Three years ago (maybe to the day, but I'm never sure if this site shows dates in my local time or in a US timezone), I published this fic's prologue. Neat.
For anyone who's deeply familiar with canon Volume 5, you may notice that the timeline is very, very different. I won't go over the specific sources because it'd bloat the AN (contact me if you want deets, I guess), but basically the canon V5 Mistral arc (if you can call 'sitting in a house' an arc) takes place over about two weeks in August while TFI Volume 4 ended in late March, so we're about five months off the mark. Whoops.
Not a big deal though.
Mistral was like nothing Ruby had ever seen before.
Vale had its charm, she supposed. It was a sprawling metropolis, a maze of streets and bridges and highways soaring overhead. Every district had its character: the residential, commercial, and industrial parts of the city changing from the wealthy north to the poorer south.
But Mistral was…
Tall.
It was very tall.
Buildings stacked on top of buildings, climbing their way up the mountainside on wooden stilts, cutting so close to the waterfalls that Ruby thought with enough rain and flooding the structures would be swept away. Paths were carefully maintained on the slopes, sometimes cutting tunnels into the rock itself, and elevators—like the one on which they stood—ran up and down deep grooves carved into the mountain.
"Neat," Yang said.
"It's more than neat," Ruby said. "It's… wow."
"'Wow' isn't an adjective," Weiss said.
"And it's not as 'wow' as you might think," Blake said. "The upper city looks nice, but it's just as corrupt as—"
"Do you ever take a break?" Qrow asked.
"Are you saying it's not?"
He shrugged. "It's pretty. It's also full of greedy bastards. It can be both at the same time."
"Look down," Blake said. "Mistral is literally built on top of its own poverty."
From so high up Ruby couldn't make out the details: the stains on the buildings and the sewn-on patches to mend clothing, the police patrolling with fingers itching on their weapons while the homeless huddled in muddy alleys to avoid them. She could imagine it, though. It was the same in southern Vale. She hadn't gone there often but her few experiences had left their mark.
Qrow scoffed. "Every city in the world's like this to some extent. Vale, Londo, Atlas and Mantle, Argus, Wind Path—"
"Not Old Oasis. Not Kuo Kuana."
"I suppose Old Oasis skips the 'pretty' part, sure. And Kuo Kuana's more of a glorified backwater than a city. Look, if you want to pop down and do some charity work later I won't stop you. Won't join you, though," Qrow said.
Whether he meant it as a challenge or not, Blake seemed to take it as one. "Maybe I will."
"Can we just focus on Haven first?" Ruby asked. "We need to find out how Cinder snuck in under Professor Lionheart's nose. And Weiss needs a new weapon."
"I'd prefer to repair the old one if at all possible, but the point stands."
Ruby shrugged. She'd kinda thought this was the perfect opportunity for Weiss to get a cooler weapon. Not that Myrtenaster wasn't cool, but it could've been so much more. If all she wanted was to fix it though, that was fine too.
Blake nodded.
"Yeah. Haven." Qrow sighed and waved his scroll at the control panel, then tapped the screen a few times.
The elevator began to rise.
/-/
"I'm Sun, by the way."
Oscar wasn't sure how much time had passed, but he'd slept, so that was good. The man in the cell across from him—Sun, apparently—and Neptune had still been bickering when he'd drifted off, but they'd stopped now.
"It's… nice to meet you," Oscar said.
"Circumstances aside, right?" Sun flashed a grin. "Oscar, wasn't it? You don't happen to have some sort of plan, do you?"
"I thought you guys were coming up with the plan."
"Always good to have a back-up," Neptune said. "Which is why—"
"We've been over this, dude. Snake-charming isn't going to work."
"Isn't it insensitive to reduce a faunus to her animal trait? It's seduction, not snake-charming."
"You literally called it snake-charming before."
"Yeah, but then I thought about it and… well, seems weird, you know?"
