughts. Stories varied, but one stood out in sharp relief now in her mind. The story went that a young boy, with no name or home, was found by the humans. It was discovered during training that the boy had a unique skill, even for a semblance. He could produce visions in a person's mind. When they were conscious, the visions were flimsy, nothing but distractions, really.

But when the victim was unconscious, or asleep, the visions became a terrifying new reality. You couldn't wake up by yourself, and any wounds you sustained, mentally and internally, became real. If you were killed by the vision, you died. End of story. The boy was assigned a name, and a place in the army. His name was Freddy... Monroe... Bonny glanced at Jason, but shook her head. Jason was a faunus, and the boy had been human.

The legend went on that when the boy reached age 17, he had disappeared, and over the following years, till the end of the war, people on both sides had died in their sleep from horrific internal injuries. If the legends were true, when the boy was an old man, he had taught his son to use his power, and with it, the son killed his father and took his place.

After some debate, she shared the story with her teammates. Billy looked skeptical, but Jason began to pace as well, and after a moment of deliberation, began a fast paced series of gestures. Bonny kept up for the most part, but once again, she spoke to Billy.

'The man in that story is quit real. In fact, he was actually a faunus, a bobcat. And yes Bonny, he was one of my ancestors. However, about 200 years ago, the Monroe man, as he was called at the time, had twins. The Monroe name had been passed down from father to son for over 300 years, and each man had only ever had one child. At the age of 15, the twins were forced to fight to the death. The winner would earn the Father's powers, name, and estate.

'The fight lasted for hours between the brothers, however, the younger managed to get the upper hand, injuring his sibling. But when his father told him to finish the match, he threw down his weapon, and said 'I don't want you're life if it means his death.' Then he turned and fled the compound. He managed to make it to Vale, and started his own bloodline. After awhile, they disappeared entirely, mingling with society. I was the last, left on the Gentlemen's door step with nothing but half a birth certificate. When I was 13, I was approached by a member of my family, who tried to recruit me. He said he was finding all the surviving members of our family, trying to put us back together, but I saw madness in his eyes.

'I refused, and he attacked me. I held him off and injured him badly, throwing a car battery at him and spraying his face with battery acid, but in the process, he cut my arm. He ran, but I had lost too much blood to follow. He is the only other Monroe descendant. Zach is the only other person who has heard this story. Understand, I do not possess the power of my family, however, the other does. I only ever saw him once, and I never got his full name, but after the forest, I began to suspect. The man who chases us, the man in green, may be that descendant.

'You described how he howled, and you were suddenly unable to react. That is a possible effect of the mental assault. The good news is you were both awake. If you hadn't, he may have destroyed you.'

Billy seemed relatively calm about the whole thing, but Bonny's head was spinning like a top, and she sat down, hard, on the edge of the bed. Zach woke, his body tensing as he felt restraints on his wrists. Jason, sensing his distress, appeared by his side, stroke his hair as she explained what had happened.

Bonny looked troubled, unsure how to feel about this development. She was dating the descendant of a mass murderer? Not that she was suspicious of Jason, Grimm forbid, but it was a rather odd thing to learn about her family. She lay back on the bed, her neck resting on Zach's arm, though she hadn't actually meant to. The bed was spacious, and fairly sturdy, so Billy joined her, nestling into the nook between Zach and Bonny. Jason hit the light, then removed the restraints from Zach's arms and legs.

He stretched, grateful, his left arm curling around Bonny and Billy, hugged each other, snoring almost immediately. Jason lay on his right, arms wrapped around Zach's chest. After a moment, they all fell asleep.

Across campus, Axel stood in the bathroom, washing the blood from his nose. Zach had put up more of a fight than he expected, and unfortunately, his power worked both ways. It was kill or be killed, but something had ripped Zach from the dream before he could finish him off. The stress on his aura had nearly boiled his brain. Axel wouldn't be able to do it again for at least a week.

His power, because it was not 'earned' from his father, was much less powerful than it should have been. Legend had it that his ancestors could bring an army to its knees in one night of terror, that cities would crumble in a week after his family appeared. He growled, frustrated. His curved fangs bit into his lower lip, more blood joining what drained from his nose. He had been trying to target the spear user, Billy, but he was gone, and the two girls were awake. One of the many downsides to his power was that he was still learning to use it.

He could only attack people if he knew, approximately, where they were. He could only take one of two forms while in the dreamscape, and it was rather insulting that, because he was a faunus, the only forms he could take were that of his namesakes, a sabertooth tiger, and a human. He had attacked Zach as a man, but the bastard had been more trouble than he wanted to put up with. In the end, just before Zach had escaped, Axel had managed to stab him, although he was gone before Axel could tell if the wound was mortal or not.

He growled to himself again, toweling off his face before returning to his bed.

Billy sat in the back of the lecture hall, trying to stay focused as Oobleck zoomed around the room, explaining the history of human and faunus conflict. The man was just incapable of stillness. Even when you could see him, he was always moving. His left foot tapped out a steady rhythm whenever he stopped running, and despite constantly drinking from his coffee mug, whenever he flashed away from an area, the mug seemed to refill itself.

