"Weiss Schnee. Pyrrha Nikos. Lie Ren. Nora Valkyrie. The four of you retrieved the white rook pieces. For the next four years, you will work together as Team SPRN - Spring," the Headmaster declared, "Led by Weiss Schnee."

The audience, composed of the other successful students and a number of faculty cheered as the newly appointed Team SPRN smiled.

"And finally," Ozpin continued, "Ruby Rose. Jaune Arc. Yang Xiao Long. Blake Belladonna."

Jaune, with his teammates, stepped forward.

"The four of you retrieved the black knight pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team RAYB - Rainbow."

The crowd cheered for them, and Jaune looked at Ruby. She was smiling, eyes shining in the soft light, and he couldn't help but smile with her.

"Led by," he paused, "Ruby Rose!"

The girl in question's mouth fell open, surprise etched on her face. Surprised enough, in fact, that she barely reacted when Yang pulled her into a tight hold, declaring, "I'm so proud of you!"

Jaune smiled wider and joined the crowd's applause. He couldn't think of anyone more deserving of the role.

"Congratulations Partner!" he said after the clapping had subsided enough that speech was audible.

Ruby beamed. "Thanks Jaune. I'll make sure to do my best!"

"Mister Arc," Professor Ozpin greeted from beside him, startling him mildly. He hadn't heard the man approach. "Would you please accompany me to my office? There is something I wish to discuss with you."

Oh god, did he know about his transcripts? Was his dream going to be snatched away just as it came into reach?

"Don't worry, Miss Rose," the Headmaster assured his partner as she went to protest, "He's not in any kind of trouble. At least, I hope he's not."

"No sir," he answered quickly.

The man smiled. "Then there will be no issues. Please, follow me Mister Arc. We will not be gone for long."

He followed the man in silence, just a couple steps behind, through the corridors of Beacon. After a few minutes, they reached the elevator, and rode up it with some quiet, and if he was being honest, rather bad jazz music playing.

The doors to the elevator slid open smoothly, revealing the circular room Ozpin used as his office. A great collection of gears and cogs spun both above him in the air, and below the smooth glass floor beneath his feet.

The Professor walked across the room, his footsteps echoing off the curved walls.

Ozpin stepped around his desk, and sat in his large chair, gesturing to one of the two seats in front of his desk, which Jaune took.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I asked you here Mister Arc, so allow me to satiate your curiosity. I wanted to ask you some questions regarding your performance during the initiation. And don't worry, you performed well and completed the assigned tasks, earning your place here just as much as every other student within these walls. No, what I wanted to ask about was this."

Ozpin spun his holo-monitor around, revealing footage taken from camera 40C. It showed his team, along with Weiss and Pyrrha, standing at the temple. It was from shortly before Nora and Ren had arrived.

He saw himself point into the forest, and a moment later, Nora was flung onto the screen. Jaune spoke silently on the screen, the other people around drew their weapons, and a few seconds later Ren bolted out of the tree line, the massive Deathstalker hot on his tail.

"You knew they were coming," Ozpin said.

He nodded.

"A… Semblance, perhaps? Of course, if you don't want to reveal the nature of it, that is completely within your right. We would like to know what it is so we may improve your learning experience while you are a student of my institution, and assist you with possible… negative side-effects of your Semblance. Of course, the nature of your Semblance would not be shared with anyone outside of Beacon personnel without your express permission," Ozpin offered.

So he had seen what happened after his Aura was unlocked.

The offer was tempting, but the capabilities of his Semblance could bring about a great deal of danger, should the wrong people learn of it.

What was he thinking? This was the Headmaster of Beacon Academy, not some shady dude on the street. The possible value of Ozpin's offer outweighed any lingering trust issues he had.

"My Semblance," he began carefully, "seems to be technology manipulation."

"Seems to be?" Ozpin questioned.

"I've only had it for a few hours; I don't know its full capabilities yet. But you already knew that, didn't you?"

Ozpin smiled, ignoring his query. "What capabilities are you aware of?"

