𝐈𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 (English)

Chapter 45

Jaune had expected he'd be called to the headmaster's office the morning after the dream to continue the story – or for Ozpin to admit it was all a dream-ramble and none of it was real – but Ozpin had practically withdrawn from the public eye. Important meetings about the Vytal Festival, Miss Goodwitch had told the student body when she took over some of his duties. Given it only came around to Vale once every eight years, and how big a deal it was, it made sense he'd be up to his neck in work.

Team JNPR were mostly pleased he'd managed to go a night without upsetting anyone or getting himself arrested (or shot). He'd told them he had dreamed with Ozpin, but not what, and they thankfully accepted that as private matters between Ozpin and Jaune. It wasn't like they really wanted to know what went on in an old man's head anyway.

The stranger thing was that Weiss had come back and wasn't hatefully glaring at or avoiding him. Had Winter not told her after all? He'd been so sure she would. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he didn't bring it up and happily let life continue as it always had, bringing them unerringly closer to the Vytal Festival.

Which, as one might expect, took to casually infiltrating people's dreams.

/-/

"Whooooo!"

"Wahey!"

"Dance! Dance!"

Jaune closed his eyes and summoned a long coat, tossing it to a naked Velvet Scarlatina clutching herself in the middle of Amity Arena. The faunus didn't question why he was there toward the end of her fight when her clothes had been shredded off by an enemy's attack; she was much too grateful for the coat she wrapped around her body as she sank to her knees and whimpered.

"It'll be okay," said Jaune, creaking one eye open and then the other when he saw she was decent. This was the kind of thing he wanted to avoid seeing, even if a part of him would have disagreed with that notion. "These... uh... accidents happen during fights. I'm sure no one will remember it."

Because it wasn't real.

"I'm going to be all over the internet!" Velvet wailed. "My life is over!"

Jaune groaned as she began weeping over-dramatically. Well, it was overly dramatic from his point of view but probably less so from hers. This was the first "naked at Amity" dream he'd had tonight, but not the first dream related to Amity or the Vytal Festival. Cardin had seen his teammates killed due to his own weakness, a transfer from Vacuo had proposed to his teammate and girlfriend after winning their fight and been publicly rejected, and Ruby had shown up to the wrong Amity Colosseum and missed her team's fight!

There was only one Amity Colosseum, obviously, but it was still so very Ruby to imagine messing up that bad. He'd done his best to tweak the dreams here and there, but he wanted to be subtle, and his past interaction with Ironwood had made him leery of influencing people directly. Miss Goodwitch had spent all of today and the day before looking at him oddly as well. Was even she starting to think he was invading her dreams? It was all too much to want to expose himself to Velvet.

So, a little creativity was required.

With a flex of his aura, Jaune suddenly had a pink and yellow polka-dotted Goliath crashing through one of the stands and roaring, except that its voice came out shrill like a mouse. Velvet gasped and covered her mouth, somehow still afraid of the childish thing. Frowning, Jaune willed it to trip, stumbling on the grass and hitting the floor face first. Its tusks flew off and exploded into wrapped candy like it was a ten-metre tall pinata.

"W—What...?" Velvet stammered.

"I've got this!" shouted Coco, dashing forward as an illusion of sorts under his control. He had Coco slam a foot down and bring her minigun forward. "Eat this!"