Jason and Bonny sat together in Alternative Grimm Fighting Techniques, were the professor, a man named Port, was giving a story about how he had stopped a herd of Nightmares, flesh eating Grimm horses, from destroying a frontier village. The two managed to stay awake only because they were deep in discussion about were the assassin and the Monroe might be hiding.

Zach, having recovered from his injury intact, was in the school gym, having a free period. He was practicing with his swords, the constant whirl of the duel blades his only companion in the dark room. He had turned the lights off, playing out a one sided survival scenario. He spun and twisted, his movements growing faster as he began to mix in more and more complex sequences.

After a few minutes, his mind began to stray. He was no longer in the training room, he was in a dark, snowy forest, surrounded by a massive group of feral Beowulfs. Unlike the Beowulfs of the school forest, ferals were unarmored. Though this made them easier to kill, it also allowed for a larger pack, one armored Beowulf usually being the alpha. They were also faster and more coordinated than armored Beowulfs.

Zach ran into their midst, his duel bladed sword twirling in his hand as he dismembered anything that got within reach of the deadly weapons. He fired the shotguns, the force enough to make the sword spin faster. He began to move with the sword, flashing through the pack.

Suddenly his sword struck metal, and he was pulled from his scenario and back into the dark room. Before him stood the man in the armor, the man who had hurt his friends, his family. He let out a roar, slashing at the man. The man just laughed and jumped back. The metal of his suit began to move again, the gauntlets on his hands losing defining shape, the metal stretching further and further out, until the solidified into twin straight blades, about 2 and a half feet each.

He jumped back in, and Zach disconnected his swords, barely catching the speeding metal before it cut him in half. He jumped into the air, and decided that, no matter what, he wouldn't get away this time. As he landed behind Hunter, he threw his swords. Hunter slashed at them, knocking them away, but Zach was gone. He turned, and two blasts rang out, the Dust exploding, lifting him up and throwing him backwards. He landed next to a tinted window, and as he tried to face Zach, a third blast, this one from some sort of grenade, blew him out the window, the blast blackening the remains of where he had been standing.

The window looked out over the school gardens. Hunter fell, twisting in the air to catch a low hanging tree. It snapped under his weight, and he slammed into the cobbled floor of the garden center. Stone cracked and shattered beneath him, and as he stood up, Zach landed in front of him. Hunter swung, a sweeping, spinning blow meant to decapitate an opponent. But suddenly Zach wasn't there. He was behind him, he was next to him. Dozens of blows landed against his armor as Zach teleported over and over again, slashing, kicking, punching, driving him back.

The armor began to give under the sheer force and quantity of the blows. It's regenerative abilities couldn't cope with so much damage. He swung a bladed arm at were he thought Zach might be, but hit only empty air as Zach appeared behind him, kicking him into a trench that was awaiting new plants.

As he landed roughly on the bottom of the pit, he heard two loud thuds, and looked up in time to see a pair of Green Dust bombs go off. The trench filled with poison gas, highly flammable. The suit protected him from the gas, but- oh crap.

Zach fired one of his shot-swords, and the trench exploded. Flaming debris, dirt, smoke, and rocks rained down on the garden. The force of the blast created a crater were the trench had been. When the smoke and dust cleared, he approached the hole, careful to cover it at all times. He looked over the edge, and...

Nothing. The trench was empty. Not a scrap of metal. He was gone.

Hunter dragged himself behind a hedge, breathing hard. His gauntlets melted back to their original form. He cursed under his breath as he examined his body. Deep bruises cover most of the skin, and at least 2 ribs were broken. He cursed again, then pulled his scroll from his pocket, messaging his underlings to come get him.

Students and teachers arrived on the scene, but after hours of searching, all they had found were some bloody rags and singed leaves. No one noticed team AXIS carrying a large black bag into the woods. When they reached the edge of the woods, Axel and one of his team mates, a young man named Iain Starling, carried the bag into the woods while the others returned to the search.

Zach, Jason, and Billy found themselves, once again, standing in front of the desk of Ozpin. A TV set behind him played the tapes of Zach's fight against the man. Ozpin sat mutely behind the desk, but his displeasure was evident enough. Galinda stood off to the side, barely holding back a rant of astronomical proportions.

The tape ended with Zach, quit calmly, blowing a crater into the school gardens. He winced as he saw the explosion, which looked much worse on the tape than it had felt. The video froze, and Ozpin said "I have aloud you to attend my school, ignoring everything that told me not to, and in less than two weeks, half your team was almost killed, and there have been three attacks made by this masked enemy. And a very peculiar conversation was relayed to me by the nurses.

"You seem to be under the impression that it is our jobs as teachers to keep you safe. But that is only half true. Our jobs are to prepare you so you may keep your selves safe. A very substantial amount of damages were caused by your fight, Zach, and if you wish to stay here, I need to know. What is it that follows you. What is your past, hm? What are you keeping from me?"