Oscar marvelled at how quickly they'd distracted themselves. He wondered how they'd ever get anything done.
With a nudge in the right direction from people with stronger wills, Ozpin said.
"I dunno," Sun said. "I've always owned it. But if you want to apologise to her for a comment she didn't even hear and risk her getting angry at you, go ahead. Is that step one in your master plan?"
"Hey!" Oscar called to get their attention again. "What is the plan, exactly?"
"Well—first of all—we got caught on purpose," Sun said. "See, we heard about this whole bounty situation and decided we'd try and put a stop to it, and it seemed like the easiest way to find the people responsible was to, you know, get caught. So the plan was for us to get carted off while the other half of our team followed to work out where they were hiding, then they'd break us out and we'd all catch the bad guy together. Problem is we got caught in the wrong place and at the wrong time, so Sage and Scarlet don't know where to find us. You with me so far?"
Oscar nodded. "That is a terrible plan."
"It was Sun's idea."
"For the record, splitting up and getting caught on purpose has never once failed us before. Remember Mountain Glenn?"
"I wouldn't call that a success," Neptune said. "I almost died."
"And I think we should focus on the almost part of that. Anyway, that was Plan A. Plan B is to steal the key from Mytha or the guards or whatever, Plan C involves snake-charming, and we were hoping you might have a Plan D."
"Isn't Plan B panning out?"
"It might now that there's someone directly across from me," Sun said. "If you distract a guard, keep them in place in front of your cell for a little bit, I should be able to nick the key. But I'd rather hear any Plan D you have before we commit to Plan B. Our bounties only go down in value if we're dead, not if we're maimed, so it's best not to piss Mytha off too much."
Oscar shrugged and inspected the lock on the door to his cell. It wasn't electronic or aura-controlled. It was just a simple mechanical lock, albeit it a heavy one, not unlike the one on the barn door back at the farm that had broken a few years ago that they'd replaced with a padlock and chain.
"It should be possible to pick these," Oscar said. "It'd be less noticeable than stealing a key."
"Do you have a lock pick?" Sun asked.
"Well, no, but—"
"A bobby pin? A paperclip?"
"It was just an idea. Is there anybody else here? We can't be the first people they've caught. Where did they all go?"
Sun shrugged. "Professor Vayn and a team of first-years went missing around Wind Path a few days before we showed up. Not sure where they are now. I guess Mytha passed them on to whoever put the bounty out. Tyrian, wasn't it?"
"We could escape when they try to move us then, right?"
"I dunno. I think I'd be more cautious of this Tyrian guy than Mytha," Neptune said.
You're asking the wrong questions. Professor Vayn's semblance is clairvoyance. If she knew we'd be here she might have left something behind for one of us to find, Ozpin said, while Sun and Neptune discussed—argued, really—about the merits of escaping in-transit.
Clairvoyance? Like, she can see the future?
From what I gather it's not quite that simple—not even Jinn can see the future—but yes, something like that.
Who's Jinn?
A big blue spirit-nerd. Try to keep up, Oscar.
Oscar pursed his lips. "Uh… you guys know Professor Vayn is clairvoyant or whatever, right?"
"You know Professor Vayn?"
"Yeah. Sure. Point is she might have left something for us. If she was in one of these cells, I mean, and not in a different one. Or—"
"Doubt she left us this dead rat," Sun said, already conducting a thorough search of his cell.
It was impossible to know which cell she'd ended up in—assuming she hadn't just been killed—but it was worth a try. Oscar turned his attention to his own cell. At first glance it didn't seem like there was anywhere to hide anything: the only features were a bedroll and a bucket, but he checked the lining of the bedroll anyway.
You've slept there. If there was anything out of the ordinary about it you'd have felt it already, don't you think? Ozpin said. Try the walls.
Oscar ran a hand over the wall. There were plenty of nooks and crannies. He felt something sticking out of one of them and pulled it out, then moved closer to the cell door to inspect them in the dim light.
