'DAD!'

'No mijo, we need to leave.'

'But dad….'

'It's too late for him, we need to save ourselves…..'

Brown eyes shoot open, fully separating reality from nightmare. A labored breathing follows as a hand moves up and rubs the sleep out of their eyes. Amarillo Varela stretched out in his seat, making sure not to bump any of the other passengers. After rubbing his eyes again, he looked around where he was, making sure he was still in the real world. As he did this, he made note of all the other passengers, all were roughly his age from the look of it and all wrapped up in their own little groups. Save one or two like Amarillo of course. He sighed and sat up from his seat in the middle of the room, taking advantage of the space there was. He made his way to one of the large window panes on the walls of the room and looked out, seeing out over a very unfamiliar city.

"Vale." He reminded himself. His own voice, a small accented reminder of his home. He smiled as he looked over the city, having only spent a couple minutes in it between coming off the boat from his home to the west, and climbing on board an air ship set to course for one location, Beacon Academy. Amarillo reached a hand to his chest and grasped a circular shaped object through his clothes, very obviously an amulet, and kept smiling.

"This is our best shot at a life mom and dad would be proud of. Let's do this right." He dropped his hand and walked back to his seat, marked by the dark green satchel on the seat. He dropped himself in the seat and leaned his head back, letting out a long exhale. His long coat, though buttoned up the side opened as he sat back, letting his booted feet sprawl out. After a few minutes of sitting like this, he almost fell back asleep but a strange feeling of being watched kept bugging him awake. He opened his eyes and looked around the room, looking for anyone who he might catch watching him. As he scanned the room, he made note of some of the stranger people on board, one guy currently looking about ten seconds from vomiting, a VERY energetic girl bugging some poor guy, a tall blonde girl currently bear hugging a tiny girl who looked too young to be here. Amarillo's scanning soon found him making direct eye contact with a girl sitting on the end of one of the benches further down the room. As soon as Amarillo met her eyes, she snapped her head forward as if she wasn't doing anything. He smiled and almost looked away when something on her head seemingly twitched, and on looking closer, he noticed a pair of animal-like ears on the top of her head.

"A faunus? Interesting." As he looked forward, the news holograms that he had managed to tune out before had all been shut off, and replaced with the holographic visual of a blonde woman wearing a very professional getup, at least until he noticed the flowing cape she was wearing.

"Hello and welcome to Beacon," Amarillo immediately leaned forward, focusing on her just like everyone else onboard, "My name is Glynda Goodwitch, you are among a privileged few who have received the honor of being selected to attend this prestigious academy." Amarillo smiled and grabbed the amulet again.

"Our world is experiencing an incredible time of peace, and as future huntsmen and huntresses, it is your duty to uphold it. You have demonstrated the courage needed for such a task, and now it is our turn to provide you with the knowledge and the training to protect our world." And with that the hologram disappeared and gave the entire cabin a view of the city, causing a lot of the people inside to flock to the windows. Amarillo sat back once more with a smile on his face.

"I guess that means we'll be landing soon." As he said this, the sick looking guy sprinted past him with a hand over his mouth, heading straight for the closest trash can. Amarillo shook his head with a laugh and moved to stand up, grabbing his satchel and throwing it over his shoulder. He patted his sides, checking for his weapon. He nodded to himself when he felt his swords hilt and began walking towards the main door. As he did this, the overhead speakers alerted all the passengers that they would be landing shortly.

A few short minutes later, Amarillo found himself surrounded by all of the other students, even the sickly-looking guy, all waiting to exit. A couple locking sounds and a drawn-out door opening, and the students found themselves staring out at the massive buildings and towers that made up Beacon. Its bright white exteriors made Amarillo shield his eyes a bit as he walked out. The group of students rushed out and immediately several older students wearing little badges started corralling all the new people to one location, but as they started doing this, several people broke off from the main group, including the tall blonde from before.

Amarillo's sightseeing was cut short by a group of older looking students wearing beacons uniforms and lanyards with the words 'student aide' written on the tag. They began funneling the mass of students towards a large circular building, Amarillo getting the best view in the front. He shifted around uncomfortably in the group, not being used to this kind of fancy looking of a place. Amarillo grew up in an almost entirely impoverished area on the coast of Vacuo, the only reason he was here instead of Shade academy was a chance encounter with a rather strange man; tall, bald and wearing what was very clearly clothes from Vale. He had seen Amarillo get involved in what had escalated into a large fight between police, civilans and a local gang, soon after that, the monastery that was caring for him had received a letter, assumedly from the man and soon after that the Abbot sent Amarillo on his way, giving him some lien for the travel.

