That morning, as most Thursday mornings, found Glynda Goodwitch scribbling away at the ironwood desk in her office. The room was lit by softly glowing lavender Dust lamps and by her Scroll, the dull buzz of the Vale News Network's opening music vying with her work for her attention. A well-worn quill pen was poised within a hair's breadth of the paper, plucked from the back of a young Nevermore and dyed a brilliant purple.
Glynda eyed the paper but did not write, wary as always of commiting to something that couldn't be erased. By nine in the morning, her paper would have ordinarily been brimming with ink. It was 9:03 now, and Beacon's deputy headmistress had yet to write more than a handful of words. Her pace was in danger of drifting from methodical to sluggish, and it was putting her right off her eggs, hard-boiled slices untouched and cooling off to the side.
She scoffed and tapped the screen of her Scroll, turning up the volume as the morning news began.
"…losses from the freighter incident amounted, as my co-anchor Cyril Ian mentioned, to at least thirty million lien – well short of the precedent set by recent White Fang raids on Schnee Company property, but putting yet another unwelcome dent in their stock in an already trying year. Bianca Reine-Schnee, an influential shareholder, widow of the company's late founder Claus Schnee I and mother of current CEO Claus II, had this to say at yesterday's press release…"
The feed cut from modern, sharply dressed VNN anchor Lisa Lavender to an older woman who looked like she'd stepped out of a wedding in the previous century – tall and stately in a white floor-length dress, silver hair bound in a strict, straight plait, one of many rigid lines that seemed to define her. Her eyes, light blue like the tips of a glacier, betrayed little in the way of emotion as she condemned the attack.
"To put it quite simply, we are faced with a segment of the population that refuses to assimilate. Why would they, when the White Fang dangle our very livelihoods before them like a carrot on a stick? Last week's act of terrorism is yet more proof of the crime and depravity inherent to the Faunus race."
Glynda choked at that last statement, a teacup raised daintily to her lips. Her violent coughing fit scattered tea across the paper and wood, but mercifully drowned out the rest of Bianca Reine-Schnee's tirade. As she dabbed tea off her desk with a nearby handkerchief, a tiny chime interrupted the news report. An alert had popped up in the corner of her Scroll's screen. Ozpin.
Glynda answered without a moment's hesitation. Anything but this bigot.
The headmaster's face appeared and grew to fill the right half of the screen, pushing a muted Lisa Lavender off to the left. He was pinching the bridge of his nose, his glasses askew and his eyes squeezed shut as if against an explosion. Finally he shook his head, exhaled and adjusted his glasses. The gesture was growing uncomfortably familiar to Glynda.
"Unbelievable, isn't it?" he said.
Glynda hated raising her voice. Instead she traced her teaspoon around the rim of her teacup, the scraping of silver on porcelain expressing her distaste in all the ways she preferred not to. "Why do they give this woman a microphone?"
"VNN is a Schnee subsidiary. Why wouldn't they?"
Scraaape. Scraaape. "Human-Faunus relations have come a long way, Professor. She can't be good for PR."
"Perhaps not, but a Dust monopoly seems to be an effective antidote to boycotts. Besides, with what the Crown pays to keep the border wards running, I doubt she'd notice if we all stopped buying."
On the left side of the screen of Glynda's Scroll, the news had cut to commercials. Gorgeous actors and actresses with straight, flawless teeth were silently extolling the virtues of Shi-nee Toothpaste. A point bright of light glimmered on one man's smile, growing and morphing into the white snowflake of the Schnee Dust Company as the commercial came to a close.
Scraaaaaaaaape.
Glynda gritted her meticulously brushed and flossed teeth, suddenly and briefly craving sugar.
"Can we talk about something else?"
"Naturally. There is the matter of the tournament this weekend…"
There it was. The headmaster trailed off, carefully considering his words and leaving the conversation hanging. Glynda had long ago learned to wait for Ozpin to finish his thoughts at his own pace. Usually it only happened in private, but lately she doubted Ozpin even knew he was doing it. Something was bothering him. By the nature of their professional and personal relationship, whatever bothered Ozpin would soon bother Glynda as well.
Glynda was not in a patient mood today. "You think she's involved."