"Hey guys? I found some bobby pins. Do either of you actually know how to pick a lock?"
"Nope," said Neptune.
"How hard can it be?" Sun asked.
Surely Ozpin knew, having lived however many hundreds of lives.
Never learned. It would have been useful a few times, I suppose, but I never got around to it. But Sun's right: how hard could it possibly be?
/-/
"Where is everybody?" Weiss asked.
Haven was a sprawling campus on the plateau atop the mountain, and though they couldn't see every corner of it it was awfully silent.
"Probably in class," Yang said. "It's got that school-day haze, you know? Makes me tired. Barely even need the lecture to fall asleep."
"When have you ever slept in class?" Weiss asked.
"Port's lectures. Sometimes Oobleck's. A few of Uncle Qrow's back at Signal too."
"Think I woulda noticed."
"Not when you were hungover," Ruby said.
Yang shrugged and nodded her agreement.
"Hm. Fair point."
They passed into the central complex, through the main hall and into the back corridors past lecture halls and teacher's offices, following Qrow's lead. Weiss glanced into an awards cabinet as they passed. She didn't recognise any of the names.
"It still seems too quiet," Blake said, peering through the window into an office. It was dark and empty.
"Didn't you contact Professor Lionheart? He was going to meet us, wasn't he?" Ruby asked.
"Mmm." Qrow narrowed his eyes. "Something's wrong. Come on." He picked up the pace, then broke into a jog. The distinctive click of Ember Celica had Weiss reaching for Myrtenaster before remembering it was in pieces in her pack.
Qrow skidded to a halt in front of regal double doors in a waiting room and drew his weapon. He waited a moment until they were all in position around him, then took a deep breath and prepared to breach the door.
Weiss' pulse pounded in her ears. She desperately wished for a weapon, and as useful as Lorian was the lengthy conversations she had with his brother every time they were summoned were starting to get on her nerves.
She prepared a glyph anyway.
Qrow made his move, and three things happened all at once.
A tall man with greying hair and a beard—presumably Professor Lionheart—opened the door from the other side and was so shocked at the sight that he gasped and fell backwards.
Qrow, his foot aimed at the space where the door had been, was unable to stop his kick without throwing his balance completely and ended up flat on his butt.
Ruby yelped and almost dropped Crescent Rose as her scroll began to violently buzz in its pouch on her belt.
"It's Jaune!" Ruby said, waving the scroll around excitedly. "Ooh, it's been forever!"
"Four months," Blake corrected, deadpan.
"Jaune!" She answered the call and his face flashed up on screen, Nora's squeezed into frame next to his. "Where are you? Are you close?"
"We're—"
"Have you ever heard of knocking!?" Lionheart asked, clutching at his chest.
"Ever heard of a schedule? You were supposed to meet us." Qrow said, climbing to his feet.
"Ever heard of common courtesy? We're trying to have a conversation!" Jaune said, to a supportive cheer from Nora.
"We're landing in ten minutes," Ren said from somewhere behind the scroll's camera.
"We just got here too!" Ruby said. "We're at Haven now."
"We'll meet you there."
"No use waiting," Qrow grumbled, pulling Lionheart up. "Just stay on the call. Catch up afterwards. Is Vengarl with you?"
"He's… no."
"Never mind that," Blake said, stepping forwards. "Where is everybody? Isn't school supposed to be in session?"
"Everybody's out on field missions," Professor Lionheart said. "Grimm activity has been up since the fall and the council has put a lot of pressure on the school to counter it."
"Everybody? Even the first-years?" Weiss asked.
"Accompanying professional huntsmen or members of the faculty, yes," Lionheart said. "It seemed a good compromise. A day in the field is worth ten in a classroom, as you should know from experience." His eyes panned over them. "Qrow told me about you all. A… pleasure. Leonardo Lionheart, at your service."
