Chapter 4:

Ren shivered against the gentle breeze robbing him of his body heat. Hugging himself tightly, he tried to shake off the ice that still clung to him. He clenched his jaw shut to keep it from clattering.

"Weiss, I told you!" Yang scolded. "He's turning blue!"

"Says the firecracker that almost blew us all up!" Weiss sassed, wiping the soot off her face. She stomped and threw her fists down in aggravation. "Next time when I tell you to be careful, at least make an effort!"

It was true. Yang had been a little too reckless in freeing Ren from his icy prison. He didn't mind that part so much, though. Maybe she would distract Weiss long enough for him to-

"Ren, get back here!"

'Crap. . . ' With a defeated sigh he hung his head and his shoulders slumped as he slowly shuffled back to the group.

Jaune scooted over with a childish grin. "Hey, Ren. I thought that while everyone was exchanging 'I told you so's-"

"Sh-sh-sh-shut up, J-j-jaune!" He clattered, shooting daggers at the boy who backed off with a mischievous laugh. Pyrrha shook her head and rolled her eyes at her two teammates.

"I bet that's what the Grinch looks like." Blake joked, with Yang, Ruby and Jaune giggling behind her.

'Why me?' Ren rolled his eyes and looked away, hoping he wouldn't have to take any more abuse.

"Hey! That's enough fooling around." Weiss scolded. "You guys are as unfocused as a school of brain dead goldfish!"

"Hey, Mr. Bubbles takes offense to that!" Jaune retorted.

Pyrrha elbowed him, "Your pet fish isn't brain dead, Jaune."

"Oh."

"I said enough!" Finally everyone got the hint and shut up. "Ren, start talking." She looked at the freezing warrior. "You weren't hoping that I'd forget, were you?"

"N-n-n-not in th-the s-s-sl-slight-t-test."

Weiss slumped her shoulders and facepalmed as Yang popped over her shoulder and said, "I told you so."

Ren was grateful for the few precious minutes it took to speak coherently again. It gave him a chance to calm his nerves, but he was concerned that they were wasting too much time. There hadn't been any sign of Nora since she escaped the dormitory.

He looked at Weiss, who stood with her arms crossed, impatiently drumming her fingers. She returned his gaze with a raised eyebrow. 'Now or never.' Ren reluctantly cleared his throat. He was still shivering, but not as badly as before. "Nora. . . she, well. . ." he hesitated, disliking that he was being forced to betray something so personal to his best friend.

"Well?" Weiss impatiently pried.

He sighed. "Nora has vivid hallucinations. They started about ten years ago." He didn't like the way Weiss' eyes narrowed, but he continued. "Her medication keeps her from having them . . . when she remembers to take it."

"So that empty pill bottle you found?" Blake inquired.

"She ran out. She was supposed to go to the medical center to get more."

"Ren," Ruby asked. "How bad can these hallucinations get?"

He took a deep breath, ready to get to the worst of it. "When the hallucinations start, she is able to reason against them, but as she gets worse and they become more frequent, it becomes harder to rationalize what is real and what isn't. Eventually, they become so overwhelming that she completely loses touch with reality. That's when she becomes irrationally paranoid, as you've seen."

"Not to mention violent." Yang added.

"No," Ren corrected with a shake of his head, eager to dispel the notion that she was just blindly smashing things. "She'll only attack when she feels threatened. Right now, she's only trying to escape whatever she thinks is after her."

Shuffling his numb fingers through his jacket pocket, Ren dug the small bow he'd retrieved from the dormitory. He opened it and tapped its contents out, showing everyone the small, glass syringe inside. It was about the size of a pen. A plastic cap covered the small needle. "It should knock her out, but might take a few minutes to take full effect. After she passes out, we need get her to the hospital. I've only got one of these, so if we screw up, we won't get a second chance."

"Well," Weiss sneered. "If that psychopath keeps-"

"Don't call her that!" Ren snapped, cutting off whatever nonsense Weiss was about to say.

"Why not? That's exactly what she is!" Weiss argued. Ren narrowed his eyes at her, daring her to continue.

She crossed her arms in front of her and took the dare. "What would you rather I call her? A maniac? A lunatic?"

"You hardly know anything about her!" Ren growled.

"You don't need to know much to figure out that she's a complete schitzo! I just knew something was off about her when we first met. They have a special place for people like her, and it's not Beacon!"

