"Hey Penny? My brain says we should stop those idiots from doing something really stupid."

Two faunus stand a little ways off to the side of a beautiful stained-glass door. In the dim light of four o'clock in the morning, the dark-skinned guy stands out with his light yellow jacket. It's the one in the purple hoodie that instantly attracts Jaune's attention though; the one heaving a huge rock at the door.

"Don't!"

At the same moment that Jaune springs forward, hand outstretched, a sheen of light flashes across the building face and intercepts the flying mini-boulder. The impact sends out a shockwave that throws the two faunus to the ground and generates little sparks of light. For a moment, it looks like the shimmering force field won't be able to divert the projectile's momentum into other forms of energy, that it's going to careen forward anyways and smash through the glass entrance to Weiss' private suite; at least, until a single green hexagon forms before the thrown stone. With the extra reinforcement, the rock's kinetic energy fully dissipates and it thuds into the ground, allowing both force fields to wink out of sight.

{That first force field… was that me?}

Never mind that; Penny is nowhere in sight. Ruby and Penny had hit off so well despite meeting each other just this evening that Jaune's forgotten how Penny doesn't really exist to anybody else. It's sort of a disappointment, not to mention how he has two irritated faunus to deal with alone now…

"Dude, not cool!" yelps a girl's voice. The purple hood flops off her head to reveal a shock of teal-colored hair as she squirms on the ground holding her tailbone.

"We surrender," the guy moans in the same instant. "Can I go to bed now?"

"After I went through all the trouble of recruiting you here? Don't you dare ditch me now."

"Give it up, Reese. We weren't even close to getting inside anyways." The guy turns dispirited eyes upon Jaune. "Do you need to scan my scroll?"

"Uh…" Jaune takes a glance about him. No Coco in sight. Hopefully not for a few more moments either. Is it too much to hope that the upperclasswoman won't suspect Jaune of faking Yatsuhashi's call for help? It's like not he can tell her Penny hacked into the school's administrative system to monitor everybody's scrolls and fabricate identities. Or that she, uh, actually exists in the first place. Frankly, if he thinks about it too long… "N-Not me," he stammers. "I'm not the police or anything—"

"Then what do you think you're doing," the girl growls, "butting into our business? We were so close to getting inside before you—"

"We don't have the smarts to actually figure it out," the guy interrupts quietly.

"Nadir! I broke into Dragon dorms and dragged you out of bed so you could help me with this kind of stuff."

"My left brain should be sleeping right now. It's not working. Can I go back now?"

"Brains?" Jaune tries to suppress the glee in his tone. Not like he'd like a chance to show off his mental prowess or anything, nah, but if this is what Penny meant when she said use your brain…

A tiny spark of interest flares to life in Nadir's eyes. "Yeah… the door doesn't have a doorknob. It's actually a puzzle. Probably slides open when you solve it."

His feet are moving before he can really give the two a reason as to why he's actually there. It's only when Reese glares at him that he hesitates. "Uh, so you guys know you aren't the firsts to break in, right?"

"I'm just following the action," Reese pipes up. "Inigo wasn't sneaky at all as to where he was going."

"There's a guy in there who's going to blame his actions on me. I've got to stop him before he gets too far."

Nadir motions at the front yard. "Are you sure this guy isn't one of the bodies out there?"

"What are you—holy mother of Monty."

Because he broke into the grounds by flying above the fence surrounding the side garden, Jaune figures he can forgive himself for utterly failing to notice the sheer number of bodies piled about the front lawn. Tangled in tree branches, half-buried under dirt, bleeding from rose bushes, literally frozen in chunks of ice… they might as well been a terrifying part of the lawn décor. Like plant adornments and cute little ice gnomes, and not actually twitching, moaning, sobbing perverts (male and female).

"How'd you guys get through?"

Reese pulls two halves of a hoverboard from her back. "We surfed over a sea of corpses," she says in all seriousness.

"It was morbid," Nadir agrees. "She used body shields as bait for the rest of the traps."