"Forget the pleasantries," Qrow said. "Vendrick's seal is unaccounted for and they have one of the Maidens. You can't just empty the school! Who's guarding the relic?"
"Qrow!" Lionheart hissed. "The children!"
"I mean, we know," Jaune said. "You guys know about the Maidens too, right?"
"Had that talk, yeah." Yang said.
"And the—?"
"Yup." She drew out the vowel and popped the 'p'. "Relics too."
"You told them?" Lionheart asked.
"Well, the Schnee's weird ghost friend did some of it, but yeah," Qrow said. "I told them."
"What ghost?" Nora asked. "Is it a friendly one?"
"Sort of," Weiss said. "What's this about Vendrick?"
Lionheart sighed. "Why don't you all come in and we start from the beginning, one at a time? This is getting… confusing."
/-/
Winter was falling, and had been falling for quite some time.
How long, exactly, wasn't clear. It was very dark, and the pit had been indoors regardless, so she couldn't use the sun or the moon as a timepiece. Her scroll was another option, but if she dropped it she doubted it would survive impact. At some point in the fall she'd begun counting the seconds, but around four-hundred she'd tired of the exercise and resigned herself to the fact that she was falling, that she had been falling for an immeasurable length of time, and that she was likely to continue to fall for a while longer yet.
So she wasn't certain how long she'd been falling when she saw the ground beneath her. She conjured a series of glyphs to slow her descent before she alighted on the floor of the cave. She spotted Gilderoy's eyes glowing in the dark above her, and she managed to get one glyph in to soften his landing before he struck the ground.
He managed to land upright, but his knees buckled and he cursed. Ash particles billowed up around him.
"Are you okay?" Winter asked, retrieving her scroll from her pocket and activating the torch function.
"I guess Polendina bothered to install pain receptors. Give me a minute."
Winter nodded.
Gilderoy sat on a low brick wall nearby. "The pit was already freezing over again when I followed you. I guess you managed your magic trick."
"I'm not sure what I did, exactly," she said. "I don't think I was responsible for much of it, though." It'd been Raime's doing. His ghost, anyway, or some other conjuration of him. A memory, perhaps. The last she'd heard of Raime he'd fallen from an Atlesian battleship, locked in combat with the monster that'd once been Vordt.
Gilderoy nodded slowly, then rose to his feet again. "Do you think this is it?" he asked, glancing around.
"It?"
"The Ringed City."
"It's not much of a city."
Small ruins jutted up from the ground all throughout the cave, and there was a circle of stone steps descending towards the cave's approximate centre. When she approached, she could feel warmth emanating from it, as though embers lay just beneath the ash and the dust. But when she brushed some of it away with her foot, there was nothing to uncover.
"This way, I think," Gilderoy called. He'd explored up the other end of the cave, and his eyes were illuminating a blasted chapel. It was likely the source of the ruins: pieces of the roof and one of the walls must have been sent flying across the cavern.
The stones within were scorched. In the middle of the room a tunnel descended deeper into the earth, and there were broken shackles mounted on the back wall next to a low table.
"Look." Gilderoy knelt down and picked something up; shining her scroll at it, Winter saw it was the remains of a glass phial. The inside was stained black. Now with her light pointing to the ground she could see other objects glinting among the ash. A primitive aura gauge. A syringe. Specks of shock dust.
Dried blood stained the steps leading into the tunnel below. Winter followed it, shining her light ahead of her; the first thing she saw, leaning against a bend in the wall, was an old hunch-backed man, unmoving. He had a lizard's tail and a pair of long horns.
For a second she stopped in her tracks, alarmed, but then she realised he was dead. There was bruising around his neck. He'd been strangled.
"What is it?" Gilderoy called.
"More unpleasantness," she said drily. She stepped forwards to allow him down behind her and inspected the body closer. She'd thought him a faunus, though it was unusual to have more than one animal trait, but now she saw that the tail and the horns had been grafted to his body, and his hunched back was merely caused by an attempt to do the same with a pair of wings. His eye sockets were empty.
