The world fades from existence.

It's just him and the Scroll of Doom.

And then the floor.

He's still wondering how he got there when Pyrrha's panicked voice filters down through his ears. "…you thinking, Nora?!"

"But he snapped out of it!" When the Dog wiggles her the tip of her foot in his ever-so-ticklish stomach, he laughs reflexively. "See?"

Jaune shakes his head as Pyrrha helps pull him to his feet; the action makes him aware of an unexpected ache in his jaw. "What did you do?"

The redhead glares at Nora as the latter shines her fist mischievously. "Want a repeat demo?" she smirks.

Jaune practically flies behind Pyrrha's back. "Why would you do that?"

"Pain's the best way to get people to focus on the important things." Despite her bright smile, something dark lingers in Nora's turquoise eyes—though that also brightens quickly as she glances down to Jaune's still-open Scroll and exclaims, "The super-duper important things in life, like how you're going to avoid dying in your match against Weiss!" Her expression dims slightly. "Lemming against Rooster though… That's not fair at all, since you aren't even in the same tier. I'll ask Ren about it. Maybe she asked for an easy battle so she could show off all her pretty colors."

{Or maybe she just wants a punching bag.}

Pyrrha's giving him a strange look. There's definitely pity (or compassion, but what's the difference) in it, but also a certain degree of… Jaune can't identify it. It's like she doesn't know what to do with him. "Oh Jaune," she murmurs. "I didn't know. I am so sorry."

He somehow finds his tongue and surprised to discover that it still works. "Sorry… sorry about what?"

"Your heritage. It must have been hard."

{What in the name of Light is a lemming?} "Uh, yeah. Sure. You, erm, wouldn't happen to have any fighting tips?"

Pyrrha's eyes flick down to the time displayed on his Scroll. "You have about fifteen minutes to check in. Why don't I walk you down there and tell you about it on the way?" She stands and holds out her hand.

"Thanks tons, Pyrrha," he moans appreciatively. But when she pulls him to his feet with a surprising amount of strength, his gratitude quickly morphs into a spluttering horror—because his legs turn out to be just as supportive as jello, causing him to pitch facefirst into her chest. (He would have appreciated the moment a lot more had not her chest been covered by unforgiving armor.)

"I—I am so—" he stutters, stumbling back while nursing his bruised nose. The functionality of his legs hasn't kicked in either, so he trips over the bench behind him and topples over.

Nora's orange bob enters his vision as he lies in his back with his legs stuck straight up in the air. A mischievous Cheshire cat grin grows on her face as she coos, "If you want, I can come find you the next time she takes her chest plate off."

"No—Nora!" Jaune sits up so quickly that the Dog barely has time to dodge an accidental headbutt. "Pyrrha, I—"

She grabs his hand and quickly pulls him down the aisle. "You only have about half an hour till your showdown with Weiss." She looks over her shoulder. "I am sure that you'll come out fine."

The genuine smile that she offers him following her statement of faith in him threatens to cut the power to his legs again—until he remembers that he might not be around to explore that potential route in the next thirty minutes. "Okay, focus. Rooster." It's hard to focus when she's still holding his hand to guide him through the crowd. "Um, how do I fight a Rooster?"

"It's called a cockfight!" yelps Nora correctively as she faithfully tails them. "And it's big, beautiful, and full of tons of blood! The best kind!"

"NORA."

Jaune's mind is whirling with so many potential methods of violent death that he barely notes how quickly Pyrrha releases his head, a slight blush rising to her cheeks. "You aren't helping," adds Pyrrha sternly. "But Jaune, Nora is right to a certain extent. The opening volley will most likely be just as beautiful as it is deadly. As long as you can avoid her initial attacks, though, you might come out—"

"—Not burnt to a crisp!" Nora beams happily. "That's always a good thing, right?"

Nora keeps chattering away as Pyrrha leads him through a doorway and into the sunlight of the great outdoors. Immediately, the sounds of combat reach his ears. His eyes track the audible manifestation of explosions and clash of weapons, soon finding the holographic projection of a fight in some grasslands to his left. He's just in time to catch the action of a brunette in an eagle-print black tank top plunging her hands into the ground and heaving up an entire blanket of soil and grassroots to block a fiery attack.

"Can she do that?" Jaune questions, interrupting Nora mid-babble.

Nora is not fazed. "Manipulate the environment? You're supposed to!"

"It demonstrates quickness of mind," elaborates Pyrrha. "If you're particular for Dragon of the East. It might not to a bad path to take, considering this is Rooster."

