Pyrrha turned the book around and examined the objectively bad fairy tale, a smile on her face, "This puzzle is much easier than I thought." she stated, looking back at the cube, and leaned closer to it. Blake crossed her arms and looked at the book suspiciously "Is nobody else questioning why the enemy is giving us such a blatant solution to the puzzle they created?"
Ruby simply patted her on the shoulder and smiled, "Who cares? It's their loss!" she shouts happily, Blake looks down and sighs, apparently being the only one to question this, all of them seemed too happy to see the solution right in front of them.
"Alright, alright, so, what should we do?" Jaune asked, looking expectantly at Pyrrha, as if awaiting orders. The redhead approached the cube and slowly started rotating the top outer circle, "Well, we just need to combine the numbers with the objects, so for example, there'd be six humans here..." She rotated the ring until the six was aligned with the human figure, "And for the mirrored ones, we just need to put what was in the 'mirror world' inside the story!" she stated, putting her hands inside one of the ring's holes in order to rotate the bottom ring, it was tricky, but she did it, "And that should be pretty much it!" she finished explaining.
"Alright, makes sense, let's do it!" Yang shouted, and not before long, the eight started to spin the rings around so that they could align with the numbers with their respective markings.
However, it didn't take long before everyone started to notice that something indeed was very wrong. "Wait...Wait just a second..." Weiss leaned closer and looked at the top ring, she then grabbed the book and re-read the story. "The story says that the twins picked three sunflowers, right? Then...something is very wrong here!" she shouted, and indeed as she spoke, while the six was on the human, it was the four that was in the sunflower!
Pyrrha's face suddenly contorted in horror at this revelation, "B-But...If that's the case, then that means that in order for the three to be on the sunflower, the five has to be on the human!" Either way, something would have been on the wrong number, she shook her head, "No no no, there has to be something we're doing wrong here, that can't be, if that's the case this puzzle would be completely impossible!"
Pyrrha stood up and started spinning the ring around and around, but it was completely useless, no matter what she would do or in which way she would turn, at least one number would have been in the wrong spot, even she, the ace student, couldn't help feeling panicked in such a situation. Ruby's heart started beating faster inside her chest, but was it a real feeling? Yes, even though it was a dream, that feeling of fear was definitely real, she looked at the east side of the cube, and too started to spin the ring frantically without thought, spinning the wheel incredibly quickly, all at once most of them, excluding Ren and Blake started to spin all sides of the ring at once, their arms becoming an entangled and frantic mess.
Ten minutes of horrible frustration passed until the Beacon students started to give up one by one, Nora threw her head back and stated what everyone had in mind, "It's impossible!"
Ren tightened one of his hands into a fist, and said nothing, instead he grabbed the book, still open on the fairy tale, and turned back on the Timer page, to add salt to injury the number 'displayed' on the page was 10:24, and it was rapidly going down, Jaune, who was the one panicking the most, looked at the page and his eyes went wide, "We're screwed! We only got ten minutes left!" He stood up, hands in his hair, "Why is this happening to us?! A-And why does that thing want to kill us?! Why does it want to kill YOU?!" He shouted, a finger pointed towards Ruby, who was sitting at the other side of the table, she had no idea on how to respond, why were they targeting her, out of everyone there?
There was no time to even try to answer his questions, Pyrrha stood up, and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Calm down, Jaune, I don't know why, but...I feel there must be a solution here." she said in a reassuring voice.
While Pyrrha kept trying to calm him down, the rest tried to possibly think on how they could get out of this situation, spinning the rings was completely pointless, and since it was a dream walking out of the library would have been completely useless, beating the Stand was out of the question, so the only way was to beat the puzzle, but how? Ren looked at the book displaying the countdown, and closed it down, when he did that, he noticed that R.E.M changed expression, and was now showing a grin, showing off the golden sharp teeth, "Ugh..." in frustration, Ren threw the book across the room, it fell on the ground with a thud, good thing that gravity works even in dreams.
