Cardin might be a butthead, but not even buttheads can walk past helpless girls tangled up in their own capes. That's the sight that Jaune arrives at a block later: Cardin in a tree, untangling Ruby's cape from an adjacent street light. Said Mouse is hanging upside down helplessly, her foot knotted within tangles of crimson cloth. Nevertheless, she chitters away happily, not at all minding that Cardin is in the prime position to look up—erm, down—her skirt. Well, since Ruby's upside down and her skirt has decided to obey the physics of this world, Cardin pretty much has front row seats.

Jaune's first instinct is to cover his eyes and yell I wasn't! His second reaction snatches hold of his consciousness and refuses to let go, because he swears he's seen that lacey, sparkly, snowflake-printed design before…

Something smacks him right between the eyes with unerring accuracy. He reflexively closes them, putting a hand over them for good measure, and yelps in surprise… and thank the Almighty Creator Monty, because it is in this perfectly innocent position that Ruby catches sight of him and joyfully cries, "Jaune! You're not dead! I… eep, don't look!"

"I wasn't!"

"O-O-Okay… I trust you. But… could you hurry up, Cardin? My poor little legs are getting cold."

"How did you end up in the tree in the first place?" he mumbles, staring at the ground and absolutely notlooking at Ruby's little legs. Instead, his eyes rove the icy sidewalk for the mystery object that hit him between the eyes, eventually spotting something out of place among gravel and frosted leaves: a square foil packet about two inches wide.

{What is that…?}

"I was rooftop hopping, looking for you!" Ruby squeals. "Then that freak winter storm hit, I slipped, and, uh, I… somehow got stuck upside down. And then, because there was nothing fun to do, I decided to lick the metal pole."

"Cardin, savior of hopeless damsels in distress!" he jibes.

The brunette smirks, though his eyes remain focused on unknotting Ruby's cape. "That would make you the first damsel then."

{Ah. Right.} "And peeker of flipped skirts!" he retorts lamely.

"Oh, I'm not worried about him," Ruby twitters. "He doesn't smell."

"Maybe prepubescent girls just aren't my thing."

"Nah, Yang says everybody should have a response. So according to her, no smell means you're gayer than a purse full of glitter!"

Cardin wrenches Ruby's cape free so abruptly that he 'accidentally' drops her on her head. "Oops."

"Ouchie…" The girl brushes dust and frost out of her hair. "Give a girl some warning, won't you? Big meanie."

"Your feminine charms have no effect on me," grunts the Boar as he slides out of the tree. He directs a sharp nod at Jaune, a barely-contained smirk on his lips. "Feel free to keep that by the way, Jauney-boy. Monty knows you'll need it."

"Need what? This?" He squats to pick up the square foil packet Cardin had tossed at him earlier and experimentally squeezes whatever's inside the packet with his thumb and forefinger. "Why would I need a rubber ring?"

"…You've got to be kidding me."

"Oo!" Ruby's chin is resting on his shoulder within seconds, her silver eyes peering curiously at foil square. "What is it? Do I get one?"

Cardin facepalms, fingers down his face to reveal a stormy glare that immediately puts a damper on Ruby's sunny attitude. "No."

Jaune's heart instantly melts at the younger girl's crestfallen expression. "Here, take it," he offers. "I don't want it."

A clang resounds through the air as the Boar smashes his forehead into the nearest vertical surface. The streetlight practically dents at the force of his wallbanger.

"Trust me, Jaune-y boy," growls the older boy. "Keep it in your wallet or something until the day you become a man, or I swear I'll castrate you myself."

Jaune flinches away from Ruby's eager fingers and tucks the mystery gift in his back pocket. "Sure…?"

An earsplitting roar shakes Zodiac to its very core. Frosty gravel and pellets of frost bounce at his feet as the vocalized anger of a Dragoness surges through him—or maybe they're bouncing because Ruby abruptly kicks off from beside him, disintegrated remains of flowers whirling in her wake, interest in Cardin's unknown present all but forgotten at the sound of her sister's pain.

He sprints after her, and though he can never hope to achieve her speed, at least she leaves behind a rather obvious trail to follow. Heavy footfalls crunch through the frost behind him as he races downhill, slipping and scrambling for purchase as the concrete disappears under increasing sheens of glittering ice. Visibility decreases as the frosty cloud cover thickens the closer he gets to the storm center, but every once in a while, an intense burst of bright gold flashes in his peripherals. It's not an angle that comes from above; rather, it's a lot more indicative of an artificial source, the inferno of a miniature sun that erupts from Yang's mouth every time she opens her mouth to spew flames onto her prey.

Ruby's petal path takes Jaune through tight alleyways he would have missed and over the rooftops of two-story storefronts that he barely overcomes with the help of Legs +1. Cardin doesn't even try to jump, instead shooting him a salute before continuing down the path of least resistance. Weiss' tower looms overhead the entire time, occasionally refracting Yang's orange firelight into a brilliant array of colors—thinking of which, the fact that he's been encountering more of these dancing rainbow lights might mean that he's getting a lot closer than he'd thought.

[Watch where you're going!]

That's all the warning he gets before a fireball impacts the rooftop not three feet before him. It's maybe one foot in diameter—and pretty, like a roiling eddy of yellow-amber water perpetually consuming itself inside out—but upon impact, it spikes him fifty feet straight into the sky, above the icy haze that encompasses the city.