There's some sort of negative connotation to Pyrrha's voice when she mentions East. Jaune chooses to dwell on his immediate survival instead. "Roosters are mainly fighters then?"

"Flashy ones, yes. Especially the child prodigy heiress Schnee, even before Rooster Teeth controversially acquired their monopoly on Water Dust."

{At least five years of combat training, huh?}

"Weapon?"

"It used to be a sextuplet-chambered comboreaction dust rapier—"

"Whoa whoa whoa. Stupid people speech, please."

"You're not stupid," Pyrrha insists. "It was a lightweight sword that combined six varieties of Dust to produce an indefinite number of different reactions."

"But only in dust of equal quality," adds Nora, "Which sucked when they stole that Water Crystal, because it's like a hundred million times more powerful than anything else. Like the power in one grain of Water is equal an entire cup of any other plain run-of-the-mill element."

"The Water crystal was obtained. With much sacrifice, of course, but obtained," corrects the redheaded warrior, with a peculiarly defensive tone to her voice. "Because of this, the heiress Schnee was forced to discard her rapier to accommodate her newest element."

Jaune's heart plummets to a bloody death as he catches on where this is going. "Long distance sweeping attacks?"

Pyrrha nods. "And this is happening on top of a frozen lake. The heiress Schnee will be right in her element."

"I'm going to die, aren't I?"

Pyrrha whirls on him so suddenly that he walks straight into her armor-clad form and bounces off. "Don't give up," she says fiercely. "Give up and you've already lost."

"Whoa there, Tiger mama," Nora crows. "Go easy on the Lemming. He's had it hard enough."

Pyrrha grabs his shoulder firmly. "You told me your heritage's history didn't matter because you were here to change that. Today is the first day of your new life, Jaune. Promise me you aren't going to give up now."

Jaune's not so sure. The environment as they progress towards the Lake of Zen has been gradually decreasing the closer they approach, to the point where he can just feel the chill of doom. This battle against Weiss pretty much spells instant death. He has a short-ranged sword he barely knows how to use, a bottle of Dust with unknown properties, and the barest shreds of information on his opponent.

Though Pyrrha's confidence in him, however unbelievable that may be. That's got to mean something, right? Speaking of which, she isn't done sharing all the dirt she has on the Rooster. Gathering up the shattered pieces of his psyche, he asks, "Tell me more about Weiss."

Pyrrha's face warms approvingly. "Here's the good news. Although the heiress Schnee is extremely proficient in the utilization of her short-ranged rapier, she is still learning how to handle her new long-ranged weapon."

"It might be hard to control, but it's puuurty," Nora chirps. "It's like a gigantic Gorious Wheel of Un-Fortune."

"The pinwheel-like slots does resemble the revolving chambers of her rapier," elaborates Pyrrha. "Each slot of Dust is supported by her glyphs."

"Glyphs?"

"Ethereal diagrams that she uses to manipulate the physics of her environment. That's her semblance, which is meant to be a short and powerful manifestation of aura. Though the deliberate display of a constantly maintained semblance is meant to intimidate, you could easily incapacitate her by breaking her concentration. In short, if her glyphs fail, her Dust could just as easily blow up in her own face."

He knows he's playing the devil's advocate, but this is his life on the line, so… "But she doesn't have to concentrate for very long in most of her duels, right?"

Pyrrha falls silent, as if choosing her words carefully.

Nora, in her usual tactless manner, doesn't bother. "Yup! She'll open up with extremely violent yet painstakingly calculated chaos and destruction to end the fight within the first minute. It'll be big, beautiful, and full of bloo-o-oh. Whoops. Sorry!"

Nora bellows her apologies as Pyrrha grabs Jaune's pale, shaking hand and practically spirits them away; unfortunately, this practically brings them to the lakeside. As if the increased physical proximity to the site of death wasn't bad enough… it's as the entire school population has traveled straight from the auditorium to the stands around the lake. However, unlike the audience that witnessed the duel between Cardin and Velvet, these spectators are mostly monochromatic—because they're all wearing the school uniform. In short, this mass of witnesses is comprised mostly of students from older years. These are all students who cut their summer break short and came to Zodiac Academy during orientation week, just to watch the Initiation duels.

Just to watch Rooster Teeth's Weiss Schnee obliterate an accidental human pervert into smithereens.

