We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world.
We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible.
To the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send up spinning off into space.
Or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend.
Few of us spend much time wondering why the universe is the way it is.
Where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always there.
In time, we may one day look back on it.
Or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.
What is the smallest piece of matter?
Why can we remember the past, but not the future?
And why there is a universe.
As Moonlight pulls itself to a close, Windfall slips off the side of the branch he was sitting on top of. He had timed it to end just before his job began.
His boots impact the earth heavily, but his powerful legs brace him easily. He presses a single button on the side of his blue headphones, the interior computer shifting setlists to his 'work' mix.
As the drums and bass slowly pick up in his ears, Wind brushes his smooth black hair from his eyes, the matching orbs gazing down the hill to a massive unmarked truck.
Show time, he thinks, placing his dustcaster-shield onto his left wrist and withdrawing his bo staff from his back, resting the traditionally two handed weapon by his side.
With a single movement, he leaps into the air and across the more than thirty meter distance to the top of the semi, causing his blue windbreaker to blow past his plain white t-shirt.
A touch of his semblance negates most of the impact with the roof, a dulled thud being the only evidence of his arrival.
Not that they would likely react in time either way.
He walks along the roof, careful to hush his footsteps, to reach the edge just before the windshield.
With a smirk, he holds his staff in front of him and spins...
BOOOOOOOM!
A cascade of multicolored dust spews forth, the many effects overlapping to cause what he named a 'Chaos Storm'. The explosion blows apart the glass of the windows, slicing the occupants inside, before sucking all of it back out of their newly made injuries as the air pressure vacuums everything together.
Windfall, by using his ability to control the air pressure against his body in an almost artistic manner, keeps himself firmly rooted in place on the roof of the newly toppling vehicle.
As it skids across the ground on it's side, Windfall heaves himself over the edge of the trailer and slides to a stop along the asphalt.
After a moment, the first people he'd seen all day drag themselves out of the back of the truck.
Directly into Windfall's line of fire.
They all look up at the sound of his shield, the energy collecting at the center in a device of his own design, even if he lacked the mechanical expertise to actually build it.
For the sake of dramatics, he says a few parting words. "Say hello to grandpa for me."
The neon blue circuitry tracing his otherwise black shield flood to the large sphere in the center, the light reflecting over and over as the energy builds.
While it takes a few thousand circulations to actually shoot, we're working with the speed of light.
Before anyone, even Windfall, could register the attack blasting forth, it had already blown apart the collection of criminals.
He walks up to the truck, bypassing the mutilated corpses without pause. His objective wasn't them, after all. He wanted what was inside the truck.
Windfall steps inside, his eyes locking onto the glass case held to the truck by various elastic cords. They'd failed due to the crash, but what he was looking for wasn't nearly fragile enough for him to worry.
He kneels down, picking up the set of bracers with deft hands.
A single sound, that of metal against metal, alerts him to people just outside the truck. Without even looking at who they are, he stands up and lifts his hands in the universal sign of surrender.
"Hey there, Oz. Did you visit regarding my application?" he asks as cheekily as his emotionally stunted self can manage.
Even without an audible cue, Windfall can tell Ozpin was smiling as he sipped his coffee.
"I believe we've seen plenty. Welcome aboard, Windfall Branwen."
(Later, during a required interview.)
"I was not born in the best of homes. The Branwen family was unstable thanks to a certain... Pair of individuals, so my mother was forced to settle disputes between them while also working to keep us three alive. Oh yeah, my twin sister Monody was with us too. Monody was a great sister, and her singing ability was the reason I first delved into music."
"My love of music is actually what led me to becoming a Huntsman. When I was... 12? I don't remember my age that well, but it was at least five years ago. Anyway, when I was a lot younger my sister Monody was doing a choir concert for our school when Grimm attacked. We all survived, obviously. I mean, the Branwens don't train powerful hunters for nothing, but we wouldn't always be with them, and we both knew that."
"My sister didn't want to become a Hunter so she could focus on her singing career, and someone needed to keep her safe, so that's when I began my training... Or, I suppose I should call it what it was."
"My pain."
"After years of this, I even got accepted into your school without any transcripts from a trainer school. Thanks for that, by the way. But, with a school comes new people, and leaving behind the old..."
"So, I said goodbye to everyone. I even said goodbye to Schwarz's memorial, something I'd never spoken to in my life out of spite. But, then again, he died doing what I'm doing now. I can't let myself be a hypocrite forever."