At least there are some perks of abruptly being way higher than everything else in all of Zodiac. Like the sights (fresh, warm, natural sunlight) and sounds (his own screams). There, amidst the pulverized roof tiles and the upset housecat, Jaune finally gets a not-really-clear-but-clear-enough glimpse of what he's getting into.

The tower is the most obvious landmark, a spiraling spike that juts defiantly into the skies. Now that he's within a couple city blocks however, even he can see that there are intricate designs carved along the entire height of the spire. Like… like a mass of serpents writhing upward into the heavens, jagged fins glowing iridescent even in the gloom of fog, frozen legs clawing through the air for any purchase.

{Not snakes… Dragons.}

Bronze fire reflects off inanimate, glassy eyes as Yang's golden coils careen into view from behind the monument, a tiny sun hovering within the space of her opened mouth. With a deafening roar, the Dragoness launches the churning sphere down into the murky cloud layer. Mist burns away as the fireball vanishes into the cloudy depths—

In an explosion of steaming vapor, Weiss rockets into view. The intricate glyph she'd once used as a gigantic wheel of misfortune is now attached to her own back, giving her the appearance of a six-winged snow angel.

{…Seriously? You're still—}

But no, really, three snowflakey spokes on each side; they're like wings, and she's flying—

{Stop. Just stop while you're ahead.}

She's holding Yang's fireball suspended between rune-protected hands. The sheer power of the unstable incendiary ruffles the glimmering feathers that have sprung to life all around her hands and neck. Despite her apparent attempts to hide them, her Clan's trademark feature now peeks from underneath her loose sleeves, rises defiantly from within her high collar, drifts gently in multiple phoenix-like tresses from underneath her skirt. Her face is hard and razor-edged even among the down of miniature feathers surrounding her features, and when she projects her voice, Jaune can swear there's almost a hypnotic melody underneath all her words. "I don't want to fight you, Yang."

Yang wordlessly opens her mouth, spontaneously birthing yet another tiny sun.

Weiss' hand glyphs abruptly whir into action, warping and manipulating the energy between her palms. It reacts violently within her grasp, humming a violent purple before Weiss releases it in Yang's direction. It explodes almost immediately into a thousand tiny droplets, each emitting a tinny echo as it whizzes through airspace that, en masse, builds into the roar of an unstoppable force of nature.

Fireballs apparently take a while to construct, because Yang has to eject hers prematurely. It blossoms out of her mouth in a whirlwind of golden petals and immediately ignites Weiss' combustible mist. Each volatile droplet sets off its neighbors, quickly consuming five times its size in airspace in a massive surge of cloud of fire that easily parts around Weiss even as it consumes Yang.

It's the same technique Weiss used to electrocute him during their duel together. A highly volatile, flammable version, but conceptually the same thing. Maybe she's cheating a snuck a little Dust into that trick, but the main point is that she's mostly recycling the power of her environment around her. The water and ice of the Lake of Zen, the energy and fire that Yang slings at her here. Limitless power with little effort on her part.

He files this realization away for contemplation at a later date, because it's about time that he start falling, and for some reason, he hasn't. He suspects his reason is probably colored a vivid emerald.

Sure enough, he (and the unhappy housecat) are standing atop a translucent green energy construct. Penny even provided a nice set of spiraling stairs that slowly descend back down beneath the clouds. The issue here though is that, aside from him, the only other beings above Weiss' artificial cloud layer are the ice queen herself and the vengeful Dragoness after her. The last thing Jaune needs to do is to draw attention to himself by standing atop a physics-defying platform of green energy.

He takes the fast way down by jumping off the platform.

{Funny how flying is almost second-nature nowadays…}

"Penny!" he yelps the moment he dips into the cloud layer. "Shield up!"

Hexagonal panels whirl just in time around him, because a second later a surprise lightning rod pops into existence, aimed straight for the weak point between his legs, only to be ruthlessly disintegrated by Penny's humming energy. He can't help but grin fiercely of the happy image of his body not bonelessly flopping off the chimney, landing facefirst onto the sandpaper-rough rooftop, and plummeting four stories onto the unforgivingly icy street.

{Eat THAT, universe! Ha!}

The spherical shield shifts around him so that he remains upright the entire time, from smashing through the lightning rod, to bouncing off the slanted rooftop, all the way up to landing on both feet upon the strangely squishy pavement. And of course it has to be squishy. That little oddity in his situation overwhelms the warmth of his Penny-assisted victory at defying the universe, and he's checking the ground beneath his feet…

"My back…" moans an unfortunately familiar Cat beneath him.

Jaune's entire body recoils six feet in the air. "Blake! Um. My hero?"

In the next second, he's dropped to his knees at her side, because the very obvious footprint on her back is the least of her worries. Maybe Cat anatomy is different, more flexible, but he's pretty sure her wrist shouldn't be bent like that. And either somebody punched her in both eyes multiple times or she fought herself past the point of exhaustion a long while ago.

"Blake, your—"

"Weiss!" Blake hisses, flinching away from his touch. "You have to help Weiss."

"Weiss has it under control," he assures her while digging his coat pockets for splint materials. Who knows, maybe he'll throw something together with yesterday's chopsticks and strips of cloth torn off the bottom of his shirt to reveal his gloriously non-existent abs. "What happened to you?"

"You have to help Weiss."