Jaune's eyes follow Nadir's finger to a familiar figure lying a short six feet away. Before he can glance away and pretend he never recognized the cloaked body, said body twitches as if revitalized by the glance of his true master.

"My lord!" cries Russel, way too happily. "You came!"

"Call me 'sir,'" he replies on automatic.

{Welp, there it is. Can you feel them judging you? So hard.}

Their eyes are burning two pairs of holes into his back. Well. Now would be a great time to make a better impression. He stalks over, grabs a fistful of Green Mohawk's hood, and lifts him upward as menacingly as possible. "Where's Sky Lark?"

"I told him to wait for you," babbles Russel as tears spring to his eyes. "I told him to wait."

"How long ago did he go inside?"

"The panty party fled inside ten minutes ago. They haven't come out yet."

His wording doesn't quite match up; Jaune catches on at about the same time that Reese does, though Nadir speaks first. "You said 'fled'? From what?"

"She called herself… the Crimson Terror."

Jaune facepalms.

"What I want to know," questions Nadir, "is how they managed to run, screaming for their lives, through the front door that requires logic to open in the first place."

Fat drops of saltwater begin to roll down Russel's face at the memory. "They couldn't. Not right away. So they scrambled up the walls, tried to break through windows. That's when the repelling glyphs appeared. The red glyphs… the screams…"

In the name of science, Jaune unexpectedly has the strong desire to throw a body at any window and see just how far it flies. Russel's a scrawny dude, sure, but Jaune's muscle mass is just as tiny. Maybe he could get Nadir to help? He's in Dragon, so maybe… for science!

He gives Green Mohawk a moment to calm down before yanking him closer. "How did Lark get in?"

The poor guy's tears only double at this point. "He used me… body shield. And then you… you came."

He drops Russel and gets to his feet, knowing he won't be getting any more answers out of this guy. Not that he was particularly helpful in the first place. Did Russel really need to cry that much though? He's actually feeling bad for, what, roughing up the guy too much? He hazards a glance at Nadir and Reese in the hopes that they're not lumping him in with the likes of Thrush and Lark. Thankfully, Reese seems to be shooting him a thumbs-up of approval; Nadir's got a single eyebrow raised in amusement.

"You were kneeling on his 'nads the entire interview," Reese whisper-shouts helpfully.

Double-take. Russel is sort of curled up in a tight ball. He winces, then turns about and gives his best I-meant-to-do-that smile. Then, to save additional face, he bravely announces, "I'm going in to stop Lark."

"Yeah! 'Bout time we got moving."

Nadir turns around. "Nope. Nightie night, guys."

"Not so fast, smarty-pants." Reese yanks him back by his jacket. "Just how do you plan to get out, huh?"

"The same way he got in."

Jaune scratches the back of his neck ruefully. "Well… I sort of ran into security when I flew through the fence. Ran over, actually. They haven't sent anybody after me yet, but…"

Reese nods triumphantly. "So let's make like the perverts and hide inside. The puzzle door, if you may."

What he originally thought was a stained-glass door is actually a large glass touchscreen. Displayed on it are a couple tetris-like blocks that he's supposed to fit into a pre-set mold. Simple enough. Each time he drags and drops a piece, his mind is already mapping out all the permutations that the other shapes can take to fit the hexagonal mold. Five pieces in, he can already tell that there aren't enough blocks to fill the entire space; there's a missing block. An error? Or built-in design? Either way, judging from the general Schnee logo, he's guessing that in order to keep up with the symmetry of snowflakes, the hole probably goes in the middle… which means he's got to rearrange all his pieces.

Forty-three seconds later, he's finished. He shoots his companions a suave look. {Yeah, check that out.}

Nadir folds his arms. "…What now?"

"Um…" Another glance at the door shows… no change. No slidey-open-sesame magic. He pokes at the hole in the center and jerks back in shock at the minor spark that sizzles the tip of his finger. "Yeouch!"

"Digital lock," grins Reese. "Leave it to me."

Jaune backs up as the girl whips out one half of her hoverboard. "Uh… what's she doing?" he hisses.

