Edit: 2/16/2019
Late at night in the city of Vale, a sixteen-year-old boy laid back against the roof a building, hearing nothing but the music coming from his earphones. The boy had dark gray hair and black eyes wearing a white zipped-up jacket with black lines on the edges of the sleeves and a black symbol of an eye surrounded by blades of the back. He also had black jeans and black and white sneakers. On his left jacket arm, a series of small steel blade segments connected by a small chain in the middle of each ran across the outer fabric from the forearm to the back of his neck where an extendable grey sword handle with a small chain tassel and a trigger switch under the guard was held by a custom metal grip. The boy is known as Ashton Valdis or simply Ash raised his arms up and looked to the dark sky while he lazily stretched. He grits his teeth when he brings his arms down and looks around at the city, where he saw nothing that caught his eye or exited him in any way. 'Why is the world so boring?' He thinks to himself. 'There's nothing new to see, nothing new to do. I thought we were supposed to be fighting the forces of darkness?' He complained.
He suddenly hears something loudly roar over his music and sees a large cargo plane fly over him. He is about to brush off the scene when he sees two more identical planes fly after the first one. 'Something's not right. Why are those planes flying over the city?' He quickly jumps from building to building and gets a better look at the planes and his eyes widen when he sees something. On the side of each plane, the mark of a red circle with a beast's head in the center with claw marks going over it. 'Isn't that the White Fang's symbol? What are those guys doing here?' The planes fly past him and toward the edge of the city where Ash knows there is a shipyard that goes out to sea. Ash smiles and shakes his head. "Alright, let's see what they're up too." He exhales and cracks his fingers before jumping from building to building to chase after the planes.
Ash ends up on top of a warehouse near the docks where the planes slow down and land just outside of the building. He looks through an overhead window and sees groups of men in white cloaks and masks running in and out of the building, each of them carrying crates into an airstrip where the three planes he was following landed. "Alright, let's see what you're up to White Fang." He shuts off his music, opens the window and jumps into the building, landing on a tall pile of crates. He makes his way to the ground and sneaks around the building to examine the operations, using his scroll to take photos whenever he can. He sees most of the men coming from a large door in the back of the warehouse and slowly makes his way there to see why. When the last person leaves, he slips through the closing door and finds a smaller room filled with stacks of large white crates, each one marked with the Schnee Dust Company logo. He quietly moves around and opens one of the crates and it is filled with dust crystals of various shapes, colors, and sizes. 'You could supply an army with this amount of dust! What is the White Fang doing with all of this?!'
"Hey what are you doing here?!" Someone shouts from behind him and he turns around to see two White Fang members, one with a gun the other with a sword, pointing at him from the entrance. "Oh shoot!" He exclaims and quickly ducks behind some of the crates as the guard opens fire on him, riddling the crate Ash was looking at with holes. "What are you doing!?" The guard yells at his friend and pushes his gun down. "One bullet hits those crystals, and this place goes sky high!" Ash backs against the crates as he hears footsteps echo throughout the room, surrounding him. "Darn it. Guess I have no choice." He sighs disappointedly and thrusts his left hand down. The force unlocks a special mechanism and the metal segments slide off his arm onto the floor. When the handle brushes his hand, he catches it and flicks it up, extending it longer. The individual segments on the floor are pulled up by the chain, coming together to form a slightly curved longsword.
He waits for one of the men to come close and when he turns the corner Ash jumps out from behind the corner and slashes at his gun, making it split in half and fall to the ground. The man looks at his broken weapon in shock as Ash turns and kicks him to the floor. The other men draw shortswords and run towards Ash and the boy unlocks his blade, the handle becoming shorter and the blades of the weapon coming apart, becoming something similar to a whip. The cracks his weapon back and forth on the ground, warding the other White Fang members away. The men try to outnumber, but Ash is somehow able to keep them away and starts to swing his sword faster. Ash grits his teeth and slowly moves forward towards the men. One pulls a gun out and Ash lashes out with his weapon, whipping his blade around the barrel of the gun.
The man looks shocked when he sees the blade and Ash pulls his blade back, forcefully pulling the gun out of the man's hands. Ash grits his teeth and swipes his arm in a circular arc, hitting the handle of the gun against the heads of the other White Fang members, knocking them out. Ash whips the gun off his weapon and blade comes back together. The men around him draw their sword in anticipation when the ground starts to shake. The men look behind them as a large man with a white horned mask and a chainsaw with two muzzles next to the blade lumbers forward. The men move to the side to let the Berserker though and Ash stares him down confidently, pointing his blade at him.