"You need help," Jaune insists soothingly. Blake doesn't seem like she's altogether there, deliriously drifting between fatigue and mumblings concerning Weiss. She doesn't even initially notice the food stains on the chopsticks that Jaune tapes to her forearm.

"Stop," she blurts, abruptly yanking her appendage out of his grasp. "I heal quickly, and I still have eight lives left. I can…" she hesitates before unexpectedly licking the foreign objects on her arm. "…has fish?" she inquires hopefully.

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang!"

The young Mouse's plea from a couple blocks away is drowned out by a couple explosions. By the Almighty Creator, Ruby can probably take care of herself much better than he, but the abrupt wash of worry Jaune gets at the sound of the girl's desperation brings Jaune's mind away from Blake's gigantic, adorable yellow eyes and back to the fire and ice conflict going down.

Cardin chooses at that moment to bust through a nearby brick wall. He raises a suspicious eyebrow at the sight of Blake alternating between sniffing her wrist lovingly and glaring at Jaune expectantly. "Should I even ask why you're playing with a Cat when," he gestures in the general area of the tower, "the neighborhood is in danger of not existing in another ten minutes?"

"Yeah, about that: Yang's breaking her own rules! Doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of initiation?"

A snort punctuates the other man's cynicism. "Rules are made to be broken."

Jaune jerks his chin at the site of the Boar's grand entrance. "Duly noted."

"Would it kill you to know I was concerned? You disappeared into the sky for a good five minutes before suddenly dropping back into our lowly ranks. Can I call you the Flying Fairy?"

"Uh, no." Burning firelight screams above them before transitioning abruptly into a muffled explosion within chilly mist. "Okay, that's it. Team meeting, right now."

Cardin easily keeps up with the brisk pace that Jaune sets in the direction of the latest detonation. "Sure, whatever. But Mister Flying Fairy… does she count?"

"Meow." Blake lopes along on Jaune's other side, her wrist still held gingerly up to her nose.

{Did your other foot land on her head? Because if so, great going, Boy Wonder. Of course you'd manage to kill the childhood best—}

He blinks as his memory flickers. Did he ever meet Blake as a child?

[Not important.]

{She's right. Not right now.}

He still files it away for later thought… if he remembers… and focuses on the man trotting beside him. "Blake's fine on her own, Mister Pig; she's been pretty adamant about us helping Weiss, so I figure helping Weiss will help her, yeah?"

Cardin grunts.

"The way I'm seeing it, Yang isn't holding back when it comes to firepower, which probably means that she still has plenty of fuel left in her tank. And all Weiss has been doing to reflecting Yang's fire right back at her. Maybe she's tweaking it or something, but the point is that she doesn't need to spend a lot of energy either. At this rate, both are going to keep at it until one destroys the other, which, based off their limitless energy reserves, will pretty much level the city before they're finished."

"Wait, wait. Hold on." Cardin jogs up into Jaune's frontal point of view. "How do you even know any of this?"

"I, uh…" {gleaned their generalized battle tactics from my position on top of an energy construct that I didn't make…} "…In my short five-minute career as the Flying Fairy, I found that I had more than enough time to analyze their strategies."

"You got that from five minutes of flying."

"My body has gotten used to uncomfortably long flights."

"Hmph. Can't prove you wrong there."

"Mee-yow." The way she says it sounds either like an amen brotha or a bow chika wow wow. He hopes it's the former.

"General game plan: talk both Yang and Weiss down. I really don't think fighting fire with fire is a good idea when the entire city is burning down, so this is strictly a diplomatic mission. Ruby has Yang covered, so it's up to the three of us to get to Weiss."

Cardin snorts again. "Worst team ever." At the blonde's put-out expression, he scoffs, "Chill, dude. I'm not dissing the plan. It's a great plan, but the three of us are the worst. I'm—was—the guard of her company competitor. Everybody knows she hates your guts. We're looking great; well, at least, I do, and you're stuck in permanent wimpy mode, but then we have her best friend here who looks like somebody went to town all over her face. There are no good assumptions from this scenario."

"Then we take her out of the equation." He motions at the girl, who, for a brief instant, looks more alert than she should be. He blinks and her eyes have glazed right back over into its previous semi-incoherent stupor. "Uh, Blake? Are you okay on crowd control?"

The Cat nods emphatically. "I'm fast."

"Just keep everybody out of the square. We don't need Dragon or Rooster supporters adding to the firefight."

She nods once again, crouches, and practically dissolves into thin air, leaving behind only a trail of airborne afterimages.

Jaune's instructions to Cardin fade on his tongue as they round a corner and shoot out an alleyway that opens up onto what used to be a park. It's been completely drained of color, its motion brought to a stuttering halt, immobilized by thick frost. A fog has settled over the place that burns away as stray embers rain from above and, when the sparks fizzle into cold ether, immediately rushes in to fill the void.

The vaporous ocean splashes and undulates as Weiss plunges back underneath its surface, looking just a little worse for the wear. Her glimmering feathers may be charred slightly around the edges. Smoke and steam rise from her body. The glyphs that comprise her wings quiver as if held together by the least amount of concentration needed. A flaming meteor screams through the atmosphere above her and she turns, the most basic of shielding diagramss beginning to form on her hands, just a little too late.