"Is that all you think of her? That she doesn't belong here because she's different from you?"

She took a step toward him, stomping her foot into the ground. She was so close he could feel her icy breath on his face. "She doesn't belong here because she's a threat to society!"

"People like you are far more dangerous to society than Nora ever will be!" He fumed, jerking his pointed finger toward her.

"Guys, that's enough!" Blake tried to interject, but Weiss shoved her away.

"How dare you! Do you have any idea who you're talking to?"

"A narcissistic shrew who instinctively scorns anyone remotely different from you."

She took a step back at the exaggeration and slightly tilted her head back, maintaining her icy glare. "Well, at least I have enough self-control to not start smashing everything that moves whenever something pushes me over the edge." She leaned towards him. "And you're lucky for that, or I'd be ripping you apart."

"Do you think you can imagine what's going through her head? She isn't aware of what's going on, and it's not her fault!"

"Hey," Yang said, stepping between the two and pushing them apart, "both of you cut it out!"

"You have some nerve!" Weiss spat from behind Yang. "I'm just trying to help and you-"

"If you're trying to help, you're doing a poor job of it." Ren growled.

"Well maybe if you weren't such a stubborn pain in the ass we might actually be able to get something done!"

"You're saying this is my fault?" He took a step forward, but Jaune grabbed his arm to hold him back.

"You're being ridiculous!"

Shoving Jaune off him, Ren growled, "Perhaps I am for expecting any of you to understand." He turned about and stormed away.

"Get back here you- Hey!" Weiss squeaked as Yang lifted her off the ground.

"Let him go, Ice Queen." Yang said as she put the grumbling Weiss down.

"That could have gone better." Blake mused. "Now what?"

"Uhh," Ruby ungracefully interjected. "How about we split up? I'll go with Weiss to Beacon Tower. Yang, you and Blake take the dining hall. Jaune and Pyrrha, catch up to Ren, and when he's ready, head for the lecture hall. If anyone finds out where Nora is, alert the other two groups. Then we'll regroup and go after her."

Blake and Yang exchanged glances and were off, while Ruby and Weiss headed in the opposite direction.

Once the others were gone, Jaune took a deep breath. "Think he hates us?"

"One way to find out." Pyrrha answered as she began to walk in the direction Ren disappeared to with Jaune close behind.

Ren didn't make it far. Slumped against a knobby tree trunk in the far corner of the garden, he sat hugging his shoulders with his head hung. His eyes started to sting as memories of growing up with Nora flooded his head.

"Hey," Pyrrha called from the edge of the garden. Ren looked up to see his teammates approach. "Are you okay?" When they reached him, they each took a seat on the ground next to each other.

With a sigh, he lowered his head again and said "I'm fine." But with his choked pitch, he didn't sound it, and he knew it.

"Ren, we know this is hard for you." Pyrrha said. "She'll be okay."

He swallowed the lump in his throat and shook his head. "Right now, she's trapped in a nightmare and she can't get out on her own. If we can't help her, it's just going to keep getting worse until she. . ." His voice choked off. Clutching himself tighter, he didn't realize until now that he was shaking. 'Keep it together' he told himself. 'This isn't the Ren they're supposed to know.'

"Until she what?" Pyrrha quietly asked. "Ren, what's going to happen?"

He took a deep breath to try and steady his nerves. They were her teammates, too. They cared about her, and they deserved to know. "When she was first admitted to the hospital psych ward ten years ago, she was like this for three days. She couldn't sleep, and she didn't eat at all. Rather than tiring out, she kept getting more restless.

"By the third day she became extremely aggressive and incoherent. She had attacked one of her caretakers, managed to get out of her room, and nearly broke through the locked door that separated the psych ward from the rest of the hospital. In order to protect her, the other patients, and the medical staff, she had to be restrained, but that caused her to panic, and she went into respiratory arrest."

"What?" Jaune asked. "Wait, what does that mean?"

"The hallucinations serve as a trigger for a condition known as excited delirium, which can cause sudden death by respiratory failure, hyperthermia, or cardiac arrest. If we screw up. . . " His voice was trembling. Closing his eyes, he grabbed his left elbow with his right hand.

"Ren." Pyrrha asked, "You were there. Weren't you?"

Taking a deep breath, he paused a moment before pushing himself up off the ground. "We're wasting time."

As he walked away, Jaune and Pyrrha exchanged a quick, worried glance before following behind.