"Well, I can tap into a camera to see what it sees, in fact, I can do that with a whole network of cameras. I can control a device's function, to some degree; I haven't had time to test just how much I can do. I can freely access the CCT, and I can browse files at will on a computer system."

Ozpin sat quietly for a moment, absorbing what he had said.

"You say you can view what a network of cameras are recording. Is that simultaneously? How do you process all the information?"

"Yes, simultaneously. I can sort of… filter it. I can push it to the back of my mind, like you might do with background noise. It means it doesn't affect my normal perception, but it's easy to notice when something changes."

"I see," Ozpin said, before he opened one of the draws in his desk, and extracted a scroll, which he laid on the table. It was open, but the display was off. "You say you can control the functions of a device. Can you turn this on?"

Jaune probed at the device, easily switched it on, pushed around the lock screen with biometric data he pulled from the main drive and opened the notes app, where he wrote out the word 'Hello!' in large, bold font.

Ozpin looked at the device, blinked, then looked back at him.

"This scroll was locked. How did you get around it?" he asked.

"Huh? Oh, I just got the biometric data from the drive and used that to unlock it," he answered.

"You used the information it was checking against to unlock it?"

"Yeah, exactly."

Ozpin took a slow breath. "I see. Thank you for the information Mister Arc. You seem to have been gifted with a very powerful Semblance, and I hope that you will continue to further your understanding of its capabilities. You are dismissed. You may return to your dorm and get to know your new team," he said with a kind smile.

"Thank you, sir," he returned. "Um, where is my dorm?"

Ozpin smiled again. "All student information is stored on our servers for the convenience of our teaching staff."

Jaune blinked. The Headmaster was telling him to break into their servers? Well, he wasn't going to turn down the offer, especially given what amounted to express permission from the Headmaster. "I see. Goodbye sir," he said, turning on his heel and walking back to the elevator.

The boy stepped into the elevator and the doors closed automatically before he was taken away from Ozpin's office.

Ozpin looked at the scroll, watching the cursor slowly blink at him as he considered the great deal of dangerous information that had just been presented to him.

He sighed deeply as the screen dimmed, then picked it up before it could shut itself off. He navigated through the device and called the man he knew would pick up.

"Oz," the man drawled. He sounded drunk, something not entirely surprising, "Whadda you want? I'm nearly caught up with-"

"Qrow," he interrupted, "I need you back at Beacon as soon as possible."

"Back at Beacon?" he questioned, "What's goin' on over there?"

"I'll tell you once you arrive, and we can speak more openly."

"Huh? Oz, this is a secure-"

"I am aware," he interrupted again.

There was a long pause. "I see." A long sigh. "I can be there in three days, two, if I push it."

"I'll see you in two days then."

The man on the other end of the line groaned. "Right. See you then Oz," he said, then hung up, leaving the dial tone beeping in Ozpin's ear.

He let it fall, then carefully placed it back in the draw he'd taken it from, reaching for his coffee with his left hand, only to find nothing but air.

Right. He had forgotten that Glynda forbade him from having anymore after he had tried to sneak some past her for the team announcements. He let out another deep sigh, drumming his fingers against the desk, and pressed a button to his right.

The side door opened within a minute.

"Sir?" his assistant spoke.

"Glynda. I need you to keep a close eye on Mister Arc for the next couple of days," he instructed.

"I told you that boy's transcripts were too good to be true!" she declared, "I'll get on it right away sir."

He decided against correcting the motive of his observation as she turned around and stepped into the elevator again. After all, the one with the keenest eyes is the one most suspicious.

It was quite clear his transcripts were falsified, and he had originally planned to interrogate the boy on where he had acquired them, provided he survived initiation, but his displays had proven him a valuable tactician with a powerful Semblance. He would do well at Beacon.

At least, if he could stop Salem from getting to him.

The harsh, loud sound of a whistle broke through his warm and pleasant sleep.

"Gooood morning Team Rainbow!" Ruby shouted at much-too-early o'clock in the morning.