She felt a little sick and pushed on quickly. She heard Gilderoy murmur an expletive or two before following her.
The tunnel wasn't long, and despite being deep underground when they emerged the sky was bright above them, the sun and clouds painting it in hues of yellow. A silent city stretched out before them, surrounded on all sides by a ring of mountains, and the path led down to the top of the city's outer wall.
"That must be it," Gilderoy said.
"Mm."
"Vengarl didn't say where to look, did he?"
"Not in plain terms, no." He'd said a crypt. He'd also said that he didn't know where, exactly, the crypt would be. The Ringed City was not as static as it looked. Space itself shifted, converging and diverging. It wasn't an easy place to navigate: it'd take a while. "It might be worth splitting up," Winter said. "We'd cover more ground."
"Do you think our scrolls will work?"
"I don't see why they wouldn't."
"I don't think we understand magic well enough to assume anything," Gilderoy said, producing a scroll from a slot in his arm and sliding it open.
He tapped a button, then waited.
And waited.
Winter's scroll didn't react.
"Hm. Good call," Winter said, before realising it could be misconstrued as a pun.
Gilderoy didn't pick up on it though.
She was just about to set off down the path when she heard a strange sound coming from the tunnel behind them.
"Do you hear that?" she asked.
"Hear what?"
"From the way we came." She turned around, straining to listen. She heard it again, more clearly this time. Gilderoy cocked his head.
"Is that…?"
"A baby," she said. It was screaming the way only an infant could.
"I think we would have noticed a baby," Gilderoy said.
Winter agreed. "Whatever it is, it's certainly meant to sound like one."
"You think it's a trap?"
"Maybe. I'd say it's more likely the bait." The Ringed City was a prison, she reminded herself, and a magical one at that. Who knew what its architect had set in place to keep its inmates contained?
But just because it was being used to lure them back didn't mean the baby wasn't real.
"I'm going to see what it is," she said.
"I don't think that's such a good idea. We're trying to put the mission first, right? This is just a distraction. There probably isn't really a—"
"Then you can wait here, if you like," she said, scowling at him.
The question shouldn't have been whether they'd spring the trap. It should have been who was going first.
It surprised her how callous he was. His own hubris had distracted him from the mission before, but a child? An innocent? He'd dismissed it out of hand. It was entirely possible he was right to do so, but Winter wasn't about to move on without knowing for sure.
The baby's cries grew louder. On instinct she reached for her weapon but it was back in Loyce somewhere, probably enjoying the warmth of McDuff's workshop. Winter grabbed a loose brick from the wall of the crumbling chapel as she emerged from the tunnel. It was better than nothing.
The cavern was the same as before, vast and empty. Winter felt a cold draught to her right, but the dim light of her scroll only revealed the faint outline of the craggy wall. There wasn't really anywhere for the wind to travel.
The crying was coming from the middle of the cave where she'd landed after the fall. She was painfully aware that the light of her scroll gave away her position—but that she couldn't see at all without it—and that as she approached she could be attacked from any direction. Get in, make sure the child—if it existed—was okay, get out, and do it quickly. That was her plan.
She took a deep breath, then launched herself from a glyph.
Her head hurt.
The next glyph, which was meant to halt her momentum and send her back to the tunnel, sputtered out. Her aura sparked to stop her ankle from breaking as it absorbed the brunt of her landing. The air was cold and dry, and she could hear footsteps somehow echoing in the ash.
But she could see the child swaddled in black silk lying in the middle of the cavern.
The footsteps were long, measured, and horrifyingly close. Winter spun, brick in hand, and threw it in the general direction of the sound. She'd need a hand free in a moment anyway.