A flash of green materializes in front of Weiss. Concentric pink circles emanate millimeters from Lie Ren's open palms as he takes the fireball head on. The effort brings him to his knees but buys Weiss enough time to complete her rune and reinforce Ren's shield. Together, their combined auras nullify Yang's. Weiss slumps as the fire implodes; Ren does not relax, instead bringing his arms around in circular motions, swivels his body in natural rotations, and releases a violently pink blast of uncontrolled aura from an two-handed open-palmed strike into the next incoming projectile.

The incoming fireball that meets Ren's aura blast is of a different color—the same light yellow that had spiked Jaune into the sky fifteen minutes ago. The explosion that radiates from this is no different: very little firepower, all concussive force that smashes Ren into the ground, through the frosted grass lawn, to rebound off the frozen earth and fly in a mess of tangled limbs right at Jaune.

He briefly contemplates catching Ren. They're not that different in size, right? And Blake did the same for him earlier.

…Yeah, no.

"Cardin, catch!"

"Maybe on the streets, but I pitch in the sheets." Cardin launches into an inexplicably graceful backflip, placing himself onto his own downward vector to lessen the impact when he intercepts the Snake in midair.

{You're jealous, aren't you.}

Shrugging off the latest Reason Why Jaune Is Not As Awesome As "Blank", the blonde notes that the smashed body in his companion's arms is in no condition to provide additional information on Weiss. Too bad. Looks like he'll be chucking himself headlong into another blind situation again.

{Eh, what's new?}

"Watch him," he barks aloud.

"Really, Fairy Boss? You really think you can take her alone? I came along with to back you up, not to play nurse."

"I'll back him up."

The voice is too familiar. Even more hauntingly so, now that it originates from outside his head. Now that the sound he hears is affected by the physics of this world, such that it melts with the crackle of fire and the dampening influence of fog to crash down his ear canal in pressurized waves, instead of the telepathic message he's heard in his mind for the past couple weeks.

But he turns. He stares. Because it's Miltia Malachite exactly as he remembers her, that week before the start of school. Still wearing that tiny red dress, the thigh-high heels. Red and white feathers above her left ear. Vivid green eyes. She looks like she's dressed for a night in the club, a bright red anomaly in a city full of uniformed freshmen on the run.

"Miltia…"

[You remembered me,] she smiles, her voice clearly resonating in his mind even as she stands, in person, in faunus form, before him. [So I exist.]

{How could I forget?} He resists the urge to roll his eyes. {You left me enough cryptic messages. Which I still want answers to, by the way.}

A sly simper spoils the thankful innocence of Miltia's grin. "When the time is right, I'll tell you."

"No. Leave him out of this." Fear flickers in the other man's eyes. It is quickly followed by a murderous intent so crazed that, when he surges towards Miltia, arm outstretched, the blonde practically jumps in front of his imaginary friend. Even now, he's not exactly sure she's there. She sounds real enough. And if Cardin can hear her, see her too, that's got to mean something, right?

"Jaune need my help," she says smugly. "Don't you?"

{Unless you're willing to give Ren the kiss of life, yes, you need all the help you can get.}

"NO." Cardin is starting to bulk up. Doesn't seem to be doing it consciously, but it shows that he isn't kidding around. "Jaune, trust me. You're making a huge mistake."

The fact that he's gearing up for a fight is enough reason for Jaune to put some distance between them. "How would I know? Half an hour ago, you didn't want to tell me a single thing!"

"I'm telling you now. I was going insane, I told you that, right? It was her. She needs an anchor. She'll dig those claws into your mind if it means she can stay." He smirks bitterly. "I tried to keep you away, tried to—"

A bladed shink from the boxes on Miltia's wrists is all the warning they get before Miltia teleports between him and Cardin. It's possible that she just moved too fast for his puny human to keep up with, but he doesn't miss the brief quarter-second when Miltia just seems to appear out of thin air, like a badly edited movie where the woman's form has just but cut-and-pasted into his vision with one claw coming up in an unforgiving uppercut, blood-red blades inches away from penetrating the soft, unprotected underside of the Boar's square jaw.

With one almost careless hand, the man bats the claws away, like deflecting a child's blows. His other hand follows up in a mean hook, yet Miltia simply takes one long step to the side to twirl around the large man's attack, dragging her claws up through the forearm of his suit jacket. Stretched tight as it is over his developed bicep, the cloth explodes quite spectacularly, shreds of black wool and soft lining and white cotton flying into the space between Cardin's bared teeth and Miltia's smooth smirk.

"Stop!"

Miltia moves again at Jaune's words, materializing abruptly at his side. Blink and he'd miss it. Cardin stumbles in the empty air where Miltia used to be. "Let's find Weiss," she suggests, "and I'll tell you everything."

"Jaune." There is a distress in the man's voice that gives him pause, forces him to turn around and listen. "Don't make the same mistake I did."

"You're here for Weiss," the phantom reality reminds him. "And I'm here to give you your answers."

His instincts war against each other. Despite Cardin's caustically gruff demeanor, he really does seem to have Jaune's better interests in mind. Miltia is just barely on this side of the uncanny valley, but she's at least she's willing to dish out assistance with as little fuss as possible. Really, he needs all the help he can get; and in the literal heat of the situation, he doesn't have a lot of options.

"Weiss won't even consider diplomacy when she sees her," the Boar barks, switching tactics. "She'll attack on sight!"

"Sounds like a good plan…" He attempts to hide his sheepish smile; it doesn't really work. "Anything that will get her attention off Yang, really."

