Chapter One: Of The Universe, College Roommates Who Are Also Lifelong Friends, And Unfortunate Astronomical Phenomena.
In the beginning the universe was created. Whether or not this was a fortunate occurrence is not the focus of the story, but it will, possibly, at some point in the future, come up again. This remains to be seen. In the present, there are roughly 7.8 billion people upon the planet Remnant. This is, in the very near future, going to change, and that will come up again very shortly. Of those 7.8 billion people, there are only a few with whom we will directly concern ourselves. Don't worry. I am fairly sure they cannot hear us…
I do need to continue this narration. I will, for the moment, not come up again as a player in this tale.
Of the few people with whom we are concerning ourselves with, one individual stands out to a degree simply because he doesn't talk that much. Let us begin with him. Lie Ren (Ren, to his friends) was a very complex individual, but he retained the very odd character trait of keeping a vast majority of this to himself. His best friend and roommate, Nora, did not appreciate this. She felt a myriad of things, but the exact nature of how she felt about Ren was perhaps the only thing she did not disclose to him. On one particular morning, which happened to be January first, the pair woke up in their apartment, having finished ringing in the new year just the previous evening. Or was it morning..?
Ren awoke, stretching, groggily turning to Nora's bed to make sure it hadn't exploded. Nora was incredibly intelligent, and had a truly frightening affinity for explosions. Add all the fireworks they had set off last night, and a myriad of possibilities appeared in his mind that he would have been perfectly fine not thinking of. The bed was, fortunately, still there. Nora, however, was not in it. Reasoning that she must have gone to the living room, where all the consoles were, Ren rolled to the opposite side of his bed, perfectly willing to fall asleep for a few more days. Hours. He meant hours. Honest. He was greeted with a sight that was decidedly not usual. Nora's fully awake, grinning visage.
No, he did not hit soprano there. Shut up, Nora.
"RISE AND SHINE, REN! We. Have. Plans~!"
Ren decidedly did not rise and shine. He did not employ all his years of martial arts training to flip out of the room. He was too tired for that. All other options exhausted, he resorted to the last sanction imaginable. Talking.
"Nora? Why were you waiting at my bedside?"
Nora giggled maniacally. "Come on, silly! It's time to start working on our midterm again! School starts back up in four days, and you know how Oobleck gets!" Both her and Ren started, then, in unison repeated: "Doctor Oobleck, thank you very much. I didn't earn the PhD for fun, you know".
Silence reigned. For about four seconds. Then there was laughter. Lots of it. Tears in his eyes, Ren barely managed to control himself long enough to gasp out "How many times did Yang mess that up?" before devolving back into a howling monstrosity of noise. Nora had no response to this. Yang was still messing it up, and every time she did so they were all cordially invited to another reminder that he was Doctor Oobleck. The man in question was one of Beacon University's finest professors, and the head of the whole mechanical engineering department. Ren and Nora, along with Yang and all of their other comrades had him for multiple classes, and some were even majoring in his field. That being said, to say the man was anything short of eccentric would be tantamount to claiming the sky was currently transforming itself into an oil painting.
Sighing, Ren resigned himself to the land of the fully conscious, much as he would have liked to do otherwise. Morning was, in his opinion, a time at which only hardcore masochists and sadists were awake, and he didn't like to think about where that placed the vast majority of his friends and teachers. "May we at least catch the daily news first, Nora? Vale might be putting out another engineering competition, and as I recall you quite enjoyed the last one."
"Well, with logic like that, how can I say no? Just let me know if there are any sloths, ok?" Nora didn't wait for a response before bounding into the kitchen. Normally, Ren cooked for the pair, but perhaps the one thing he absolutely couldn't not set on fire was hashbrowns, and Nora wanted hashbrowns. Humming to herself, she started the cooktop's heating sequence, only pausing briefly to look over the calculations she and Ren had been busy working on the previous night. This had the potential to change everything. And she was going to enjoy lording over the fact that she'd solved the sequence before he did. Wise and clever Ren may be, she thought, but she truly did have him beat when it came to physics. With her physics and his math, there wasn't anything they couldn't beat.
"Nora? C-could you come here for a moment?"
Ren's uncertain call rang alarm bells in Nora's skull. Ren was calm, cool and collected, handsome-, no that's off topic. Something was wrong. As she entered their living room, the words spoken by the news anchor- Lisa something-or-other- began to register.