"Exactly what it looks like," Nadir whispers back. Reese is holding one of the magnetocrystalline vents against the door, occasionally interrupting the invisible electric flow with a couple hairpins pulled from her hood. "Breaking and entering."

"But… how?"

"Grimm if I know. Theoretically, she figures out the coding of the lock according to the attractions she feels on her magnetized hairpins. In reality, I'm really tired and I'm seriously considering deserting you guys and to surrender to that incoming student. What a drag. Do you think she'll let me off if I just hand over my scroll?"

"Reeeeeeeeese," Jaune screams, leaping forward just as something ridiculously heavy displaces a large amount of air behind him. The shockwave alone rolls him over as he dives, revealing the thunderous form of Coco Adel in the midst of swinging that deceptively small suitcase into Nadir. She now wears a pair of glasses that shine opaquely in the moonlight, hiding her true intent from him. Judging from how Nadir's body wraps around that weaponized handbag and his tongue and eyeballs appear to bulge from his skull, Coco is not kidding around. Combined with the scary light reflecting off her glasses, who would blame Jaune for assuming is that she is not amused at all?

A firm hand grabs the scruff of his neck and yanks him underneath the sliding door. The descending door {already?!}. The one that's about to crush his—

"Aiiiiieeeeee!" he screams, pulling his knees all the way up his chest. The piston-like motion sends him tumbling heels-over-head into Reese, which knocks her off her half-hoverboard and pitches them both to the carpeted floor. All part of the plan, of course: the second their backs smack against the ground, some ominous device clanks and whirs to life and he feels heat on the tip of his nose.

"Don't move," Reese bites. "Unless you want to lose a limb. I think."

"You think? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just try to keep your appendages still while I get us a visual."

"Oh." He twiddles his thumbs. "Visual? You… wouldn't happen to have a smoke bomb on you by any… what is that?"

A Cheshire grin spreads across Reese's face. "It's a pen."

It sure looks like a pen, but somehow he has the feeling its main purpose is not for writing. Probably because she sticks it in her mouth and subsequently blows out a huge puff of scented smoke in his direction. Any worry he had for her unconventional means of generating smoke is erased when the rising cloud reveals a lattice of red lines. "Well… phooey. Of course she has a maze of lasers in her entrance hallway."

"Thought so." His companion continues to puff away at her 'pen.' "Slice n' dice; well that was nice."

He tilts his head in her direction. Judging by the lack of light sensors in the carpet, he figures that most of the lasers run wall-to-wall instead of ceiling-to-floor. Horizontal movement should be okay… mostly. "Do we know they're cutting lasers? See any severed arms or legs flopping around?"

"Look for yourself, why dontcha?"

"Erm… I can't really see much of anything."

"Huh. Your night vision sucks."

He's done his research, and from personal experience, he knows just the word that will get every faunus to back off quick. "Lemming."

"…Oh. I'm so sorry." She pauses awkwardly. "No, this hallway's empty. Either your friend and his crew have infrared vision and are really, really good at dodging, or the janitor already took out the trash."

"The janitor would have to disable the lasers first," he muses quietly.

Reese blows smoke above his face to get his attention (which also reveals a beam of light maybe two inches above his crotch {Noooooooo why.}) "There's a big glass bulb above the door on the other end of this hallway. You think that's an off button or something?"

"That sounds more like a light receiver…" She's onto the right track though. If it's anything like the front entrance's door, that sensor might just be another doorknob in disguise. His eyes fixate on the spot where the first cloud of smoke dissipated. The dim lighting of the entrance hallway is both a blessing and a curse; while the lasers are still visible despite the barely present haze, it's hard to see much anything else. He thinks he sees a mirror hanging on the wall though… "Hey Reese. How many mirrors are in here?"

"Uh… none."

Oh. That throws a wrench into that plan. "What about reflective surfaces?"

"If you're talking about all the Schnee family pictures, then sure, there's like, six of them."