"…That's your plan? Assisted suicide?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"I assumed we were going to beat her just short of senseless. And then talk some sense into her."

"Nothing like a little diplomacy," quips Miltia, "after violence."

"No! I… was just going to… y'know, survive some potshots, do a bit of fighting, a lot more screaming, and pray to Monty that she'll listen."

A flutter of crimson cloth and the aroma of fresh roses heralds Ruby's arrival when she literally drops from the sky and lands among them. "Can we skip the talking and just move on to the screaming and fighting?" she proposes eagerly.

"Ack! Ruby! How long have you been listening in?"

"Long enough to realize that at some point, Yang is going to drop a bomb on all of you, and you'll be too busy with your Team Meeting to notice your booties getting burned." Her eyes sparkle at what she perceives to be the appropriate use of foul language.

Jaune's smart retort (the one he swears is on the tip of his tongue) is abruptly interrupted when his target plummets from the sky and plows through the frozen grass not six feet behind Cardin. Her glyph-wings fizzle out in a spluttered mess of energy lines and symbols. Tiny feathers drift off her body as she pushes herself out the trench she just created; quick but controlled breaths create clouds around her face, which, even when streaked in sweat and dirt and just a little blood, is still beautiful. Her eyes are still crystal clear, sharp, calculating… until they widen in surprise, just ever so slightly, as they land upon him.

Her lips move. He thinks they're saying something along the lines of oh great, it's the perverted dolt. He doesn't really get much time to think about it, because she's rushing at him with a repelling diagram that she'd used to launch boulders and crush icebergs.

[I've got your back.]

Miltia's whisper seems more like a request than an offering of assistance.

[Move those feet, slowpoke!]

And his legs are moving without his permission. Which is just as well, because Weiss' glyph is literally three feet away. The pressurized air around the center of the almost-complete rune distorts Weiss' face, which, curiously, is not set into any sort of furious expression. Actually, there's a panicked worry in her eyes as Jaune partially dodges, partially trips over his own feet, and altogether falls out of the blast zone.

Jaune's graceful dodge exposes Cardin. They make eye contact for about half a second, in which the Boar gives him some pretty nasty stinkeye.

Then, in a potent squall of stormy wind, Cardin blasts off into the murky fog, leaving behind only a thin, girly scream.

Jaune glances frantically between Weiss and the arbitrary point where he thinks he last saw his companion. A Boar, made three times as bulky as normal by calling on his inner Grimm, had not stood a chance against Weiss and her semblance. And the scream… the haunting scream, from a full-grown man… "What was that for?" he protests.

"Dolt!" There's the anger he's come to expect. It's still overshadowed by fear, though. What does she have to be afraid of? "That was supposed to be you!" (Somewhere in the back of his mind, an imaginary version of Weiss pipes up, 'Pervert.')

"I don't want it to be me!" (An entire theater production unfolds in his mind, where the Shining Blonde Knight declares, 'I'm trying to save you!' Maybe affectionately adding, 'Snow Angel.')

('Oh. Alright. Though I appreciate the sentiment, I regret to inform you that proper decorum dictates I slit your throat open anyways.')

('Wait! Before you do that, I need to tell you that gurglekurkeldziewqb—')

(Then Weiss whips around and ambushes the sneaking Ruby by making out with her.)

That doesn't happen, (un)fortunately. Well, Ruby is slowly edging her way out of Weiss' field of vision, even as Weiss focuses her attention on and addresses him. "Urgh! It's for your safety."

"I thought you hated me!"

"Who doesn't?"

{Ouch! Freezer burn!}

"But," the heiress adds quietly, "nobody else needs to get hurt because of Schnee affairs."

The haze behind Weiss chooses at that moment to evaporate instantly in the wake of a thousand tiny meteorites. All around the two of them, hundreds of dragonfire pellets descend—a reverse-engineered version of Weiss' cloud attack, with each particle superheating its surrounding neighbors to create a burning ash cloud, glowing bright orange.

He's not exactly proud of how he automatically moves to hide behind her form and tramples over all her tail feathers—especially since she's almost a head shorter than he—but she has a broad variety of physics-defying semblances at her disposal, and all he has is a propensity to fly and not die. "Blow your windy thing!" he all but squeals.

"Excuse me!" Ethereal lines flicker and stutter at Weiss' fingertips. "I can't! Not without Myrtlenaster…"

[Chakra. Move it.]

Miltia moves through him again (he'll think about how freaky that is later; maybe he'll even consult Cardin about it), puppet strings dragging his arms before him. He swears he sees ghost images of Miltia's arms overlying his, aura coursing down their lengths and pooling in their superimposed palms. Is this what she did kickstart his own aura?

Jaune's hands land on Weiss' back. He literally feels the surge of energy leave him, disappear into Weiss' soul. It manifests in her hands as semblance, speeding its formation.

He's just about gotten a full-body sunburn when the gust of wind finally whirls to life. This time, it isn't the concentrated beam that launched Cardin into oblivion; instead, a hurricane gathers Yang's cloud of fire up into one deadly, slow-moving sun. Weiss stumbles as soon as she finishes passing wind (teehee), clearly exhausted. Jaune takes the liberty of scooping her around the waist and hightailing it out of there. The fact that he can cart her off like a village wench speaks more of her petite frame and less of Jaune's musculature (but hey, he can pretend).