Her aim had been good. She heard a scream behind her, or several screams: it spoke with more than one voice, and those voices were not at all in unison. A man's voice—presumably Hodrick's—cried out for Sirris. A woman desperately screamed for Roman, of all people. But there was one voice in particular that caught Winter's attention. It sounded like Vordt's voice, and it screamed the name of a woman Winter did not know.
She recognised none of the other voices or the names they called, or perhaps she just couldn't pick them out: it was a barrage of sound, of bawling and begging and whimpering. And beneath it all… another voice.
Though to call it a voice didn't seem quite right. It was more a void in sound.
Winter scooped up the child and fled.
The shadow didn't like that.
But—even without daring to risk another glyph—she had a head start on it. Her boots kicked up ash behind her, carrying her back to the chapel, around the bend in the tunnel where the strangled man had been—but the corpse had disappeared now, because of course it had—and through the open door at the tunnel's end.
She slammed it shut behind her and dropped the door bolt in place.
Guess we're splitting up after all, she thought.
/-/
"Wine?"
Malgwyn eyed the bottle warily. "I'm not sure I trust it."
"You're right not to," Salem said, not even bothering to pour. "Patches brought it."
"Patches?"
"He hasn't slipped your mind, has he? Completely bald, more of an aspiration to wit rather than any wit itself."
"You don't like him much."
"He does annoy me sometimes, but no. I like him fine. I wouldn't be here if not for him. And he told me everything you had planned for Gwyn. You must remember that, don't you?"
"Do you think he was telling the truth?"
"So you do remember him." She smiled at her little joke. "He wasn't lying. Filianore confirmed it. Quite a grand betrayal. Oz, Patches, Jinn, you and your siblings—except for darling Priscilla, of course—Oceiros and his sons… even Alonne. Even that damn locust prophet. All of you arrayed against Gwyn. But none of you came to me. I daresay I could have found a more elegant solution than locking him away in the Ringed City."
"You'd call his murder elegant?"
"Considering Oz decided to put me there in Gwyn's place, I know better than anyone that it's more elegant," she snapped. "And murder's a very strong word. You were always too merciful for anyone's good. Ironic, really. For all Gwyn's pride and cruelty and arrogance, his downfall was in showing mercy, in finally learning something from you." She scoffed. "It's the worst lesson you could have taught him."
"How so?"
"Come now, Malgwyn. Most of the lives you spared were mediocre. None were great. But some were… well. Awful, really. I can't for the life of me think why you spared Oceiros. The echoes of his faunus hunts are still felt today."
"I can't stay dead, and you can't die. How can't you believe in second chances? Once his crown was taken from him—"
"Oh, spare me. He still did his experiments. He just got sneakier about it." She shuddered. "He was delighted to be my jailer. He thought I'd be the key to understanding immortality. For all his hatred of your father, I was a prize beyond measure."
"I'm sorry if he hurt you."
"You should be sorry for giving him the chance."
Solaire would have stuck to his principles. Lucatiel would have taken Oceiros' head, and she was angry that Malgwyn hadn't. That he wouldn't even apologise for not.
Salem sighed. "I've wondered for a while now why you never asked for my help with Gwyn. Why you went to the likes of Oceiros over me. But I know why. Because you knew what I'd suggest. You just didn't have the strength to condone it, and I suffered the consequences."
"You weren't the only one to suffer," Malgwyn said. "I died. Don't forget that."
"Yet here you are."
/-/
Mr Arc left out most of the details of his team's time in Atlas, telling his friends they could talk about it later, but Leo was relieved to hear that James had sent someone to find Vendrick's seal, and that Vengarl himself was negotiating with the Spring Maiden.
He was less relieved to hear that Vengarl had gone to Brume to do so. Leo was well aware that the Branwen Tribe kept an outpost there. Qrow seemed uncomfortable at the thought, as did his niece, especially when Jaune mentioned Raven by name, though he didn't seem to make the connection between them.
"But none of that matters. It's all being taken care of. What about Cinder?"