Jaune is roughly brought back to the present when Pyrrha uses both hands to slap both of his cheeks simultaneously. It's not a very hard blow, but true to Nora's earlier words, it startles him back into concentration. "I am so sorry," the redhead apologizes immediately, "But you have only minutes until your registration deadline. I cannot accompany you into the preparatory barracks, but you need to know that all you need to do is survive. You don't need to land a hit on her, you don't need to break her concentration, and you certainly don't need to be invulnerable. You just need to show the evaluators and Sun Wukong that you can roll with the punches and turn the odds slightly in your favor."

"Not dying," chokes Jaune. "I can do that. Maybe."

"I know you can," Pyrrha insists, before roughly pulling him into a hug. Jaune's so shocked that, by the time he's even comprehended it, the redheaded soldier is pulling away. She hesitates momentarily before mentioning, "Weiss… is a sheltered child. Perhaps a way to get underneath her guard is to deliberately provoke her…"

Jaune nods wordlessly.

Pyrrha quickly shakes her head. "Never mind. Forget that I said that. It's too much of a risk."

"Jaune Arc of Lemming," the headmistress' disembodied voice roars above them. "You have a minute to register at the Lake of Zen. Refusing to participate in your Initiation duel will forfeit your acceptance into Zodiac Academy. Please register as soon as possible."

Pyrrha gives him a bright smile that is amazingly reflected in her eyes. Jaune's not quite sure how he feels about that, even as she says, "See you on the other side, Jaune."

He'd thought that he'd get the fifteen minutes in the preparatory barracks to himself. Time to concentrate on tactics and strategies, maybe, or hide in a corner and bawl his eyes out.

He doesn't get to do either, because the moment the door swings shut behind him, Penny materializes out of midair as if landing from a small hop. "Jaune! I was wondering about why you were taking so long," she grins, a knowing smirk in her green eyes. "Nevertheless, I am glad you are finally here!"

"Eep! Penny!" Jaune tries to calm his fluttering heart. "Give a guy some warning first! And what are you doing here?"

"I promised that I help you," she says very solemnly.

"How did you get in here? I thought this room was for duelers only."

As if she considered it explanation enough… "I am here to help you!"

Jaune rubs the back of his head sheepishly and stares at the ground as he mulls over Penny's existence in his new faunus life. {Why is she following me, how does she do it, does she want something, can't she see how much of a loser I am, and why?} "Look, Penny, I'm… really thankful for being such an awesome friend, but I… don't think this is going to work."

Penny's eyes widen significantly. "What did you say?"

"I-I-I-I…" Jaune backtracks frantically. "I just meant that, you know, this fight is supposed to be just me and I don't think there's a way you can actually help me without possessing my body or something crazy, eh hee hee—heep!" He finishes off with a nervous giggle so high in pitch that it could shatter glass, which then raises another octave when Penny suddenly tackle-hugs him into the wall.

"Friends?" Penny cries, looking up at him with her chin resting against his chest. "Are we truly friends?"

"Y-y-yeah, sure… I mean, you've been pretty nice to me even though I've only known you for a day, you've gone out of your way to…" He represses the reflex to cringe or peel the girl off his body when Penny abruptly buries her face into his armor plate. And then she says something, only she speaks straight into the chest guard so that he only feels and not actually hear her words. {Awkward awkward awkward} "…Uuuuuuuum… excuse me?"

Penny throws her hands into the air as she finally backs away from him. "Faaaantastic! Friends!" She performs a perfect pirouette on the tip of a single foot. "I am a real girl!"

As much as he likes bringing happiness to weird teleporting girls with identity issues, Jaune would much rather spend his preparatory period trying to figure out how to best hobble his bruised and broken body off the arena when Weiss gets through with him. "Um, Penny, I have a death—I mean a duel in fifteen minutes…"

"You have Dust," she says abruptly, the smile dropping off her face as she settles into business mode. "Why aren't you using it?"

Jaune fishes the bottle of mystery powder out of his pouch. "Do you know what it does?"

Penny plucks it from his hand. "It does not matter. As long as you have determined that it is an appropriate resource to power your processes…" Upon reading the blank look on his face, Penny rephrases, "Utilizing Dust is like using your own aura; it is just another form of energy." The vial in her hand glows briefly as she demonstrates. However, before Jaune can mob her with desperate questions, she continues, "Unfortunately, as every person's processing algorithm runs differently, I cannot tell you just how you can utilize your resource."

Jaune lifts his head from his position in a dark corner of woe, a single spotlight above him illuminating his mopey sulkiness. "Not even a hint? We're not that different, are we?"

Penny pulls him back into the real world and hands Miltia's vial back to him. There's a sad undertone in her voice that Jaune can't quite place as she says, "I am very different from you."