{Her feathers are so soft…}

At least she waits until they've cleared the blast zone before she punches him in the kidney. Really, it's not his fault that he almost plows her pretty face into the ground by landing on top of her. In fact, she might as well have asked for it.

But no, she somehow manages to catch herself with one hand—three fingers of one hand—and spring back to her feet like a gymnast in a dress and a tail of four-foot long feathers, while he, master of grace, plows facefirst into the ground and receives a thousand minor cuts from all the frozen blades of grass.

"Launching pad!"

He rolls over in time to catch Ruby full-on sprinting towards Weiss. The circular rune that she conjures isn't the repelling one, but it's enough of a platform for Ruby to crouch upon before using her semblance to practically teleport onto Yang's furious snout as the Dragoness threatens to crash right into his and Weiss' personal space. Feet scrabbling for purchase on heat-slicked golden scales, hands wrapped around the scruffy frill of Yang's neck, anything to hold on and stare straight into bloody red eyes.

{Then Yang, overcome with emotion, warps back to her faunus form and immediately starts making out with Ruby.}

What actually happens is that the last Dragoness goes cross-eyed and happens to notice, just then, that there is a small faunus on her face. A valuable young faunus that she can't afford to smash into Jaune and Weiss to create a threesome sandwich; so instead, she pulls up into a steep rise and shoots back into the sky. Wind literally carves its way into Jaune's skin as a Dragon's golden body whips past, two feet from the tip of his nose, at speeds topping fifty miles an hour. Maybe he pees his pants a little.

And then Yang's gone, and Ruby's gone, and it's just him and Weiss.

The ice princess holds her hands up defensively, still waiting for the next strike. When no immediate threat is forthcoming, she hazards a glance at Jaune over her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

He might be a little freaked out at Weiss' inquiry. Sure, she's being quite civil with him right now, but it's probably because she has bigger problems.

"That was Ruby," he mentions. As if she wouldn't know that. It's not like she hasn't been a faunus all her life.

Weiss nods once.

He feels the need to add, "…Her sister."

"So?"

"Yang's not going to hurt her sister. I think we're safe for now."

"Familial relations mean nothing."

"I can't speak for Yang," he retorts, "but I think she'd value what little family she has left."

"Perhaps. But as of yet, she isn't exactly coherent. I don't doubt for a second that she wouldn'ttoss her pretend sister underneath a bus to regain what she believes to be rightfully hers."

"…Which is…?"

The noise that erupts from Weiss' mouth isn't a laugh. She motions towards the source of the foggy winter cold, where the base of the ice tower most likely is. "Isn't it painfully obvious? I just announced to all of Zodiac that the Sea of Dragons exists. That it exists, that my father lied to Menagerie about it, and that his powerless young daughter possesses it."

Jaune doesn't know what to say (mostly because he's still trying to remember what the Sea of Dragons is), so he chooses silence.

The white-haired girl smirks bitterly. "My father fabricated a story that it exploded on the battlefield, all so he could hide a powerful trick up his sleeve. But I refuse to conform to my father's old standards. I'm going to recreate the name of Schnee, and I'll stand all the fire and ice it takes to get there."

[It's the crystal of Dragon souls.]

{Oh yeah! It's the… you know, you need to stop doing that, Miltia.}

[What?]

{Pretending to be myself.}

He interrupts himself before the internal conversation can get any more mind-screwy. "Why didn't you just arrange to hand over the crystal when you first met Yang in the courtyard? Did you really need to put on a big show of it right now?"

"She wasn't ready for it then. Now…" A slight blush rises in her cheeks. "I was provoked and triggered the reveal too early. I meant to present the monument to Ms Xiao Long in person; instead…"

"Um. Let me get this straight. I'm not criticizing you; I'm trying to clarify. You kept a Clan's legacy from its final member… because she wasn't mature enough to handle it?"

"I wouldn't use it to raze Vytal to the ground." There is ice blue steel in her eyes when she states this. He doesn't doubt that Yang—thrill-seeking Yang, the girl whose solution is to punch it until it agrees—would go ahead and bring destruction across the border to humanity. "Before she attacked me without an ounce of diplomacy, I'd believed that she had shed her coat of bitterness and was ready to approach the world as a powerful politician, not as a savage brute." She closes her eyes. "I've moved too early, it seems. But it appears to be too late. The play has been set into motion. I can't just place it back into storage—"

"Why not?"

"Because of this." Shame clouds her cheeks. "It was supposed to be an offer of peace and respect. I spent hours formulating and crafting the runes to carve those icy dragons. Then a minor confrontation, barely significant when it comes to the fate of the world—and I lose control. Place the monument on top of a public park, of all places. I might as well have openly slapped Yang in front of the entire nation! All of whom no doubt see it as a display of power, bragging rights to a weapon I'm trying to keep in safe hands—"

Jaune nods slowly. "Okay. I trust you."

"I realize that I may be much younger than Yang, but that doesn't—wait. What did you say?"

"Uh. I trust you?"

This is apparently incomprehensible to Weiss, because she freezes in her tracks. He takes this as his opportunity to launch into a heroic speech.

"Uh, because… labels."