"I daresay it does matter," Lionheart says. "There's value in finding Vendrick's seal to secure the relic, but gathering the relics in Atlas? James' plan is too reckless. Raven isn't a match for Vengarl, not anymore. And we don't even know where Oz is."
"Oz could be right under your nose and you wouldn't know. You didn't check in with him for over a year, Leo."
"There was nothing to check in about."
"Seems to me there was," Yang said. "It just slipped past you. Cinder was with the exchange students from Haven."
"We pulled her files—and her team's—after the fall. Lies and forgeries, all."
"Those forgeries had to have come from somewhere," Ruby said. "They needed a forger in Vale too, so it's not like they did it all themselves. There must be a trail to follow."
"I've… well." Despite himself, Leo's eyes flickered to the desk. "I've looked into as much as I can, but with all the huntsmen away I didn't have the manpower for a proper investigation."
"Send us the files. We'll look into it," said Jaune.
"Hang on, let's not jump in head-first just yet," Qrow said. "Leo's right. Vengarl shouldn't have gone to Raven alone: nothing he can offer could make her give up the Maiden. And who did Jimmy send after the seal? Where is it? It was supposed to be lost after the war. We need to prioritise here. Cinder's a known variable, and it's safe to say she'll come here looking for the relic sooner or later. Everything else is still up in the air."
"Ironwood sent Weiss' sister and Gil, I think," Jaune said. "Vengarl didn't tell us where, though."
"How's Winter doing?" Weiss asked.
"I honestly have no idea. She seemed okay last we saw her, but she seemed okay straight after waking up from a two-ish-day coma too so I don't even know how to tell with her."
"What!?"
"Can we stay focused, please?" Leo asked. Gods, it was like herding cats. "Who is this 'Gil'?"
"Oh, right. Gilderoy Ornstein. He's still alive. Should have mentioned that."
"Who?" Blake asked.
"Penny's friend, remember?" Ruby said.
"Penny had friends other than you?"
"Art's partner?" Yang offered.
"Wasn't that Ciaran?"
"The guy who got torn apart by the giant Nevermore on Amity!" Nora said.
"Oh. Him. Good for him. How'd he end up in Atlas?"
"And how didn't he die? He looked pretty dead to me," Ruby said.
"You can talk about all that later," Qrow said. "I dunno about Gil, but I'll give the Ice Queen the benefit of the doubt. Not Vengarl though. Not at his age, and not up against Ray."
"He seemed pretty confident," Ren said.
"Vengarl's always been too sentimental for his own good, and he's known her for almost twenty years. She's not the person he thinks she is. Without a maiden of our own on our side, Cinder will always have the advantage. We can't risk leaving this to Vengarl alone."
"We could kill two birds with one stone," Jaune suggested. "If we kill Cinder, one of you will probably end up with her powers, right?"
"Dibs," Nora said.
Leo ignored her. "That's a big 'if'. We can't divide our attentions, and going after Cinder is the bigger risk."
"It might not be such a bad idea." Qrow frowned. "Spring's had years to hone her skills by now. Cinder's had a few months. And Spring has Raven and a whole bandit tribe around her; Cinder just has those two brats. She'll just be harder to find, that's all."
Leo pursed his lips, then nodded. "I'll forward their files to your scrolls. And if there's any other way I can help—"
"You do that," Qrow said. "Let's go, kids."
They filed out. Ruby chattered quickly with Jaune on her scroll, organising to meet somewhere, before hanging up and turning back to Leo before the door closed behind her. "It was nice meeting you, Professor."
"Likewise."
The door clicked shut.
"I have to say," Cinder said, her voice a little thin over the desk's speakers, "I didn't expect the Arc boy to be so invested in murdering me. It's almost cute."
/-/
Qrow was in a bar.