"Is there something wrong with you?" Blake asked tiredly.

"Many things," Yang affirmed with a yawn.

Ruby pouted at the accusation and blew her whistle again in retaliation.

Yang groaned at the onslaught of noise. "What time is it?" she asked blearily.

"6:43," Jaune answered with a yawn. "Too early."

"Incorrect!" Ruby claimed, "It's just enough time for our team's first mission!"

"Which is?" Yang asked.

"Decorating!" she declared, lifting a large box of clothing, books, writing utensils, and an assortment of other random trinkets.

"Huh?" Jaune asked intelligently.

Yang sighed. "We still have to unpack," she answered.

They all got out of their beds and spent the next hour unpacking all of their stuff, and one by one, ducking into the bathroom to change into their uniforms. He had offered to wait outside whilst the girls changed, but Ruby had quickly refuted that, and proposed the bathroom solution, which they had all agreed upon.

The girls' uniform consisted of a small red ribbon tie around the neck, a white dress shirt covered with a tan vest, all under a black jacket with gold trim, along with a red plaid skirt and stockings and shoes of choice.

His own attire was similar, though he sported black pants instead of a skirt, a necktie instead of ribbon, and his vest was a dark blue instead of tan.

"There seems to be a problem with this scenario," Blake said with a hint of amusement, as she emerged from the bathroom, now fully dressed and prepared for both the day, and the team's diemma.

In their haste, the beds had all been moved into a pile in the middle of the room so they would have room for their belongings to go in. There was now a distinct lack of space for the beds to return to their original positions.

"It would be pretty cramped," Jaune agreed.

Yang tilted her head. "We could ditch some of our stuff," she suggested.

"Or we could ditch our beds," Ruby mused quietly, her face lighting up as she gasped, "and replace them with bunk-beds!"

"That seems… dangerous," Blake hedged.

"And super awesome!" Yang countered with a grin.

"It would be really efficient," he agreed tentatively.

"I suppose it would," Blake agreed cautiously.

"New mission Team Rainbow! Let's do it!" Ruby called.

Another hour passed when they stepped back to admire their handiwork.

He would admit, it looked precarious, but he was confident in its stability.

On the left, his bed lay at the bottom, while above, Ruby's bed sat suspended by a multitude of ropes, attached to steel hooks in the ceiling, and above that hovered a white blanket, draped over the bed, not unlike a tent.

On the right was Blake's bed, with numerous books stacked on each bedpost, upon which Yang's bed stood. They hadn't had enough rope to suspend Yang's bed, so the books provided the majority of the support, while the ropes added stability.

He had had to dart across to the other side of the room numerous times to correct what could have been fatal errors in the build's stability and strength, but it was now complete, and the floor space had been drastically increased.

"Objective complete!" Ruby cheered, before she jumped up and snagged a notebook and pencil from behind her pillow. "Now, the next order of business is," she grimaced, "classes. We have a few classes together today. At nine, we've got to be-"

Wait. "At nine?" he interrupted.

"Uhh…"

"Five minutes from now?"

Ruby blinked. "We're gonna be LATE!" she cried, bolting past them and yanking the door open. "Go go go!" she cried, waving her arm at the open passage desperately.

Team RAYB slipped into their seats at the front of the class moments before the professor walked into the room.

The man was clearly past his prime but maintained a full head of grey hair and an equally full (and also grey) mustache. The man was shorter than Jaune was, but not significantly shorter than average, though what he lacked in height was made up significantly by width.

"Monsters!" the man shouted, slapping his hands down on the lectern at the head of the class, shaking the small atlas beside him and causing it to slip. With an impressive display of dexterity, he caught the globe and righted it, and continued his introduction without pause.

"Demons! Prowlers of the night!"

Behind him was a series of boards, each depicting a detailed anatomical sketch of various species of Grimm, along with densely packed scrawled notes. In order, there was a King Taiju, then a Deathstalker, followed by a Beowolf, a Boarbatusk, and finally, a Nevermore.

