Oh my gosh, I am so late. I'm sure everyone thought I had taken four vacations to Hawaii, fallen into a volcano, lived on a volcanic island for years on end, was recently rescued, got out of the hospital, and wrote this chapter because THAT'S HOW LATE I AM.
In all seriousness, though, I didn't expect this chapter to be done this early. It's not a particularly entertaining chapter, but it is rather necessary. Also, I forgot to mention how Volume 3 ended a while back, so I can confirm that this is a slightly AU story taking place in between Volumes 2 and 3, though I suspect the original was supposed to take place shortly after Volume 1. But I want Neo to be in this story, so take that, TheFrozenCrow!
I'm sorry. Please don't kill me.
In other news, in case you were wondering, this story will have several OCs in it, with almost no canonical DBZ characters, for a couple of reasons. 1. DBZ characters are entertaining to watch, but boring to write. 2. Anybody in DBZ is so much more powerful than anybody in this story that it is, frankly, absurd. 3. If I dare make an enemy that can even feasibly stand against anybody from DBZ, the community will eat me alive.
One more thing. I recently realized that, to enter Beacon, Alistor would need a team of four. Obviously, a certain character in the original story will be part of his team, but until I reach that point, I guess I'm accepting OCs with names that start with A and T, because the only real team name that starts with A and has a K that I can think of is ATAK. I might take the ideas, I might write my own characters, but this is a chance to get somebody you made up featured in this story! How cool is that?
Woah, that intro is obscenely long. I'm sorry!
…
"I see that," Ozpin answered, his tone mildly impressed.
Alistor's eyes darted from the girls to the professor. For the first time, he became aware of the energy he sensed from these people he had met. It had always been there, but he'd been to concerned with other things to really bother noticing. The girls were each formidable, for their age, with maybe less than a fifteenth of his power. However, he recognized, most of their power didn't come from their natural abilities, but rather their skill and proficiency with the weapons that they used, which wasn't registered on his energy sensing, and made quite a difference. Most saiyans fought bare-handed, as a testament to their power and pride, or simply due to the fact that that was just how it was done. A saiyan's body could get stronger and stronger; a saiyan's weapon couldn't.
Still, at least the four girls were recognizable. It were the two adults that shocked him. The woman with glasses was almost as powerful as he was. He could feel her spirit emanating from her body, not used through Ki but still there, all the same. The gray-haired man, Ozpin, was the strangest to him, for one simple reason.
He couldn't sense his energy.
He'd always been able to sense levels of energy coming off of different beings. Most warriors in Frieza's army were slightly stronger than he was, his father and brother had both been twice as strong, and Frieza himself was so powerful that, even in his lowest form, he was off the charts.
But this one man, this Professor Ozpin, he had no idea how powerful was. Maybe he was a weak, frail old man who had learned to hide his energy, or maybe he was a match for even Frieza who had learned to hide his energy. For all he knew, he could be a god in disguise.
He'd always lived in a place where mysteriousness, technique, and weapons were almost useless. What mattered was having pride and having the power to back it up. However, he was now on a planet where skill appeared to be twice as important as any other physical attribute. This would make it very hard for him to judge foes in the future, assuming he was stuck on this planet.
Which he wasn't, he quickly reminded himself. He glanced down to where his ship was…laying…
His ship was gone.
"Where's my ship?" he whispered.
"Um, what?" Ruby questioned.
"WHERE'S MY SHIP?" This time he bellowed, making sure everyone in the immediate vicinity could hear him.
"Oh, that circle thing you came here in? I used it to squash a Deathcrawler," Yang proudly declared.
Alistor spun around, his eyes searching, until finally he found it. Or, rather, what was left of it. It was smashed into a hundred pieces, each of which was scattered among the ground, and, undoubtedly, what would have been the remains of this…Deathcrawler if he hadn't incinerated everything in a hundred-foot radius.
"You ruined my ship!" he cried out.
"You tried to kill us," Yang pointed out.
Alistor decided that she didn't understand the gravity of the situation. "YOU RUINED MY SHIP!"
"And you tried to kill us."
"I try to kill everybody! You don't just go and ruin a guy's ship for stuff like that! How would you like it if I ruined your ship, huh?"
Yang blinked. "I don't have a ship."
"Well, obviously, or else you wouldn't have treated mine so badly!"
"Excuse me, sir," Ozpin declared, interrupting their argument. "Could you please come down here for a moment?"
Alistor gave Yang a venomous glare to let her know that they would continue this conversation later. Then he replied to Ozpin. "If you don't mind, I think I'll stay up here a while."
"I'd far prefer to have a face-to-face conversation."
"I can see you, you can see me, I can hear you, you can hear me. What else do you want?"