The pressure was extremely high, so much so that Yang too couldn't take it any more, "Screw this stupid piece of junk!" she yelled out as she drew her fist down on the box, the puzzle didn't even budge at the hard hit, like it was bolted down onto the table, which it was obviously not, however, thanks to this, Pyrrha's eyes saw something strange: the box didn't move, however, the numbers in the outer rings did! She ruffled Jaune's already messy hair as he finally calmed down, nobody seemed to have noticed the detail except her, she leaned closer to the puzzle and looked at the top ring once more, so close her nose almost touched the surface, "H-Huh? Pyrrha, what are you doing?" Jaune asked, confused on what she was doing while the others were growing increasingly more tense.
And there it was, the thing that they didn't notice before: Between each numbers in the outer ring there were small, almost imperceptible cracks. She tried to put her gloved fingers inside the cracks out of curiosity, and to her surprise realized that despite how small they were, they would slide in quite easily, instinctively she tightened her grip and pulled out the number, earning a shock of surprise from pretty much everyone. She looked at was in her hand and held it high up, a perfect rectangle with a six drawn on it, she looked back at the ring, and noticed that a hole remained instead of the six she pulled out. And then she started laughing.
"Pyrrha? W-Why are you laughing?" Ruby asked, even her own team looked at her wide-eyed, they never saw her laughing so much for seemingly no reason, what felt like half of a minute passed before her laugh quieted down, "Sorry, sorry! I just can't believe I...Or better, we didn't realize this sooner!" she shouted, showing off the rectangle to the others, "The spinning is a red herring! What we actually were supposed to do...was this!" she exclaimed, and quickly placed the rectangle on top of the human-shaped marking. Instantly the number started to glow with a blue hue. "Are you kidding me?" Yang said, with a not-too-amused expression on her face.
"But what about the sides? Even if we put it there it'll just fall off..." Nora said, and quickly Pyrrha replied: "Well, we're eight, right? So we can just hold onto the rectangles until all are in place!"
They couldn't know how much time remained, thanks to Ren throwing away one of the many books, and in all honestly they couldn't care less, they re-told the story quickly to each other so that they couldn't forget the solutions, and slowly placed the numbers on top of the markings. Like the first time, the numbers began glowing blue as they did so, and finally, when all of the stones went in position, a click was heard by everyone in the room, and suddenly the puzzle started to fall apart, the rings detaching from each other and falling on the table with a clank, and as it happened, nobody could even say anything before their eyelids felt heavy, and everything went dark.
"U-Uugh..." Ruby whined as she opened her eyes, she quickly came to realize she was surrounded by people looking concerned at her, they were fellow students, probably wondering how they all managed to sleep for so long. She slowly turned her head around, and saw that the others too were waking up, "W-We're fine, we're fine" Ruby quickly said, avoiding the gazes of the curious students. Her eyes slowly trailed towards the door, and noticed that someone was peeking inside, a young man in a bright golden vest was looking at them with a frown on his face, as soon as their eyes met, the man quickly started to run away!
Yang, who noticed him too, was the first one to stand up and to follow after him, even after just waking up she was already full of energy, "Get back here!" she shouted, avoiding the students and running out of the library. Even the usually peppy and energetic Nora had her face planted on to the table, whining unintelligibly, "Let's just leave that to her." Blake simply stated, slight shadows under her eyes.
It didn't take long for Yang to capture the rather physically unfit man, he tried to run into one of the storage rooms of the library, which only led him into a dead end, Yang quickly threw a jab at his stomach, sending him flying towards a bunch of empty boxes, "A-Ah..." the man whined, but didn't even attempt at moving, simply staring up towards Yang, "C-Congratulations for clearing my puzzle, but there's no real need to hit me right now, my Stand can't affect someone twice..." he whispered, but Yang simply smiled and closed off the door, slowly approaching him inside the dark room, "Oh, don't worry, I have no intentions of knocking you out...Yet, first…." she cracked her knuckles, "You better tell me what you know."