"Yes," the man smirked, "the creatures of Grimm have many names, but I merely refer to them as prey. Ha ha!"

His meager attempt at humour was met with utter silence, but he moved on quickly, clearing his throat before he began once more.

"And you shall too, upon graduating from this prestigious academy! You may call me Professor Port, and I shall be your Grimm Studies professor during your stay at Beacon. Now, as I was saying, Vale, along with the other three kingdoms, are safe havens in an otherwise treacherous world! Our planet is absolutely teeming with creatures that would love nothing more than to rip you to pieces." He sucked in a breath.

"That's where we come in," he said resolutely, casting a hard gaze over the audience. "As Huntsmen and Huntresses, it is our sworn duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves. That," he paused, "is what you are training to become."

The serious atmosphere dissipated, replaced with one much more jovial, like when he had first arrived. "But first, a story. A tale of a young man: me! When I was a boy…"

The lesson quickly devolved into what at first seemed to be an entirely absurd and severely exaggerated narrative of the Professor's early life, which to be fair, it was, but it was also filled with dozens of little tidbits of information about the Grimm he'd faced that Jaune scribbled hastily into a notebook.

Beowolves
- strong hearing + smell, bad eyesight
- BIG blindspot from back
- fast but weak - no armour

If not for the actually useful information, dying of boredom might have actually been a concern.

"-not wanting to draw the entire pack's wrath, I caught the attention of a younger wolf and used its pride to draw it away. In the end, it was no match for my sheer tenacity, and my dastardly trap and I returned to the village with the beast in captivity and my head held high, celebrated as a hero!"

Mercifully Port's 'lecture' had seemingly come to an end, and with it a few more useful notes.

- pack behaviour
- Alpha directs pack
- young = eager to impress
- easy to lure

He glanced at his textbook, and while thick and detailed, did not contain nearly the quality of information that Port's narrative did. Jaune knew that he was smarter than most, but he had no doubt that he'd still struggle to remember so many details.

His teammates also seemed to struggle maintaining . Blake seemed to at least be trying, but Yang had dozed off, and Ruby was doodling on a piece of scrap paper. Not that he blamed them, Port was very boring, but he worried that they wouldn't have information that could save their lives in the future.

There had to be an easier way that wouldn't rely on feeble human memory. Maybe a digital encyclopedia? No, who would take the time to find the correct Grimm, read through the information, and develop a strategy, all while being attacked? And what if it was a civilian that didn't know the names of the species?

Image recognition. That could work. Take a photo, and it takes you to the correct entry. Maybe with different information filters based on previous knowledge? It was something to consider. But it wouldn't get anywhere without the image recognition software, and if he wanted that to be accurate, it'd need a lot of practice.

Well, why not use Atlas' secret little project? HighThought, the most powerful AI on Remnant.

Jaune took a breath, and moved his focus from the lesson to the flittering signals surrounding him. He could feel the CCT all around him, all-encompassing and buzzing with endless information.

He pushed into the CCT entirely, moving through it effortlessly, unrestrained by normal physical barriers. It was utterly freeing, but dangerous. He could tell that it would be all too easy to get lost here, within the boundless knowledge, and never be able to return to his flesh and blood human body. Jaune made sure to keep his goal at the forefront of his mind: infiltrating the HighThought servers and using it to create the best damn image recognition software the world had ever seen.

Making it to Atlas servers was as easy as taking a step, though now he was presented with a large hurdle. HighThought was kept on a closed intranet and had no access to the outside web, and so the outside web had no access to HighThought.

This would be an impassable barrier for most, as in order to gain use of HighThought, this meant they'd have to do so physically, and with Atlas' paranoia, countless guards, and heavily armoured robotic security, it would essentially be suicide.

However, as Jaune was already aware, he wasn't bound to most hardware restrictions. If he could directly access a camera's feed without any form of input device, or completely circumnavigate a locking mechanism on an encrypted drive, he didn't believe that this lack of direct access would actually prevent him from doing anything.

He soon found his presumption to be correct.