The Berserker lets out a heavy breath and points to the open hangar door behind him. "Get the Dust out of here. Don't come back for me." He tells the men in a deep low voice. They all comply with the Berserker's order and all run past Ash to the crates. The boy grits his teeth as he suppresses the urge to go after the other men, but the Berserker in front of him was the bigger concern. The two watch each other intently as men around them carry the crates out of the building one by one. The last one, look back into the building and shuts the closes the garage door, trapping the two inside.
As soon as the door reaches the ground, Ash jumps forward with his sword held out behind him, the Berserker quickly raising his chainsaw to block the attack. The gray-haired teen keeps up the offensive, landing large overhead swipes at the chainsaw. The Berserker has a hard time keeping up with the young boy, only able to raise the chainsaw at the last second to block the younger boy's sword. The large man suddenly roars, revving up his chainsaw and raising it higher to bring it down on the boy, who jumps back away quickly. Before the boy can get back up, the Berserker charges at him again with surprising speed and the chainsaw raised again. The boy barely has any time to run out of the way as the Berserker rams his chainsaw into a pillar on accident, the blade getting caught in the concrete. Ash sees his chance and rushes forward with his sword raised, only for the Berserker to flip a switch on his weapon and revs it up again. Without warning, flames erupt from the base of the weapon, making the young boy flinch and back away from the flames. "Whoa, what are you doing!?" The boy yells in shock, but the Berserker roars loudly and rips his weapon free from the stone. Ash holds his weapons up in front of him, while the Berserker swings his flamethrower from side to side, filling the area with flames.
"Stop this, you're gonna bring the entire building down!" Ash shouts at the man, but the Berserker doesn't hear him as he roars and madly swings at the kid. Ash turns and runs away, trying to get as much distance from the flamethrower as he can. He hides behind another pillar when he hears the loud noise of metal shaving of stone. He looks to one of the corners of the pillar and sees the Berserker cutting through it with his chainsaw. He roars and the chainsaw moves faster, cutting through the stone with ease and knocks the rest of the pillar away with his shoulder. Ash runs away to the next pillar but the Berserker does the same thing, breaking the next pillar in a single go.
Ash jumps back with his sword held behind him and the Berserker looks at him with burning. red eyes under his mask. "Look calm down, let's talk this out," Ash shouts to the man, but the Berserker doesn't listen and slashes at the other pillars that are holding up the garage. The stonework above the pillars start to crack and debris start to fall from the roof. "Stop! Calm down!" Ash shouts again, but when the Berserker cuts through the last pillar, Ash knew something bad was going to happen. The roof starts to crumble and large pieces of rock start to fall into the garage and a small rock hits the Berserker, breaking out of his angered state and when he looks around him, he runs for the nearest door and shaves it open with his chainsaw. "Hey wait for-" Ash yells after the man, but a large rock falls from the doorway and blocks him off. "Oh come-" Ash exclaims, but the sound of a large stone hitting the ground makes him flinch and turn around. Another stone falls from the roof, this one larger than the others. Ash kneels down and clenches his fist, rearing his arm back. Black energy starts to spiral around his fist and when the rock fall closer to his, he gets up and punches it with his charged fist. The black energy surges through the stone and it shatters and crumbles instantly from the energy. The rest of the building starts to fall away over Ash, so he holds his sword out and clenches the handle tightly and black energy extends from his hand and wraps around the blade. Ash holds his charged sword back and slashes upward at the ceiling, the black energy extending from the blade and cutting through the falling debris in front of him. The stones break apart to pebbles and they rain down on Ash as he thrusts his sword to the side.
Ash takes a deep breath and bends over and props himself up with his sword, breathing heavily as he looks out at the ruins of the garage. "I-I think I went overboard with my power." He breaths to himself. He suddenly hears some debris shift behind him and whirls around, throwing a wild punch at the intruder only to have his hand caught by a white-haired old man. The man had dark shades, a black suit over a green undershirt, green pants, black dress shoes and a green scarf with a cross symbol around his neck. He also held a mechanical cane in his left hand. "You know young man, that was quite the display of skill you just showed me" Ash scowls at the man and slowly lowers his hand and backs away, unsure about the man's hostility. "Who are you and why are you watching me?" The man passively waves his hand and gestures to the glittering city behind him. "Let's get you out of here first. We don't want the police to arrest you now, would we?