"Now, with what is apparently an emergency message to the world, the former leader of the Valean military, and current Headmaster of Beacon University of Combat and Research, Ozpin Green!"
Ozpin Green was a man of seemingly indeterminate age, with gray-silver hair framing an otherwise youthful face. A pair of small spectacles rested on his nose, completing the man's verdant ensemble quite nicely. Something in his eyes, however, spoke of many sleepless nights, as well as perhaps resignation. Ren and Nora, ensconced on the couch and drifting closer together, couldn't help but feel slightly afraid. Ozpin was also the head of the astronomy department, and notoriously reclusive. Why would he speak out in public so suddenly? Sighing, Ozpin adjusted his spectacles, and began to speak in a tone that conveyed nothing but defeat. "People of Vale, no, people of all the nations of the world, I come to you with sad news. Over the past three weeks, I have been tracking a binary pair of asteroids dubbed the Brother Gods. I have reached out to Mistral, Shade, and Atlas Academies' astronomical resources, and through them confirmed my worst fears. Millions of years ago, a dwarf planet crashed into our moon, breaking it into what it is now today. Some of the remains spiraled outward into our solar system, coalescing into the Brother Gods. And now… they are returning to our world. In three months and fourteen days, they will strike our planet at equidistant intervals. I am currently attempting to stop this, but I am, as of now, at a loss on how to do so. It is with sincere regret and sorrow that I must ask you to continue in your jobs, and yet also tell you that, come the fifteenth of March, all our efforts are likely to be for naught. I implore you-"
The signal cut out, replaced by the logo of the Council of Vale. Static was all that accompanied that image, the only accompaniment to the mute horror that pierced the hearts of Ren and Nora, and all the world around them. For a moment, all of the world simply existed in mute silence, bar one particularly stubborn bird that refused to get with the times, and as a result ran headfirst into a cliff. Both Ren and Nora's phones were almost instantly lit up with the telltale pings of notifications pouring in from everyone they knew. Friends, family, staff, everyone seemed to be infused with the same energy. One of panic, that is. Nora got up, quietly, and began to put on her jacket.
Confused, Ren started. "Nora… where are you going?"
Nora turned to him, with a look of perhaps desperation in her eyes, though it was mixed in with hope in a combination that made an odd sort of sense. "Ren, Ozpin was in his office. I saw the gears in the background of the shot! We can… I don't know!" Nora began to pace fervently. If the carpet had a mouth, it most likely would have been groaning in agony due to the sheer amount of force behind each of her steps. "Because we have to do something! Because if we don't, no one else will. I mean, who better to blow up some asteroids then students at a combat and research academy? And if no one does anything, then we're going to have two massive chunks of rock hitting us, and then we won't be able to be together anymore! But not together-together, I mean, just that all the times we could have had will be cut short and I. Will. Not. Stand for that!"
"You're right," Ren said. "We have to do something. I just hope we're not too late…" He was grabbing his coat as he was saying this, which helped to hide the wince when Nora said 'not together-together'. Granted, he'd never exactly made his true feelings clear, but it still stung a bit hearing that. Regardless, Ren thought to himself, now was not the time (even though it was, but we'll get around to that later) and they had to get to Ozpin's office before reporters mobbed the elevators. Fortunately, they had a vehicle that was quite up to the task.
About three and a half miles away, and entirely oblivious to the semi-juvenile chaos that was about to descend upon him, Ozpin made sure he had actually disconnected from the interview, and then let out a heavy sigh. He hoped that there would not be rioting, but perhaps, if there was, his students could use it as crowd-control practice and take their minds off of… off of what he'd just told the world. And it was true enough. In a sense. However, most of the world was still blissfully ignorant of some of the more unscientific workings of reality, and if he was lucky he'd be able to keep it that way. Of course, there was dust, but he'd been able to play that off as a very fortunate form of crystallized chemical over the past two centuries. It was exactly that, and progress towards artificial synthesis was coming along quite nicely, but its original origins were decidedly not tectonic pressures. Not that any of this was going to matter, unless he was able to play precisely the right cards. In front of him, the air began to ripple. An invitation, to talk to someone he hadn't spoken to since the formation of those two asteroids. Flicking a small switch on his chair, he made a series of convoluted gestures with his hands as the blinds around his office closed that no one in this day and age could ever hope to interpret, much less replicate. An acceptance. The air in front of him shifted from what could have been heat haze to an image of the woman he'd once loved. The woman he'd been waging war against almost since the dawn of linear time as it was perceived by wholly three-dimensional beings. Salem.