"This isn't about you being a girl and me being a boy, is it? Because my brother's girlfriend would totally get on your case about how gender equality is—"

A tiny smile flits onto Penny's face. "I know, but that is not what I am referring to." She places a hand over his. "All I can tell you is to channel the resource. I would elaborate more if you did not have a visitor."

A door he hadn't seen explodes open with gusts of frigid wind as an unwelcome ice princess makes her grand entrance. Jaune only notices now that there are three doors in the room: the entrance he'd stepped through recently, a narrow doorway that looks like a closet but is probably a service corridor, and a large metal gate that mostly likely leads out to the arena itself. He also is not at all surprised to Penny is no longer with them. Or maybe she's invisible—the point is, she didn't stick around to support him in front of other people. He doesn't blame her, but it does sort of cloud his thoughts of the helpful orange-haired girl.

Weiss glances at him quizzically. "What, talking to yourself now?"

Jaune shakes himself from his frozen state. "Uh, I…" He pockets the bottle of Dust as surreptitiously as possible, which just means that Weiss' eyes are immediately drawn to the action.

"Ha. Dust? Though as surprising as it may seem to you, your pathetic attempts at fighting back is actually a good thing. In all honesty, I thought you would going to chicken out."

Maybe Nora's pack mentality has influenced him in some way, because he snips back, "Says the female Rooster."

The furiously icy wind from nowhere tears around the confined room yet again, tugging at her clothes, whipping her hair in a frenzied halo about her head… and the gods of the universe are probably sharing a bucket of popcorn over his misfortune, because her skirt also flaps upwards. However, just as quickly as it started, Weiss' winds of wrath die down very suddenly as she composes herself and haughtily states, "I'll have you know that you have been pardoned."

"What?"

"I no longer hold you accountable for shamefully sneaking a peek yesterday. Neither I nor my guards will seek vengeance."

He vomits out the ugly words without thinking. "Because you now have the excuse to break every bone in my body and chalk it up as a fuckin' fair fight now, right?"

Weiss' entire body bristles. "Watch your language, Lemming!"

He almost laughs when she says that; it's as if his all-consuming panic has receded to the backburner of his mind. Maybe Weiss' unintentional revelation of her lacey, sparkly, snowflake-printed panties has returned Jaune's mindset to its default setting

{Why is accidental pervert now normal for me? Whyyyyy?}

but at least now it means that he's able to get his bearings. Collect himself. Prepare to dive into pissing Weiss off as much as possible, as per Pyrrha's half-hearted proposal.

"Sure, fine. Listen, aren't we supposed to be on separate tiers? I'm not even from a formal zodiac Clan. Unless you pulled a lot of strings, there's no way a mighty Rooster like you should be dealing with a, um, lowly Lemming like me."

{I really need to find out what the Light a lemming is.}

Weiss doesn't say a word. Her frozen mask is so solidly blank that he can't help but escalate his words, just to get some rise out of her. "Why me? Is it because you think you won't be able to take on somebody who knows how to use their weapon competently?"

There's something. A small victory, putting a small crack in her emotionless state. "Excuse me?" the girl says. Her voice is about an octave lower than usual, dangerously so.

Still, the words keep tumbling into his mouth, whereupon he messily regurgitates them into Weiss' ears. "I'll bet you're afraid," he blurts, trying to hide the nervous shake in his voice by focusing on clever verbal exercises. "You're afraid that somebody's going to push you off your pretty party pedestal, so you chose me to punch around so you could preserve your pride."

"Resorting to word play now, are we?" she snaps suddenly. "This is your punishment for being a pervert! Pretending to be all pompously precocious and possibly philosophical when it's all really just impudently inappropriate."

"Philosophical has an 'F' sound. Twice. In case you didn't notice."

"We are dealing with structure and not phonetics here!"

"If that's the case then, impudent and inappropriate begin with 'I's."

"Shut up!" she growls, kicking up another icy wind and blasting a circle of frost in a two-foot radius about her feet. "What do you know? You're just—you're just a pervert Lemming with no choices in life but to die an early death at my hands."

He swears her hands are glowing, as if they've been coated in diamond ice. "W-w-w-w-wait! You can't kill me—the school will kick you out!"

At this, the small snowstorm brewing in the prep room ends abruptly when Weiss smiles. The wind chill is replaced by cold, dead air as triumph lights up behind her eyes. "And so the ignorance of your species shows: Zodiac Academy can't kick me out."

"What… what are you talking about?"