Atlas had been incredibly careful to prevent anyone from accessing their super-powerful AI. No external CCT connections, no outside technology, specially engineered Scrolls handed to each member of personnel whenever they entered the secure facility that were incapable of accessing the CCT; Atlas had thought this through. However, even though the special Scrolls couldn't connect to the web, they hadn't physically prevented them from brushing against the CCT, and that was all Jaune needed.

Once he had gotten into the little device, he forced open the software failsafes and established a proper connection back to himself through the CCT, he was able to bounce to a nearby computer station through the intranet, then jump between stations until he found one with administrator credentials.

From there, he accessed HighThought.

It was strangely empty, a silent void in the otherwise frantic system. Until, that is, he issued a command. Then, from the empty expanse, swelled the densest and most potent collection of data he had ever witnessed.

While sure, there were some massive databases owned and run by mega-corporations in the tech industry, they couldn't even begin to compare to HighThought, as while they may have a greater quantity of information total, HighThought ran every single piece of information it possessed simultaneously.

Then, he merged himself with HighThought, and he surpassed everything. He was, right now, without limit.

But now wasn't the time to be distracted. His task still awaited him, and he wouldn't have long to finish it and escape without being detected. He, with HighThought, working in instantaneous harmony, created the framework for the recognition software, then he began finding pictures of Grimm, cataloging them as he went, deferring to his digital textbook on the different species.

Now, with ready access to what he needed, he began testing.

Hundreds of photos.

Thousands.

Millions.

A billion.

He had completed one billion, sixty-five million, four-hundred twenty-seven thousand, three-hundred twelve, (and was halfway through the next) when he became aware that a technician was about to engage with HighThought.

Jaune quickly routed the now (in great excess of) ninety-nine percent accurate software through his hijacked scroll to an empty server he had found, erased everything pertaining to him from HighThought's RAM and physical memory, wiped the usage logs from the time of his entry until now, restored the CCT blocking software within the Scroll, and removed all signs of his tampering.

And then, he left, and Atlas was none the wiser.

As he looked over his handiwork, carefully analysing the code, he experienced a strange phenomenon. All of a sudden, it vanished. All of a sudden, he was no longer within the CCT, but back within his body, a finger jabbing into his arm.

He blinked. It felt slow.

"You okay?" Ruby whispered from his side, "You look like you're spacing out… Are you using your Semblance again?"

She was perceptive.

"You're really clever, huh? Yeah, I was just playing around with it. Not like I'm missing much, right?" he whispered back.

She averted her eyes, giggling quietly, cheeks tinting. Her eyes returned to his, and she grinned.

"We can make it through this torture! I believe in us!"

He couldn't help but smile with her.

It was another busy day today. There seemed to be more paperwork on his desk with each passing week.

The intercom to his left sounded.

He paused in his work and reached across to activate the small device.

"Yes Violet?" he asked his receptionist.

"Doctor Polendina and one of his Techs are here to see you sir. He says it is extremely urgent," the woman responded curtly.

He took a breath and pushed the tiredness from his face before responding. It wouldn't do for the General of the Atlas military to look weak. "Send them in."

"At once sir."

The door to his office made a quiet click, and Polendina, along with a young Tech, pushed into the room.

He noted that while the Tech looked incredibly nervous, Doctor Polendina looked positively ecstatic.

"Polendina. What's so urgent?" he asked.

The old doctor pushed his Tech forward. "Tell him what you told me," he instructed.

The man gulped, before speaking. "Sir, we have detected that an external system breached the Primary Database and had full access to all our files."

Was this some kind of joke?

"The Primary Database is on a closed network," he said factually, "How exactly could an external system access something it is in no way connected to?"

"That's the beauty of it!" Doctor Polendina said, stepping past his tech. "From what we've deduced, the System accessed it through scrolls! Even when locked out from accessing it, the scrolls still possess the hardware to do so! The System forced a connection to one of the scrolls in the building through the CCT, and used them to access and control the terminals with high-frequency magnetic waves to establish an external connection!"

By the Brothers.