The man takes Ash to a prison building back in the city and they are let through all the sealed doors with relative ease. They walk in silence until they arrive at a hallway lined with prison cells making Ash step away from the man and fall into a fighting stance. "Why did you bring me here? What do you want from me?" The man, now holding a plate of cookies and a cup of coffee, both taken from a stand in another room, keeps walking while he answers prompting Ash to keep up. "I can assure you, Mr. Valdis, you're not in trouble. We're here because my assistant found someone of interest and she stayed with here her to wait for us." He opens a door at the end of a hall and the first thing Ash sees is a tall blond woman with green eyes, square glasses and is wearing a white blouse and black dress that goes down to her ankles and high heels holding a tablet. The man walks up to the table in the center of the room and leans down. "Ruby Rose. You… have silver eyes." Ash looks past the man and sees a girl about his age sitting down on the other side of the table, looking quite nervous. She had dark black hair with red highlights, a long red cape pinned with silver crosses on a black blouse with a skirt with red highlights, black socks, black boots with red laces. Since the man mentioned it before, the first thing Ash looks at as he leans against the back wall is her silver eyes. 'Why did he have to mention that? What's so special about her silver eyes?'
"So, where did you learn to do this?" The man gets up and gestures to the tablet the woman is holding, where a video is playing of Ruby beating up a bunch of things with a large red mechanical scythe. "S-Signal Academy." The man's eyes widen at her claim. "They taught you how to use one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed with that level of skill?" "Well, one teacher in particular." She responds and the man fixes his glasses, intrigued by her answer. "I see." He sets the plate of cookies in front of Ruby, who cautiously eats one cookie before quickly eating about seven of them in quick succession. "It's just that I've only seen one scythe wielder of that skill before." The man continues. "A dusty old crow..." Ruby gives a muffled response, before swallowing her cookie in a single gulp. "Ahh, sorry. That's my Uncle Qrow; he's a teacher at Signal. I was complete garbage before he took me under his wing. Now I'm like, Whooowah, waaattchaa!" She starts to exaggerate the noises with various martial art gestures and poses.
Ash gets up from the wall and walks up next to the man, who sits down, "So why is a girl like you doing at a school designed to train warriors?" Ruby looks between the two of them, "I… want to be a Huntress." The man raises an eyebrow at Ruby's response. "You want to slay monsters?" He asks her. Ruby smiles and nods her head and starts to ramble, speaking faster as she goes on, "Yeah! I only have two more years left at Signal then I want to apply at Beacon. You see my sister is starting this year and she's trying to become a Huntress. I'm trying to become a Huntress because I want to help people. Our parents always taught us that we should help people so I thought "Hey I might as well make a career out of it." I mean the police are alright, but Huntsmen and Huntresses are just so much more romantic and exciting and cool and just gosh, you know!"
The man smiles at her as if he accepted her reasons to be a Huntress. "Do you know who I am?" Ruby nods at the man. "You're Professor Ozpin. You're the headmaster at Beacon." Ash's eyes widen and he looks at the man he walked with in a new light. "Wait, you're that Ozpin. As in the prodigal founder and headmaster of the best school for aspiring huntsman and huntresses." The man now recognized as Ozpin smiles at the young boy's shock. "Yes, I am that Ozpin. It is nice to make your acquaintance Mr. Valdis." Ash put a hand over his mouth and leans back against the wall, taking a few deep breaths to process his thoughts, as he realizes that he just threatened and almost attacked the man that ran his dream school. He is about to say something when Ozpin raises his hand and stops him. "It's fine; I would have done the same in your shoes. "The blonde woman on the other side of Ozpin finally raises her voice. "Professor if I may, could you explain who is this boy and why is he here?" Ozpin reaches into his pocket and pulls out a scroll before handing it to the woman. "This is Ashton Valdis, and if you would kindly play the video on this scroll, you'll understand why he is here." The woman plugs the scroll into the tablet and a video plays, showing Ash's fight against the White Fang and the Berserker from an overhead view up until the Berserker activates his flamethrower. 'Where was he when he videoed this?' Ash wondered. The woman turns to Ozpin and nods her head. Ruby tilts her head to watch the video and her eyes widen as the video shows Ash's sword. "Where did you learn to fight like that and where did you get that sword?" She asks Ash.
He scratches the back of his head and flicks his wrists so his sword comes together in his hand again. "I uhh... Taught myself. As for the sword, it was given to me by someone important." Ruby nods her head, satisfied with the answer and they both look back at Ozpin as the woman puts her tablet away. "Back to the matter at hand, I want you both to come to my school." The eyes of everyone in the room except his own widen in shock. "I know you're not at the age requirement yet, but the skills you've shown tonight more than make up for that. If you want, I could let you in a few years early." Ash and Ruby look at each other with wide eyes while the blonde woman looks at her superior with nothing but anger in her eyes. "Professor Ozpin!" She whispers angrily. "Do you understand what your saying!? I know you've done things like this before, but NOW?! Their children their not ready for this." Ozpin raises a hand to calm her down and looks at her with a blank stare. "Believe me Professor Goodwitch, they will be." She looks at Ozpin with a confused look as he turns back to the teens, who are still silent by the offer. "So what do you say, Miss Rose and Mr. Valdis?" The two teens look at each other before smiling and looking back at the headmaster.