It didn't surprise Raven one bit. Even in the good old days he'd had a darkness in him: a general disdain for the world at large, and one not unearned given how utterly unfair his semblance was. Still, it was the hand he'd been dealt and for a long time he'd made the best of it. But in hindsight it'd always seemed inevitable that he'd turn to substance abuse eventually.
As far as vices went, alcohol wasn't as bad as it could have been.
It still wasn't great.
He hadn't noticed her. She hadn't opened the portal too close to him, and she'd waited until he was some distance from Yang to do it. More eyes meant more chances to be seen.
Yang was somewhere higher up the mountain now. Raven could sense her. She was fairly sure she could see the house she was in from below, though she had to squint.
She supposed she'd spent enough time on Qrow. More than enough, really. His loyalty wasn't in question, and his methods weren't particularly hard to predict. Yang was the wildcard. Yang and her team, new as they were to the grand conspiracy.
And Leo, she added as an afterthought.
Not so much his loyalty as his competence—the previous maiden had fled with hardly any resistance from the headmaster—but still. Worth keeping an eye on him.
She was just about to take off and fly up the mountain when a figure caught her eye. A bald boy with slanted eyes.
He was heading into the bar.
Fuck.
Curiously, his semblance—the ability to alter his apparent age—was not what kept Patches immortal. Nor could it give him a full head of hair, which made Raven wonder if he'd been bald his entire life.
Raven hopped off her rooftop perch and glided down just below the bar's open window. She thought, as she flitted past it, that Qrow turned towards the movement, but by then she was hiding beneath the sill.
"Excuse me?"
It was Patches' voice. It hadn't broken, so he'd probably aged himself back to about eleven or twelve. Voice aside he still could have passed for an adult, thanks to his perpetual lack of hair.
Raven guessed he'd been bullied in school.
Hell, she would have bullied him.
She heard Qrow chuckle not long afterwards. "How old are you, pipsqueak? Thirteen? Or thirty?"
Raven stifled an amused caw.
"Not really sure," Patches answered. "See, there's this old guy living in my head now, so I'm closer to the former but he's probably closer to the latter. Closer being… relative."
"Elaborate."
"Uh, well… he says he'd like his cane back? Whatever that means."
Raven didn't have a bond with Ozpin, so she didn't know where he was. But she was absolutely, one-hundred-percent, without-a-doubt certain that Oz hadn't reincarnated in Patches of all people. Oz reincarnated in like-minded young men. Patches was neither like-minded nor young, and—according to some—closer to 'a pile of stinky trash in human form' than a man, although Jinn had probably been voicing her opinion rather than an absolute truth.
But even if—somehow—Oz had really ended up in his head, Patches would have sooner found a way to kill himself than cooperate.
"What's your name, kid?" Qrow asked.
"Osborne."
"Hm. Good to see you again, Oz."
For fuck's sake, Qrow.
Me: not every character needs to have connected backstories and hinting that they do is a cheap and lazy way of building mystery
Also me: sulyvahn screwed over one of roman's friends lmao it's mystery time
Seeing as I sent Watts to Atlas early, Cinder is overseeing the Mistral stuff, which I guess is one way of explaining why Leo's sending out even the students to die: Cinder's more recklessly ambitious than Watts is. She's pushing for more, and sooner.
Yes, I put Oceiros and his invisible baby in the Demon Prince arena, which was where the Ivory King's arena should have been. Reality can be whatever I want.
Professor Vayn is based on Desert Pyromancer Zoey. I gave her a clairvoyancy semblance purely out of spite for the word 'pyromancy', which, based on its root words, should actually mean 'the use of fire for the purposes of divination' rather than 'the conjuration and psychic control of fire' (pyrokinesis is the more fitting term for the latter).
I acknowledge that the meanings of words aren't static, but sometimes I have to indulge my prescriptive tendencies, dammit.
Next chapter - March 8th. Should have some RWBY + JNR + 'Osborne' shenanigans, some more of Oscar and the Junior Detectives, and some more of the Ringed City arc.