"I'm not concerned about you hearing what I have to say." Ozpin gestured to the girls around him.
After a moment, he thought he understood. This planet was filled with these monsters, these…Grimm, was it? Hadn't the Ice Queen called them Grimm? These Grimm, and as such, each child had to learn how to fight said monsters at a young age. They were handed off to any one of multiple professors, who would teach them how to do so. These girls were all under the tutelage of this "Ozpin" and the woman, presumably his wife, and had wandered out to get a look at his spaceship. They had been noticed missing and their tutor and his wife had come after them. They had yet to learn about the overlord Frieza, or, perhaps, certain other thing the men knew, and so this professor wished to discuss such matters with him in private.
For an alien who had never been to or even heard of Remnant, it was a pretty good guess, though Glynda would have killed him if she heard it.
"Sir," Ozpin called, "If you won't come down, I'll come up, and that would be rather hard on these old bones."
Alistor swallowed, then lowered himself to the ground. He walked up to Ozpin, who held his ground admirably.
"You have met Team RWBY, I assume?" Ozpin questioned.
Thinking RWBY as the name of Ruby, and this being her team, Alistor hesitated, and then replied "More or less."
Ruby was suddenly in front of him. She was almost absurdly fast, to the point where he instantly made the assumption that her speed made up the bulk of her power level. "Oh! Let me introduce you! Can I introduce him, sir? Can I, pleeeaase?"
Ozpin smiled knowingly. It seemed to Alistor that this man never showed any emotion the traditional way. He had to either smile knowingly or ask curiously or smirk well-meaningly. "I don't see why not."
"Oh! I'm Ruby! Hi, sir!" she grabbed his hand and shook it wildly. "Thanks for not blowing us up earlier. Though I guess you did try to. Oh, that's Yang! She's my sister." She whispered that last part. "That's Blake, and then there's Weiss, my best-"
"No." Weiss declared.
"And that's it! Hey, while you get your ship fixed, can you stay with us?" Ruby asked excitedly, the idea suddenly having sprung upon her mind and shone out of her gleaming silver eyes.
"Um, Ruby," Blake started.
"I don't think that's a good idea," Yang continued.
"If you think I'd ever share a room with that, that…" Weiss added. "That disgusting alien faunus-"
"Sure," Alistor replied. After all, he reasoned, why not? He would need somewhere to stay, and it was a way to tick the yellow-haired one off, which, now that she had ruined his ship, he had decided to make his life's goal.
"Yay!" Ruby cheered. "Oh! Professor Ozpin, can he stay with us?"
Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "We'll talk about that, Miss Rose. This man and I have some things to discuss. In the meantime, you were reported missing for class. Allow Glynda to take you out of the forest. And don't tell anybody about what you found."
Five minutes later, everyone had cleared out except Ozpin and Alistor.
"Her name is Ruby Rose?" Alistor asked, eyebrow raised. "I'm glad my parents weren't that mean. Though I suppose my father might have done that if he had thought of it."
"It's a part of our tradition," Ozpin answered simply. "Now, Mr…" He looked at Alistor expectantly.
"Alistor," he replied. "Unlike your culture, ours rarely gives last names."
Ozpin nodded. "I understand. Still, if you are to stay here, even temporarily, you shall abide by the rules of our culture. I suggest you find a last name very soon."
"I could just destroy the planet," Alistor suggested.
"I don't believe that would be the best option for you," Ozpin declared. "After all, you can't breathe in space, can you?"
Alistor nodded. "So, you know a little more about our species than I presumed."
"It doesn't take much knowledge of a species," Ozpin replied, "when they can fly and yet choose to take spaceships to other planets."
"I'll give you that one," Alistor acknowledged. "Fine. Silver, then. Alistor Silver."
"A very fitting choice, given the shade of your hair."
"Yes, thank you for that. I really needed to know the origin of the last name that I made up. What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"
Ozpin turned around and started walking. "Follow me, Mr. Silver. And if you happen to spot any Grimm on the way, kindly take care of them."
…
Once they were seated in Ozpin's office, and Alistor was done admiring the clockwork mechanisms under the floor, Ozpin poured himself a cup of hot chocolate and began.
"Now, Mr. Silver, would you mind telling me why you are here?"
Alistor explained it to him as well as he could, which wasn't very well. It basically boiled down to "My family is dead, a guy blew up my planet, I tried to escape, was caught, escaped again, headed toward an abandoned planet, went into hyper sleep, and woke up here."
Ozpin nodded, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. He didn't say anything along the lines of "That's a remarkable story," or "Wow, that's cool," or really anything else that showed any investment. It seemed as though he had heard a hundred like it. When he finally spoke, Alistor somehow expected some kind of sage wisdom to come out of his mouth.