Amarillo was snapped out of his memory as his groups escorts stopped and began ushering people into the circular building. As he walked In, he took in the full sight. The domed building had no furniture or anything, just a few entrances and exits, some banners and a large stage at the far wall with several people standing on it. The area slowly filled in with students, the soon to be first-years stood in front, closest to the stage, and the years and size of the groups increased as the room filled in. Eventually the other students that Amarillo saw on the air ship joined the group. Amarillo scanned across the crowd, his eyes immediately stopping on the faunus from the air ship looking forward, a small smile making its way onto his face. The smile faded quickly as the faunus' eyes darted to look over at Amarillo, making him immediately look away, and he could feel the smile from across the room.

The mass of students slowly hushed, as did the people on the stage as a two more walked onstage. What looked like an old man wearing a suit and walking with a cane, and a woman dressed officially and with a riding crop in her hand behind her. The man approached a microphone stand at the edge of the stage and coughed a few times, demanding everyones attention, and it was immediately given.

"I'll keep this brief. You have traveled here today in search of knowledge. To hone your craft and acquire new skills, and when you are finished, you will dedicate your life to protecting the people. But I look amongst you and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose. Direction.

"You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step." And with that, the old man simply walked off to the side and a few of the others on stage following him, leaving the woman to walk up to the microphone.

"You will gather in the ballroom tonight, tomorrow your initiation begins. Be ready, you are dismissed." As she finished, it finally clicked to Amarillo that the woman on stage was the woman from the air ship hologram, Goodwitch. And after her bit, the rest of the people on stage walked off, leaving the first years once again in the charge of the student aides. The first years being the closest to the stage had to wait while the rest of the students filed out, some greeting the first years as they walked by, others commenting as to why they had to even show up if they weren't the new kids.

Soon after, the first years rejoined the student aides, and the large group of students made their way towards an adjacent building, a square one this time. Amarillo gripped his bag and his necklace as he entered, soon finding himself surrounded by what felt like hundreds of strangers, his time spent in with other orphans immediately making him wary of everyone when it came to his stuff. He walked around and soon found an unoccupied corner and sat his bag down. Amarillo sat on the floor, his head on his bag, and watched all of the other first years, once again spotting the students he had been seeing all day, even the faunus who seemed to be more comfortable in the center of the room, surrounded by everyone. Amarillo slowly shut his eyes, intending to get as much sleep as possible.

"Hey there!" A very loud voice broke his attempt to sleep, and Amarillo slowly cracked his eyes open, seeing a person sitting in front of him wearing a very cheery expression.

"Umm... can I help you?" The guy in front of Amarillo extended his hand to him.

"I'm Fost Reddin, nice to meet you." Amarillo kept eyeing him, as weird as his self-introduction was, he seemed like a straight forward sort, even if he was a bit more than just odd. He reached out and grabbed Fost's hand.

"Amarillo Varela." Amarillo straightened out and sat up, intending to get a better look at Fost. As he sat up, he immediately noticed how small Fost was. His posture was perfect, his back completely straight and head held up, and yet even with all of this, Amarillo sat hunched and against the wall and was still taller than Fost by at least a head. The next weird detail was the guys hair, for some reason it was vibrant pink, and fairly lengthy, falling down the back of his neck and some of it hanging in front of his face. This led to his eyes, a bright blue with a small etch of blind spot in the right eye. Fost didn't move an inch and even seemed to be looking at Amarillo the same way. The last detail that Amarillo made note of was his clothing, even though they looked like pajamas, they were bright white and looked hand made, and very well made on top of that. A crest of a shield and an 'R' was embroidered on the breast of the shirt.

"I'm sorry if I was a bit forward, you looked like you needed a bit of company over here." Amarillo shot Fost a look of 'that was the point' and he laughed a little.

"Your accent is a bit unfamiliar, where abouts are you from? You can't be from Vale that's for certain." Amarillo gave a small laugh at the questioning, being reminded of the other children at his home.

"Vacuo, more specifically a coast city on the south end." Fost smiled, seemingly entertained by the conversation.

"And you? From the look of it, you are certainly more well off than everyone around here." Amarillo looked over the rest of the room, until his eyes fell on a girl wearing almost similar white pajamas currently in argument with the young girl from the airship ride. "Well most everyone." Fost looked to where Amarillo was currently staring, and saw the girl as well. They both looked back at each other. Fost wore more of a look surprise than anything else.

"Its that easy to tell huh? I'm from Atlas, everyone in my family was trained here at Beacon, I'm continuing the tradition." Fost smiled, and as he finished the sentence, the lights around the ballroom started to be put out, signaling everyone to finally go to bed. He stood up over Amarillo, who for sure now could see that Fost was almost a foot shorter than him, and gave him a quick nod.

"Well Amarillo of Vacuo, I look forward to seeing what you can do tomorrow." He motioned to the sword next to Amarillo, and without another word, he walked off to his bed roll. Amarillo smiled and laid his head back on his pack.

"What a weird place." Amarillo murmured to himself with a smile as he slowly drifted off to sleep.