"Surely you know that Rooster Teeth has been Menagerie's greatest resource on Dust. It therefore is a blessing to Zodiac that I have chosen this school as my residence for the next three years. In fact, with the funding available to me as the heiress to Rooster Teeth, I practically own this school."

The egoism oozing from Weiss' speech is literally choking the words in Jaune's mouth, rendering him speechless. On the human side of things, Rooster Teeth was called Schnee Dust Company. They were formidable, he knew, turning around wars with sheer firepower.

It's one thing to hear and another to experience the brunt of that power.

"There's a reason why I've chosen to attend Zodiac, Jaune Arc, and it's not because I need to learn." She stops herself suddenly, as if choking on her true reason for attending the Academy.

In that moment, he butts in while he can. "Nobody will believe that."

"Oh?" Weiss' reply is casual, but he can see that he's piqued her interest.

"Everybody's seeing it now on the holospaces, or on their Scrolls: Rooster vs Lemming. And they're probably wondering why you'd choose somebody so… unimpressive. So weak. Why, unless you're also weak?"

"Why, it seems as if you've poked some holes into my grand scheme." Weiss smooths down the flyaway filaments on the prismatic feathers adorning her skirt. It's a lot like a princess' pretentious preening.

Her admission doesn't even feel like a victory. What is he supposed to say to her unexpected reaction? "Yeah. So there."

"Does it look like anybody cares?" she smirks, taking a step towards him. When he reflexively steps back, she advances forward yet again, slowly pushing him backwards. "When we both walk outside onto that lake, be sure to take a look around you. If not one faunus hasn't objected by now, they will not have spoken up by the time we both step out there. Not one faunus has protested about the… unbalance of this duel."

"But…" Jaune's back hits a wall. A corner, and Weiss doesn't stop her advance until she's standing toe-to-toe with him.

"You and I…" she whispers, mirroring Penny's earlier actions as she looks up into his face coldly. "I think we both know why."

{"Just look at that! This fight can't be fair."}

{"You're right. It isn't."}

Weiss smells… great, like peppermint and frost and a slow, cruel, agonizing death. Jaune swears his heart stops beating as she lightly places one hand onto his chest. "We might look human on the outside," she breathes, as if speaking to an intimate partner and not a boy so frozen in terrified fear that he can't pee his pants because his bladder is a solid chunk of ice. "But really, deep down…"

{"Break his legs!"}

{"Tear out his throat!"}

{"CRUSH HIS SKULL."}

"You and I, we're just creatures of Grimm. In the end, we only want blood."

She finally pushes herself away from him, taking her sheer cold away with her. Warmth floods back into Jaune's body, unfreezing his knees and allowing him to flop to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. He breathes hard, wondering if she really has a frigid aura that paralyzes rational thought—because, even now, he can't shake the memory of Nora's eager words, of Pyrrha, despite her apparent compassion, roaring in approval as Velvet tried to kick Cardin's head off.

"Jaune Arc of Lemming," a disembodied voice speaks into the room. "You have five minutes till the start of your initiating duel. You may now enter the arena." The tone implies that this last statement is not a suggestion.

What? No way! Nevermind any sort of strategic planning; he didn't even get more than thirty seconds to latibulate all by himself. He isn't mentally prepared to fight the ticking time bomb that is Weiss—the one that he not only created, but also lit the fuse and only dropped between his legs at the last second. No, actually, forget about that. Before he even gets to the frozen explosion that's bound to happen, he's not ready to walk out in front of hundreds of his faunus peers and endure their scrutiny for a couple minutes before he royally screws up.

But he's going to have to. He's going to have to hope that his best he can do is not absolutely pathetic in the eyes of his peers, in the witness of what feels like the entire student body. In front of his potential instructors. He hopes that, at least, maybe Ruby and Ren'n'Nora and Miltia, if she's out there, will be cheering for him… and Pyrrha…

Maybe Weiss, in all her frosty madness, will mess up right away and disable herself. Maybe she'll misfire and he'll be able to slip under her guard and into relative safety. Maybe she'll accidentally mix up the wrong elements and turn their aquatic battlefield into a smoking crater full of the broken bodies of unfortunate students and teachers who didn't get away in time.

Weiss snaps him out of his brooding introspection as she pulls open not the door she'd entered from, but the large metal gate leading out to their arena. Polar winds that do not originate from Weiss blast into his face, carrying the cries of a hundred faunus screaming for blood. Most likely his.

Weiss steps out first, carrying herself with perfect poise. "Enjoy the rest of your life, Jaune of Lemming," comes her parting shot. "All five minutes of it."