Instead, he said "Do you enjoy hot chocolate on your planet, Mr. Silver?"
Alistor blinked. "I…don't believe so."
"I tell you, it's perfectly miraculous how many things a cup of hot chocolate can cure." Ozpin rose from his seat, brought out another mug, and proceeded to make him a cup while Alistor watched in surprise.
"There you are." Ozpin sat back. "So, Mr. Silver, what are your plans now?"
Alistor bit his lip. "I suppose I'll have to fix my ship and get out of here. I'm going to assume that there's no Spaceships R Us on this planet?"
"I'm afraid the majority of this planet has no idea your species exists." Ozpin answered mildly.
Alistor was surprised. "What? But doesn't faunus mean-"
"Faunus are very different from saiyans, Mr. Silver. Though, thanks to your tail, you'll be able to pass for one quite easily."
"So Frieza doesn't even know this planet exists?" Alistor was unable to believe his luck.
"Not necessarily. He just hasn't taken it over. However, that's a story for another time. We still haven't decided what to do with you here."
Alistor nodded. "What do you do here? Are you in charge of training those girls I met?"
"In a way," Ozpin replied. "I'm the headmaster of Beacon Academy, where many young men and women study the art of history, science, and, more importantly, fighting, in hopes of becoming hunters and huntresses to protect the common folk from the Grimm. Are you familiar with these terms?"
"Most of them. My race did get around a lot, you know."
"Only you killed whoever you got around to," Ozpin reminded him with a bemused smile. "Try the hot chocolate. It's very good."
Alistor did so, and was surprised to find that it was, just as he had said, very good. It had an excellent flavor, with an ever-so-slight bitterness, like coffee, but much sweeter and richer. As he set his glass down, he suddenly struck upon an idea. "I could enroll here."
"The thought had crossed my mind," Ozpin revealed. "In fact, the timing is impeccable. A certain academy has recently burned to the ground, and many of its students have gone to other academies to finish their training. We could easily claim you as one of them. However, that may entail certain regulations that you may not be ready, or able, to accept."
"Like my hair?" Alistor asked sheepishly.
"Odd-colored hair is nothing new," objected Ozpin. "We have everything from pink hair to bright blue hair. Your silver hair may have made you a reject on your planet, but nobody will give it a second look on this one. No, I'm referring to the use of Aura, among other things."
"Aura?"
"Consider it a physical manifestation of the soul," Ozpin explained. "A simple force that can be manipulated through training. It protects your physical body, heals wounds, and can be altered into more…interesting uses."
"So…Ki?"
"No, it's quite different," Ozpin told him. "Chi is a manifestation of the spirit and life energy. Courage, vigor, willpower, and other such things. It's physical, used for attack and defense and little else. Aura is a direct manifestation of the soul, and works through metaphysical means. It doesn't manifest itself into physical tools, but rather slightly alters the driving forces of the universe. Increased speed, electricity manipulation, even false copies of your being. That is what aura does."
"So, the circle thing that Weiss made was…?"
"Ah, yes. Glyphs are an inherent family semblance."
"Semblance?"
"Everyone can use aura in some way, Mr. Silver. The simple, skin-tight shield is certainly the most common. However, everybody who can use aura has a different semblance. A semblance is acquired, or, in most cases, unlocked, due to hard work, perseverance, and mainly luck. It's an exclusive part of aura manipulation only you can use, with the exception for family semblances."
"And your point is?"
"If you decide to enroll at this academy," Ozpin announced, "aside from obeying the academy rules, which, by the way, includes no killing, you have to meet four requirements. You have to pass a certain regulation test of your abilities. I'm sure you will manage that without a problem. The second may be a bit more difficult. It is that you must have a weapon of your choosing that you are trained to use. Third, you must assemble a team of four to use during your time here. Finally, the fourth applies exclusively to you."
"And what is it?"
"You must abandon all uses of your Chi except for one, which you shall claim as your semblance, and you shall cut your power in tenth while you study. Unless, of course, you want to reveal you heritage to the entire world."
This third requirement was, by far, the worst. Instantly Alistor rethought this idea. "Maybe I should just repair my ship and leave. I'm not sure I can live without using Ki."
Ozpin nodded. "I will require your answer by tomorrow, Mr. Silver. We can't delay things much longer. You are free to stay with Team RWBY tonight. If you do decide to enroll, however, you will need a weapon by your first day, and a team at the end of your first week."
"Understood." Alistor rose to leave, then hesitated. "May I take the hot chocolate?"
"Of course, Mr. Silver." Ozpin's face showed complete seriousness, but Alistor felt he was cracking a smile inside. "After all, it is yours."