"W-What do you mean by tha-" his question was interrupted by her foot pressing against his stomach, "Don't play dumb! You know what I want to know! Why were you targeting my little sister?! Are you one of the Stand Users that work for Dio?!" she shouted, with a face that clearly showed her anger.
The Stand User gasped for air, "It..was not my idea" he started, and her foot ever-so-slightly pressed less against him, "I know who Dio is...But I don't work for him, I only serve The Door, he was the one who told me who was my target, I simply followed orders"
Yang raised an eyebrow, her expression confused as her foot dropped to the ground "The Door?" she repeated. The Stand User didn't attempt to stand up, and instead simply nodded, "The Door is the one that brought this power in this world, he was the one who told us on how to use our newly awakened powers, he was the one who brought the 'Arrow' in this world."
This all sounded like complete nonsense to Yang, "Oh yeah? And who's this 'Door'?" she asked, looking down at him, the Stand User smiled and whispered: "I will not tell you anything more, I have a deep respect for The Door, he was the one who awakened our hidden powers and told us how to use them, I'll not betray him."
Yang sighed, knowing she got all she could out of him, and swiftly kicked him directly in the face.
After all of this, Team RWBY and Team JNPR met once again in Team RWBY's dormitory room. Ruby and the others had no other choice than to explain the situation to Team JNPR, about Stands and Jotaro's group, and how they've been attacked by assassins. After they were done, Jaune looked at the ground, "This...is a bit hard to believe, but after experiencing that I don't think any of us can have any doubts" he said, and looked around to look at his teammates, who nodded in agreement.
"Oh! I forgot, what did he say to you before you knocked him out, Yang?" Ruby asked, looking up at her big sister. "Just a whole lot of weird stuff, he talked about working for a Door guy, and how he brought some sort of arrow in this world" She replied in a tone that clearly showed her disinterest, Blake looked down in thought, "Well, it's possible that whoever this 'Door' is, he could be the one that brought Jotaro, Polnareff and Kakyoin in Remnant" she observed, the rest of the team nodded, showing they were thinking the same. "We should probably call Jotaro and the others, in order to inform them, and we can introduce you too." Ruby added, looking at Team JNPR.
Pyrrha shook her head "O-Oh, I don't think there'll be any need for introductions."
Qrow looked over the young man sleeping on the bed of the inn. Even some small villages had the fortune of having some doctors in them, and they usually operated in specific inn rooms, "Is he alright?" he asked, his voice as raspy as ever, the old woman stood beside him and nodded, "Yes, yes, now he's completely fine, it's surprising, even though completely lacking an Aura the wounds healed very quickly, I didn't really have to do much." the woman smiled, "He has an incredible force of will, despite his wounds he didn't pass out until we had to remove the wood."
"Did he tell you his name?" Qrow asked, the old doctor nodded, "He kept blabbering about having to 'go back' to somewhere, but he also said his name was..." she looked up, trying to remember, "Josuke, I think. He's obviously not from Vale, that's for sure."
Qrow looked directly at Josuke's face, a complete lack of Aura, and a pretty strange name, at this point he was almost sure that he was a Stand User, "When will he wake up?" he simply asked, arms crossed. The old doctor smiled at him "Oh, he'll be out of here in two days at most, you can be sure of that."
Qrow's expression grew a bit distant at the thought of bringing this boy to Beacon, he didn't plan on coming back to Beacon at least until the Vytal Festival, but the thought of seeing Ruby and Yang again made him smile. "I have to ask..." the doctor looked up at him, "Why would a Huntsman such as yourself be interested with a kid with no known family or friends?"
"Well," Qrow started, "Let's just say this is a Beacon matter."
[To Be Continued]-
Important Author Note: Due to getting a new text editor, this chapter was a bit of a pain to edit and post correctly, if there are any strange formatting issues with this chapter be sure to let me know.