Pictures. They have glass, and glass is at least partially reflective. They can definitely function as mirrors. The problem is that glass is also transparent… So some photons will inevitably pass through and sizzle whatever's on the other end. Though… if Lark's already gone through, then shouldn't there already be damage on the photographs? "Reese, tell me about the pictures. Any holes burnt in them or anything?"

Reese pauses just long enough to make him feel stupid before she chuckles. "Sorry. I keep forgetting you're actually blind. Ha. All the pictures are punched onto metal. Super shiny metal plate. Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"If you're thinking that we should use the Schnee family plates to reflect laser beams towards the light sensor and open the door, then yes, you'd be on the right track."

"Ooh, so close. I was thinking more along the lines of burning a hole through the wall and get out of here before I start getting all philosophideep, but your idea is pretty cool beans too."

He thinks about inquiring into just what her 'pen' is actually doing. He decides he doesn't want to know. "Ooookay. If you could get your scroll out… we can use the hard metal casing as a reflector, I think…"

Slowly, through careful displacement of individual lasers, Jaune and Reese make their way to a wall. Moving the embossed metal plates isn't a problem when the entire wall is magnetized; tilting is slightly more difficult until Reese procures dozens of hairpins from her pockets. Redirecting lasers is an exercise in three-dimensional geometry when there isn't enough smoke to cover the entire hallway; he has to extrapolate from the first five feet of red light just where the beam will end up (hoping to Monty that it's resting on the door's receiver).

"Yo, Reese." His mind skips a beat and trips before catching itself. "Blow me some smoke that way, please."

She obeys dutifully. "Yo, Jaune?"

"Hm?" 10% of his brain turns to Reese. The rest focuses on processing the information from his visual cortex and synchronizing it with the mathematical reasoning streaming from his left brain. Well, maybe not all of it. Like, there's maybe like 3.4% that wonders what's in the scented smoke. It smells… different. Somewhat interesting.

"I'm just gonna come right out and say that, y'know, most everybody aren't probably here for snowflakey unmentionables."

With lips as loose as hers, he figures she's talk her face off if he remains silent. Thus he focuses on adjusting this metal plate juuuust right. One degree of difference over here could mean four inches off of the light-sensing doorknob. Even positioning hairpins between the picture plates and the magnetic wall is a physics rehash in force and and resistance of vertexes. He motions for another hairpin. She slaps it into his waiting palm.

"Anything about Schnee is usually so politically charged, y'know? Like, even the pervy-pants who want to steal her panties would probably sell them on fBay or something after to kick up a little oh my and oh yeahhh and whatever."

With the third plate properly repositioned, he moves onto the fourth portrait. There's a red beam of light in the way that really can't be dodged around, so he instructs Reese to hold his scroll riiiight here, just like so… and when he's sure she's not going to sway about drunkenly, he returns to his task.

"Like, remember when, uh, whasser name? Winter? Remember when she threw up a big fuss about breaking away from the Schnee fam as soon as it started to go under? But even she wouldn't have said 'no' if Weiss had asked for her help."

Huh. What he'd originally assumed to be an embossed family portrait of a teenaged Weiss with her parents… isn't actually possible, given the current situation. The mother passed away in Weiss's childhood, didn't she? So… the stiff teenager standing behind her parents is probably Winter, meaning the young child clinging to her mother's dress {erm, combat skirt} would be Weiss. Strangely, Mr. Schnee looks oddly familiar…

If the wall hadn't been magnetized, the family portrait in his hands would have clattered to the floor. As is, it slams back into place with such a loud clang that Reese pauses in her drawling musings.

"Eh? What's up?"

"General Schnee…" Jaune whispers, his throat abruptly dry. "Weiss's dad. Did he used to go by another name?"

"Maybe? I dunno. Why? Recognize him?"

Familiar doesn't even begin to cover it. The embossed metal colors everything a sleet silver, but he'd never forget the messy hair or the glasses or the poker face that never changed or… Monty, the cane. Roman picked up the cane because of him.