{Sorry, Jaune Arc is not available. Please dial again.}

"I can promise you that I won't judge you based off what your dad did." {Mostly because I didn't actually know that your dad existed until last month.} "I'm going to judge you based off what you've done and what you're doing. And what you've done so far is…" {For me, at least, beat the snot out of me in front of the entire student body for an accident and then getting your minions to hate on me because—ahem.} "Well. If you say that you'd holding a national legacy from falling into the wrong hands… or the right hands at the wrong time… or whatever, then I believe you. Because based off what I've seen so far, you seem like a gal with great ethics. High morals. And an unbreakable will. Which has pretty much cumulated in you and your friends never backing away from punishing supposed perverts like me, but what I'm trying to say is that I, uh, will put my trust in you."

The girl in front of him has an awfully blank face. He really hopes he got his point across, but in reality, he's not actually sure what he actually said. Like, his mouth opened, and words came vomiting out, and then he shut it again because that's what proper decorum says to do when there are awkward silences and you're not talking anymore.

"Thank you. …It appears that I have misjudged you."

{Well, better not say anything stupid.}

"Not really."

Weiss eagerly leaps onto this little comment as if desperate to get back to disparaging him. "Pardon my momentary lapse in judgment," she scoffs. "I suppose time will only tell." Then, in a quieter murmur, "For the both of us."

"Right-o." Jaune slaps imaginary dirt from both hands. "One more question: why tell the world at all that you have a crystal capable of destroying humankind when most of them, and a majority of your own species, aren't on your side?"

"The school administration is," Weiss murmurs, not exactly looking at him. "The headmistress may or may not be. But the academy investors are the ones pulling the strings, actually. And they agreed to let me store the crystal with maximum campus security."

Okay. More security in a school than in a private company compound? He can take that. But… as for whose hands are holding the weapon… "Doesn't that mean that they own the crystal too?"

"They're under the illusion they are, yes." There is a certain degree of smugness to her tone that is much more like the ice princess he has in his head. "But the box that the crystal is stored within can only be opened by my father. And, as of this school semester, me. It's sealed with layers of Schnee glyphs, most of which were invented and applied by yours truly."

Another thought strikes him. "Hold on. If you created the tower… doesn't that mean you have the Sea of Dragons on you right now?"

"Are you doubting that I could accomplish this on my own strength?" she says dangerously. When he stammers back an incomprehensible reply, she tacks on with an absolutely straight face, "Just kidding."

"...Wut."

"I have a tiny chip of the crystal on my person right now," she elaborates. "While the crystal is nearly indestructible, my father wasn't exactly lying when he said that the Sea of Dragons shattered on the battlefield."

"Okay. Again, just trying to be logical here: you believed that Yang would burn Ruby alive just to get to the Sea of Dragons. Yet you didn't think, even if you did meet her diplomatically, that she wouldn't tear you down just to pry that teeny, tiny shard from your crispy, charred little hands?"

"I was supposed to hand it over after initiation," Weiss sniffs, "as a further treaty of fraternal union. The monument would be placed in the outer square. There would be school administrators and disciplinarians to ensure she wouldn't murder me on sight."

"That turned out well."

Weiss looks personally offended {man, she's delicate} and retorts, "I don't need to hear that from you of all faunus."

He holds up placating palms of surrender. "Okay. I deserved that one. So Yang's trying to murder you because you figuratively slapped her in the face with an ill-timed memorial to her dead Clan which may or may not be contained within that crystal."

"There is no scientific evidence that—"

"Humor me for a sec. Or better yet, think about it from Yang's point of view. Got it? Slap in the face. So now we've got to figure out a way how to… unslap her. Is that tower made out of… normal ice?"

She closes her eyes too long to be a blink. "It's a construct capable of creating its own arctic microecosystem. What do you think?"

"Okay… can you, I dunno, reverse it?"

"Do I look like a waterbender? If I had Myrtlenaster to help focus my aura, maybe…"

One look around tells Jaune that they're still ensconced within a deep mist, practically hidden from the sight of anybody who doesn't have Dragon supervision. He has no idea where Cardin or Ren or Blake are… Miltia's gone again (a can of worms he'll dig into later, now that she hasn't been exactly subtle about how she's sorta kinda haunting him)… hopefully Ruby has successfully suppressed Yang. And his scroll contains almost no contacts, so unless he gets a visual…

"Can you blow your windy thing again? We need to clear the park."

"It's a Negative Gate." The rune is already taking shape before her hands.

Slowly.

Reaaaaaally slowly.

"Can I help?" Without asking, he plops a hand onto her shoulder and… nothing.

The glare she sends his way could freeze a volcano. "What do you think you're doing?"

{Uh, Miltia?}

{…Miltia?}

Desperately, he tries to replicate what his imaginary, extremely not-helpful friend did earlier. Visualizing aura around his soul, hiding in the depths of his organs—maybe his liver, since that's like the metabolizing powerhouse of the human bod—um, concentrate, push that life force down his arms and into the palms of his hands…

[Oh, did you need my help?]

{Asfhfdkslfhwok.}

Aura, chakra, lifestream surges through his arms, propelled along by Miltia, and floods into Weiss. Even the ice princess herself notices the energy boost, how the glyph formation speeds up, swells in size, and releases a hurricane gale of wind so fierce that she would have blown herself away had not Jaune been there to literally catch and hold her in place (and get a face-lashing of feathery white hair as thanks).