Ozpin blinked, looking for a moment like Glynda had caught him sleeping through dueling lessons. "In…a manner of speaking," he said, rarely off guard for long. "The paperwork checks out for every entrant except these two."
Glynda's scroll chimed with another alert. She opened the two files Ozpin had sent her, the news long forgotten. Now there were three faces on the screen: Ozpin's and two others'. A slight, dark-skinned girl stared thoughtfully out at Glynda, blood-colored eyes framed by mint-green hair and seeming to scrutinize her even from this picture. A pale man smirked up from below her, unkempt silver hair at odds with the predatory focus in his matching eyes.
"Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black. Recognize them?"
"No."
"You wouldn't. Officially, they don't exist." The two dossiers scrolled down, parts of the contestants' personal information highlighted in red. "Their addresses are abandoned warehouses in Atlas, their academic records are not corroborated by Warden or Sentinel Academies, and their true names can only be guessed at." Ozpin adjusted his glasses, paused, and continued. "These two are off the grid – I can understand that. But they've hidden it so poorly."
"So disqualify them for falsifying their applications."
"Out of the question. Anyone who was seriously attempting to do that would at least try to fake a real residence. She's smarter than this. If she truly has conjured them from thin air, we're expected to know."
Ozpin's tone was measured, verging on rehearsed. It left a sour taste in Glynda's mouth – something she had both expected and dreaded. "You've been waiting for this – if indeed this is what you think it is."
"I've been keeping my eyes open," Ozpin began. "This is the first lead we've had in months – one of the only leads we've had in fifteen years." Iron crept into Ozpin's voice. "After that encounter at the Dust shop, Cinder Fall won't dare risk appearing in public."
Glynda was half out of her chair, blonde curls bouncing. "If I hadn't intervened, Ruby would have-"
"Died, yes. We've been over this, and I don't blame you in the slightest. The encounter was an unfortunate fluke, but we need Ruby alive. The downside is that Cinder knows we've been looking for her. She knows we came close. If we ever see her again, it's going to be on her terms." Ozpin had come to dominate Glynda's screen by degrees, and he leaned back in his Mantler steel chair. "Mercury and Emerald are extensions of her will. In exposing them she exposes herself. If this is a trap, we have little choice but to spring it."
"And the children?" Glynda pressed. "Where do they come in?"
Ozpin's hands, folded on his desk, tightened their grip on each other. "We do our best with what we have, while we have them, and ensure they do what needs to be done when the time comes."
The scraping of spoon on cup had long since ceased. Glynda sipped her tea and grimaced. Lukewarm. "Once upon a time, you did what needed to be done. You and Qrow. Why have we spent fifteen years dealing with the consequences? Who's to say our students are prepared to make that sort of decision?"
In years past, questions like that would have killed the conversation entirely. Ozpin's level gaze told Glynda he was considering it. Finally, he rose and took up his cane. "I haven't raised my voice to you in eight years, Glynda, and I'm not about to start again," he said. "Suffice it to say that one perceives a scenario entirely differently from within than from without. I tried the former once, and fifteen years later here we stand."
"Here sit we down to see the mystery and serve for Chorus in this tragedy."
"Don't quote The Mistralite Tragedy at me. I'm not suggesting we let the matter pass. We the players have our pieces, and there's a long overdue game to end. Not to win, not to lose – to end." Ozpin's knuckles were white on the handle of his cane. Blood rushed back into them as he loosened up, looked at the jade clock on his wall. "And in twenty minutes there's a tournament bracket to announce. I'll see you in the amphitheater in ten." Ozpin's hand drifted to the side of the picture, and the feed cut out.
Glynda was alone in her office again. She dismissed the alarm she'd set to prepare for the announcements, collecting her Scroll and riding crop and rising from her desk. An idle wave of her hand sent her cold, congealed breakfast into the incinerator at the desk's edge; it was a lost cause.
Glynda took a moment to fix her hair in the mirror before she left, trying to avoid her own judgmental stare. It's a poor professor who plays with the lives of her students, she chided herself. It's a worse one who leaves them to solve her problems, another part of her responded. She tossed her head back to settle her hair in its usual style of organized carelessness. But they're not your problems, are they? They just became yours.
She glanced back at the desk with its barely-marked paper, sighed and walked out of the room.
The crossword would have to wait.
