At the Einzbern Castle, Cinder works on a laptop while Archer glares at her. He says she has some nerve calling his idea on BB's origin stupid, since her saying BB is an android is equally stupid. Chloe walks up and asks what they are talking about. Archer tries to get her to leave, but Cinder says it doesn't matter if she knows, so Archer makes Chloe promise not to tell anyone. He tells her they met someone named BB who looks and sounds like his old friend Sakura.
Cinder says she hacked into Atlas' database and shows them images of two girls named April Cotton and Penny Polendina. They look identical, but April has been dead for 10 years. She then shows them a video of Penny fighting members of the White Fang at a dock. While her abilities wouldn't be unusual for Chaldea Academy, they are very advanced for someone from Atlas Academy. She's looked up Penny and BB's past and found nothing. She then found a file called "Project: A.I." with a list of several names. Names in red are failures and names in green are successes. They read over the names and find April Cotton in green with PP next to it. Archer's face falls when he finds Sakura Matou's name in green with BB next to it. He sees some more video files and asks about them, but Cinder says they need a password, and if you try to open them without the password, the file gets deleted. It would be easier to crack this if they were in Vale. Chloe gets excited and says they can have a road trip, but Archer points out Vale is too far away, so people would notice if they were gone. Cinder says she knows someone in Vale who could help them. Archer says he needs time to process this and leaves to make snacks, and asks them not to tell Ishtar (he corrects himself and calls her Rin) about this. Chloe asks Cinder if she was trying to impress Archer with her hacking skills, but she says she was entertaining herself. She calls Roman Torchwick on her scroll and says she needs a favor.
Weiss walks through a courtyard and finds Semiramis drinking tea. She says she read the files the teacher gave her, but they didn't help much. Semiramis says perhaps they should get to the root of her fear of skeletons. Shakespeare walks up, holding a book, and says perhaps he can help. Semiramis gets annoyed and tells him to get lost, but he says he genuinely wants to help. He can help Weiss find the root of her fears with his Noble Phantasm, "First Folio, When the Curtain Rises, the Applause Shall Be As Ten Thousand Thunders". It makes people relive their memories. Semiramis gets angry and warns Weiss that his Noble Phantasm can leave people mentally broken. Weiss says she is willing to take the risk, and tells Shakespeare to stop as soon as she says so.
He opens his book and the pages fly out and surround Weiss. She finds herself in an unfamiliar place in a large crowd. She passes right through them. Shakespeare appears and reminds her that this is an illusion of her memories. She just has to remember where and when this happened. She looks around and finds this is near the entrance to a Dust mine. Nearby is a stage with her father Jacques Schnee making a speech. He looks younger. Shakespeare looks through his book and says this was twelve years ago. Jacques was trying to defend his decision to use Faunus as labor and cut safety measures. Weiss gets angry and says her father treated Faunus workers as disposable. Jacques starts talking, but no sound comes out. Shakespeare reminds her this is her memory. She doesn't remember what her father was saying. He suggests they find the younger her.
Weiss starts to feel a headache and hears an explosion, but turns and finds her younger self being attended by the limo driver. Her younger self plays with a toy knight. She tells Shakespeare that the toy was a gift from her sister Winter. She's starting to remember this day. The limo driver took a nap, then she lost the knight's sword and tried to look for it. Her younger self starts looking for the sword and wanders off. Weiss feels another headache and tastes something foul. She asks what is happening to her, and Shakespeare says they are getting closer to the event of her trauma. Will it break her or will she come out of this stronger?
Her younger self wanders into the mine and Weiss curses her as a fool, wondering why she thought the sword ended up there. She feels another headache and sees a black skull. She screams they have to stop her and they chase her younger self. Her younger self summons an ice cube that glows in the dark, but she drops her toy. Weiss tries to pull her younger self away, but her hands go right through her. Her younger self retrieves the toy, but finds a skeleton, half buried in Fire Dust crystals and with a mine cart on his leg. Shakespeare examines the skeleton and says it belonged to a bat Faunus, prized for their adaptations to the dark. Weiss sadly deduces that the cart overturned and trapped him before the impact ignited the Fire Dust. It would not have happened if Jacques had kept up the safety measures. Shakespeare asks if she wants him to stop but she says she will see it through.
Her younger self backs away, but then foolishly grabs a refined fire dust crystal. It ignites and detonates the skeleton. It is reduced to ashes which cover her, causing her to scream, which makes some of the ashes get into her nose and mouth. She coughs and drops the glowing ice cube, which breaks. The scene freezes and Shakespeare says the memory is over. Weiss says she lost consciousness, then the limo driver found her and took her to the hospital. Afterwards, Jacques fired the driver for taking his eyes off her and told her it was just a bad dream. She looks around and finds the knight toy was burned. She says they are done here.
Weiss wakes up back in the real world and Semiramis asks if they discovered the root of her fear. She says they did, and all it does is give her another reason to hate her father. She asks if they can skip their private lesson for today and Semiramis agrees. Weiss and Semiramis decide to get coffee. Shakespeare tells them to enjoy themselves and walks away as well. When they leave, Nobunaga comes out of her hiding place and gloats that now she knows Weiss is afraid of skeletons. She's going to exploit it.