He does not comment on the impropriety of her combat skirt in this situation. Not when his and her combined repelling power is enough to clear the entire park. Blue skies and golden sunlight pour in from above as the fog sloughs off like foam over the lip of an overfilled bathtub, eddies swirling downstream from the torrent of wind until they disintegrate into the atmosphere. Within seconds, he can see the tips of destroyed rooftops, charred black by stray fireballs. A whirl of black catches his peripheral vision to his right, green to his left; Ren appears first, silently powering down from hyperdrive and materializing behind Weiss. Blake materializes seconds later on Weiss' other side. Both eye Jaune suspiciously, even as he pulls his hand off Weiss' shoulder and the jetstream of air splutters to a stop.

Almost immediately, more freezing fog generated by the tower begins to encroach upon them. Jaune thus opens bluntly with, "We need to take down that tower. It's not normal ice and it's not going to melt anytime soon. If we're going to take it down, we need blunt force."

"At that height," speaks Ren, "it will crush the surrounding neighborhood on its way down."

"Not if we weaken it at key points. Weiss constructed the tower from spiraling dragon ice sculptures, right? They all twist around each other like a rope. So if we get a dozen faunus to each choose their own dragon and, pardon the analog, break its spine every ten feet or so with solid strikes directly perpendicular to the surface, creating cracks all the way up to the top, then applying destructive force to the bottom of the tower will cause it to implode on itself, instead of crushing the neighborhood."

"We don't have weapons," says Blake. "I can only punch one block of ice before I break my hand."

"That's where Lie Ren comes in. Earlier, that pink energy that you used to defend Weiss—that was your aura, wasn't it?"

"Correct."

"That," Weiss interrupts, "was years of training. Of learning the control and finesse of flow."

"Me pumping myself into you: that was done in seconds."

Blake and Ren have great poker faces. Weiss settles for an outraged squeak and an indignant slap.

"Sharing life energy!" he frantically adds.

Weiss crescent-kicks him in the groin so hard that, despite being much lighter than him, she lifts him into the air and tosses him to the side.

"Okay, I'm done," he wheezes. "You guys… find some way to… do something… and I'll catch up."

He doesn't catch Ren and Weiss take off (the man with a quick thanks and the girl with a haughty hmph), as he is too busy squinting his eyes shut and attempting to regain his dignity.

He opens his eyes to Blake's feet a few minutes later. He blinks owlishly, unsure of why she's stayed behind, when she speaks first. Softly, so quietly that he almost misses it. "You've really grown. …I'm glad."

He pushes himself into a seated position with a groan, acutely aware of the ache between his legs. "Uh… thanks?"

Blake's scroll emits a small blip. Two seconds later, a blurred form stumbles to a stop before them, panting heavily. "I came as soon as I got your call—eep!"

"Velvet?"

"Um. Jaune! I. Blake, when you said there was a smokin' hot blonde in need of—eeeeeeeep." The tips of the Rabbit's ears are bound to spontaneously combust any second now. "I'm going to… do something… helpful. Um. When Yatsuhashi gets here."

Groundshaking footsteps herald the arrival of Velvet's friend: seven feet of solid, tanned muscle just barely stuffed into a school uniform. If Tifa had difficulty earlier buttoning up her jacket… well, it's a wonder this guy managed to fit into his underwear. And then the man goes ahead and blows all first impressions to kingdom come when he puts a gargantuan hand on Velvet's tiny shoulder with just the tiniest hint of affection.

"Pick a single dragon sculpture on the tower," Jaune instructs, not staring at the craaazy height difference between Velvet and Yatsuhashi, and {if they're together, how do they even NOOOOO STOP RIGHT THERE}, "and break the ice every ten feet, all the way to the top. And you, Yatsuhashi? When I give the signal, hit the base of the tower with everything you've got. We're bringing everything down." He puts on what he hopes is an inspiring leader-ish grin. "As a team!"

Yatsuhashi and Velvet melt away into the mist.

"As a team," murmurs Blake.

"Yeah. If I rally a lot of faunus around Weiss, that's got to count as helping, right?"

A corner of Blake's mouth tilts upwards. "I guess. So why aren't you helping?"

Jaune gives her his best puppy eyes. "Because I've been critically wounded, Blake."

His temporary companion is obviously trying to cement her facial expression into a stony exterior, despite her lips' best attempts to curl upwards. "Your foot. Your mouth," she quips carelessly. "Your poor, poor balls."

"Yeah, my fault, tell me something I don't know."

Cardin shows up. Squinty Eyes and Bunny Stalker too. For some reason, Russel snaps a picture with his scroll before scampering off towards the tower, followed by two faceless young men who also complete a shoot-and-run with their scrolls. A boxer with hair as white as Weiss' makes a brief appearance alongside a girl wearing sunglasses and a beret. Nora is a whirlwind of energy, there one moment and gone the next. Even Penny blips into existence for two seconds when Blake isn't looking.

He's waiting for somebody in particular though.

He doesn't catches her until after the tower collapses. After Yatsuhashi practically buries all evidence of Weiss' failed memorial using some earth-based semblance. After they all make their way up the destroyed streets as a ragtag team of freshies. Crazy tired as they are, nobody picks a fight with them.

He doesn't find her until they reach the school gates. That's when Yang steps into view, her arms folded over her chest. Ruby lurks in Yang's shadow, cowering slightly and glancing quickly between Jaune and Yang. On Yang's other side is Pyrrha Nikos, her uniform as pristinely clean as ever, standing in as an obvious wingwoman.

Something in Jaune's body lurches, even when Pyrrha directs a tiny smile his way before returning to form.

It's probably his heart.