"What about our firewalls? Surely HighThought slowed it down," he reasoned.

"Well sir," the Tech began, "the System had access to every terminal in the Primary Database. It could have pulled administrator credentials from any number of devices."

"Do we know what it was doing?" he asked, desperation creeping into his voice.

"Yessir. It went straight to HighThought; avoided all other data entirely, actually," the Tech answered.

"It didn't touch our files? What did it do with HighThought?" He was worried about what the intruder wanted with the most powerful AI on all of Remnant.

"We believe it used it to create some form of incredibly accurate recognition software through a machine-learning-based sub-system. It then exported the sub-system, wiped the data from HighThought, and returned control to us."

"How do we know that that's what it was doing if they wiped the data?"

"While it was working, HighThought saved the creation shell of the sub-system to physical memory. After we discovered what the System had done, we found the drives, and managed to recover enough of the information to determine what it had been doing."

Ironwood felt like he was about to have an aneurysm.

"And why the hell are you grinning?" he barked at Polendina.

"A human couldn't have done this. On the drives, we also managed to recover some of the sub-systems results. The System presented the sub-system with files, and the sub-system tried to identify the contents. Over the span of 13.436 seconds, the sub-system was presented with over a billion files and finished with a margin of error of only 0.54 times ten to the negative four percent. That's a 1 in 1.85 million failure rate. But the thing is, most of these files were pulled from search engines, which means that the System had to process and identify all of them! It's an AI!"

An AI? An AI was able to access the most secure network on Remnant?

"How powerful is it?" he asked.

"Our calculations are putting the lower bounds at 1.7 petabytes. It's at a similar scale to the entirety of a human brain. It's an AI that has, at the very least, achieved a Theory of Mind, and is quite possibly self-aware!"

"If it's so powerful, why did it need to use HighThought?" he asked.

"Well," the Tech began, "we believe that whoever created this AI had the forethought to prevent it from creating its own AI. If we can create an AI that is smarter than us, then that AI could create an AI smarter than it, which could in turn make one even smarter, and so on and so on until all organic life is entirely obsolete."

Ironwood stopped for a moment. He thought, then he spoke.

"You." He pointed at the Tech. "What's your name?"

"Watts, sir. Teal Watts."

He reached over to his intercom and activated it.

"Violet," he began, "Double the funding for the Polendina Project, and appoint Technician Teal Watts under Doctor Polendina as the head of the new 'Theory of Mind' team. Technician Watts will send you a document co-signed by himself and Doctor Polendina with the nature and members of this team within 72 hours for myself to review."

"Understood sir."

He turned back to the pair.

"Technician Watts, you are dismissed from all your current obligations, and your new express purpose is to create an AI that achieves Theory of Mind. You are to collect whichever personnel you believe will help you complete this purpose. So long as Doctor Polendina agrees with your choice, they will be appointed under you within the week. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir!"

"Good. You begin now. Dismissed."

The young technician saluted, turned on his heel, and strode out of his office, leaving him with the Doctor.

"And you are to get it awake as so-"

"Her."

He took a long breath. "You are to get her awake as soon as possible, and have her ready for the field. I want her fully operational and tested at least a month before the beginning of the festival."

The older man grinned. "Yes sir."

Ironwood sighed heavily as the Doctor left his office. It seemed the paperwork was increasing every minute.

Huzzah! Done! Told you it wouldn't take me 3 months this time; didn't even take half that!

Man, this chapter was hints, hints, hints! So many! Also threw in a couple references! I did last chapter too: one of you caught the Titanfall 2 one, but no one saw the other one (I'll let you guys try figure it out; it's pretty obscure).

I'm happy with this chapter, both the first section, and the last section, I had written out for the previous chapter, but obviously, it would have made it hella long. Hope you guys don't mind the shorter chapters.

But yeah, the plot divergences really start building from now on, and I've got a lot of ideas, and I've already started putting in some subtle foreshadowing. What do you guys think is gonna change?

See you all next time!

Yours sincerely, H3ctic.