"He…" His voice fails him for a moment. There's no way that this girl's father, the Chief Executive Officer of the Schnee Dust Company, could also have been his…

A flash of white. He cringes. There are memories he can't reach, try as he might. He can't recall them, can't reel them in, because the chains that'd once bound them to his consciousness have been shattered. He knows the man in the metal image, but additional information is out of reach. That man had been his…

"Don't be a tease," she whines. "You've got that look on your face."

"What look?"

"The my-life-just-changed-and-I-don't-know-what-to-do-about-it look. This oughta be rich. Spill. Who is General Schnee to you?"

{He's—}

Another bolt of white. This time accompanied by a jolt of pain. He winces, holds his head in his hands. Reese laughs.

"Don't tell me you're getting side effects already?" She shoves an elongated object between his fingers. "Here. Best way to get rid of the hangover is having more, yeah?"

Jaune coughs. The hacking only gets worse as he realizes that the source of the impurities clogging his airways is right underneath his nose. He shoves the mystery 'pen' back at Reese. "What… stop. No. Stop."

"Aw, you're no fun."

Through the haze clouding his mind (or is it his eyes), jumbled memories flash by. "He was our… my tutor. Ozpin."

A beat.

"Nope. Can't say I've heard the name 'Ozpin' before. It's always been General Schnee." Reese peeks over his shoulder at the Schnee family portrait. "Whoa. This is pretty wacky. Is he the jetplane firing out unicorns or the gun with my mother's face?"

He twists his head to ogle at her. "Are you okay?"

Twins streams of smoke blast from her nostrils, just as he breathes in. "I don't know, man. Why is there a cosmic kitty of light sitting on your head?"

He coughs and waves a hand in front his face. It burns the inside of his nostrils and his eyes sees stars and sparks of light. "S… Stop! Put down the pen, Reese, and no one gets hurt."

"Well, would you look at that? Looks like you were right about that light sensor being the key to opening the door." Sure enough, the door at the end of the hall is now open. Reese glances the rickety hairpin-scaffolding propping the six Schnee family portraits at appropriate reflective angles. "Y'know, there probably was an easier way to do this."

"Yeah, probably. But at least my way got rid of the laser obstacle course."

"I'll let you have that, as long as you clean my room and lick the spaces between my toes."

Speechless. Just… speechless. "Wut."

"Yeah, you were concentrating so hard that you pretty much approved of everything I said. Things like did you know I ran over your dog with my hoverboard? and you think your mom will like it if I take her from behind? and wanna be my homecoming boy-toy butler-slave? So tomorrow morning, there better be video evidence of you skinny dipping in the Lake of Zen."

Is he attempting an impression of Firetruck Ruby, or is it getting really hot in here? "No."

"Oh, I see how it is. No point in skinny dipping if you don't have a lady along to appraise the goods, right? Well, if you insist—"

"No."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have assumed. If you ask nicely, I'm sure Bolin would happily join for an evening of festivities."

Because words aren't working, he puts his hand directly over her mouth. He grins triumphantly when she does indeed stop talking; at least, until she licks his hand with gusto. What happens next is mostly reflex with just a dollop of spite: he jerks away, only to rebound just as quickly to give her a playful shove. Maybe he doesn't know his own strength {pffft yeah right} or she suddenly has no sense of balance {more likely}, because she stumbles back a good five feet, gesticulating wildly and intersecting at least ten laser beams.

He's expecting her to scream as blood spurts from ten puncture holes or to silently disintegrate into ashes. He should have foreseen a more Schnee-like touch in the form of a giant red glyph that, guided by the disrupted rays of red light, manifests before Reese. Even with unfocused eyes, she manages to squeak out the beginning of a very rude word before the Doppler Effect blurs the last half as the glyph launches her at speeds that should have required a seatbelt. The front entrance even slides open, just high enough to allow Reese a screaming exit, before slamming back in place.

Huh. She left her 'pen' behind.

He should probably return it to her.

He convinces himself that that's why he picks up the device before making his way to the revealed staircase leading up to, hopefully, Weiss's room.