"Oz, dear. It certainly has been a long time. You never call anymore."
Ozpin shifted irritably. Neither of them had the power to have been responsible for those asteroids, but he'd be lying if he said both of them could capitalize on it in more ways than one.
"Salem. We both know you've known about the Brother Gods as long as I have. Longer than any telescope. Why call now?"
Salem sighed, her stark-white skin seeming to reverberate in tandem with the inky black veins crisscrossing her form. Her hair was intricately braided and segmented into multiple sections, a fad she'd picked up several centuries ago and had never laid to rest. "Because, Ozpin. The rest of the world knows now. And while the shadows of yore are less accessible to me now, this modern world gives me ample opportunities. Why bother telling them?"
"They'd have found out eventually. Get to whatever it is you're proposing. If we start now, we might be able to pool enough power to do something about these."
A chuckle from the mockery of life that was before him. "Oh, Ozpin. Why on Earth would I do that? This is the perfect opportunity to… level the playing field."
Ozpin tensed, and parts of the Wizard finally started to show in his visage. "Any attempt to bring the Grimm back into play would be fruitless. I can control them as easily as you can, now. Why won't you see that this isn't something you can use to regain some of your footing?"
That was a lie, and they both knew it. However, both of them would have to act much faster than normal if they actually wanted to be able to come out of the upcoming pandemonium with anything resembling a foundation of strength. Their war had been going on for millions of years, after all. Anything comparative to a sword thrust usually played out over decades, for them.
"Because," Salem said, "I still have many footholds among the mortals you so desperately protect. Between them and my own power, your empire will soon crumble from beneath, and only you will be left, atop that tower of yours. That beacon."
"I can't wait to see your ruin of a keep collapse on your wailing bones."
"Oh Ozpin, the feeling is always mutual."
The image dispersed. A flick of a switch let the outside world back into his office. And Ozpin stood at the pinnacle of Beacon Tower, the top of his modern-day castle, and began to desperately think.
Far away from all of this, there sat a man at a bar. He isn't going to have a direct impact for a while, but then again, he was never meant to. He really would be a terrible spy if all his clandestine intelligence gathering was done out in the open. Granted, he did very much appreciate the dramatic, the red cape resting on his back was a testament to that. However, a slew of very unfortunate happenings in the man's past bestowed upon him an incredibly strong preference for working alone. Duels in the dark could be dramatic as well. No need for a constant audience, Tai. As he continued to ponder the incredible missions he'd undertaken in the past (most of them decidedly unpleasant), his cell phone, or 'scroll' as was the modern slang, rang. The man nearly spit out his drink, which would have honestly been a waste of good liquor. If Ozpin was calling him -in the middle of a highly sensitive operation over an untapped scroll dammit- then something had gone very much pear-shaped. Knocking back the rest of his drink, which was probably bad for his liver but very much good for his tongue, he quickly strode outside and answered the call.
"Ozpin you put me here with explicit instructions to stay quiet, so if you wouldn't mind telling me exactly what the f-"
"Qrow," A very terse voice said, "do shut up. There is not much time. You've seen the news by now?"
Oh hell. Like the end of the world needed to get any worse. "No, I gouged out my eyes for the hell of it yes I have seen the news by now what the hell do you want me to do about it?!"
"Get back to Beacon. Now. The Witch is about to make her first move."
"How do you know that Sal-, that the Witch is going to make a move?"
Ozpin took a deep breath. "Because, Qrow, today was the first time in over six million years we've spoken. And if she's bold enough to confront me again, she has a plan."
A click. Call ended. Qrow, for that was indeed his name, yes with a Q his parents had an odd sense of humor, took a deep breath. Logically, Salem would attempt a move at Beacon first. Just to unbalance them, make them doubt their actions. He had family at Beacon. Keying a particular sequence into his scroll, he stepped back into the bar, and ordered another drink. It would be only a few minutes until his ride got here, now. Why waste them?