2 years later

2 years allows for a lot of change. Somethings did remain the same, like Qrow's scheduled visits and Saphron never really liking Qrow but tolerating him while he was here, but there were some big changes, for 1, a 6 year old Lily had started to go to a public school, much to her dismay. Joan wanted her to be able to make new friends other than her brother and sisters as well as hoping she would start becoming more social.

At first she was terrified, she… let's just say she didn't have the best mother and leave it at that, ever since she was adopted she had someone close to lean on, someone to hold her close to calm her of her fears, but now she was separated from them, even if only for a few hours. I didn't help that she was a faunus, after the attack on Jaune she knew that he'd always protector her which, unfortunately, lead to her depending on Jaune for every second of everyday, Jaune didn't mind, of course, but Joan was worried about how it would impact her later in life.

After a lot of talking with her, as well as Jaune agreeing that it was a good idea, she eventually gave in, on the condition that if things were really awful that she would be home schooled just like Jaune.

Saphron and Sam didn't have any changes worth mentioning but Jackie and Jaiden were both 2 years old now and had started to walk, usually clinging to Jaune's legs for support, and Joan was pregnant… Again, she was about 8 months in the process so the house was once again preparing for a new child.

Back to the topic of schooling, Jaune was excelling at home schooling, if fact he was learning so fast it was a little worrying, at random Jaune would remember some ancient knowledge, he didn't remember most of what was received, which was probably for the best. Qrow theorized that it had something with the original genetic mutation, it probably would have provided all the knowledge Jaune needed to know if he had became Salem's puppet. Terrifying as the possibility was it helped Jaune a tremendous amount.

Right now it was a Saturday afternoon and Qrow and Jaune were at the same lake as before, their official training grounds. The season's were starting to change as the winter started to become spring, the ground was covered by lush green grass and a few trees had leaves on them. Jaune had recently started to take an interest with combat, which his parents weren't exactly sure how to take, Qrow offered to teach Jaune the bare minimum and only for self defense and with no weapon by his parents request.

"Keep your stance low, and your elbows out while guarding so you can still see your target.' Qrow instructed him. Jaune nodded but didn't say anything. He threw out a couple of jabs into the air while slowly advancing before coming into contact with a training dummy. Jaune targeted a punch to the dummy's shoulder, chest, and stomach before ending the chain with a haymaker to the dummy's chin, accidentally popping its head off, his strength was really starting to show.

Qrow, who was watching from the sideline, gained a smirk, Jaune was doing every well so far, and every few months he'd find a new ability and commit himself to mastering it, even without being told to, the perfect pupil.

Qrow walked over to Jaune with a small bag full of supplies and a small smirk on his face. "Good job, kid." He said while tossing Jaune the bag.

Jaune turned to face Qrow while taking a water bottle for the bag. "Thanks!" He said with a cheery smile.

It seemed kinda weird to Qrow, how Jaune could switch from being so utterly focused and concentrated to being the same, goofy, kind hearted, kid he's always been, Jaune took a quick sip from his water bottle before returning it to the bag. "What's next?" Jaune asked

"Well…" Qrow started, "You picked up on all of the stuff I had planned for you today, I was expecting you to take longer to learn but you did very well, you clearly have some sort of aptitude for combat."

Jaune's eyes lit up like stars and his body was vibrating from excitement.

Qrow let out a quick chuckle before continuing, "Don't worry, next time i'll bring you more to do, and maybe even something to spar with."

Jaune's eyes lost a little light as his brain started to connect the dots. "Wait!" he shouted, "Next time? Does that mean you're leaving so soon?" the worry and sadness was seeping into his voice.

Both Qrow and Jaune gained a frown, this was always the hardest part. Qorw walked over and petted the top of Jaune's head, Qrow knew it was sorta taboo for him to do such a thing but he just couldn't help it. Qrow's face changed to a smile as a plan formed in his head, "How 'bout this, next time I come to visit I'll stay for an extra-" Qrow cut himself off, earning a confused look from Jaune.

Why did he freeze you ask, because he got that instinct triggering feeling that's been plaguing his mind for the past 2 year. Sometimes it was mild or non-existent, other days it might be relevant but not consuming, and sometimes, like today for example, it would start screaming into his mind that something was wrong. What was more worrying was that he only got the feeling when he was training with Jaune, at first he thought it might have been the boy himself but past experiences with Jaune took him otherwise. He was utterly sick of the feeling, and with his instinct screaming at him so loudly, he decided that today was when he was going to get to the bottom of it.

"Qrow?" Jaune said while pulling on Qrow's shirt in hopes of getting his attention.

Qrow looked down and tried to put on a calm facade, but just by looking into his eyes Jaune could tell something was off. "Nothing for you to worry about kid, I just want to look into something."

Jaune nodded. "Ok," he started, "do you want my help?"

Qrow smiled at Jaune before quickly shaking his head, "Nope, I better get you back home first."

Jaune let go of Qrow's shirt with a smile and quickly started to make his way back home, Qrow following Jaune very closely. When they were at the edge of the tree line that surrounded the lake Qrow spotted a black Raven who was watching them both very intently.

"Shit…"

Jaune looked back at Qrow to see the man was standing entirely still and looking somewhere into the forest, but it didn't explain why he started cursing.

Qrow quickly turned back to face Jaune, determination was clear on his face but for what Jaune had no clue. Before he could even get a word out Jaune's feet were off the floor and trees were whizzing past him. Qrow had Harbinger in shotgun form and was shooting behind himself to gain a speed boost, sometimes using the shotgun to suddenly change direction in mid-aid in order to dodge trees or animals.

"Qrow!" Jaune yelled in panic, "What's happening?!"

He didn't respond but Jaune could hear him whispering a massive amount of profanity under his breath. "Qrow, nothing's following us, you can put me down!" Jaune yelled once actually seemed to get through to him, due mainly to the fact that Jaune was once again on solid ground.

Qrow grasped Jaune's shoulders and made the boy stare straight into his eyes. "Did you see a raven following us?" He said in between breaths of air.

"W-What?"

"Yes or no, Jaune, did you see a raven chasing us?!" Qrow yelled into his face. Jaune's eyes widened, for once he could hear anger in Qrow's voice but he was fairly certain it wasn't directed at him.

"No." Jaune said with all the confidence he could muster. That seemed to calm him down. Qrow closed his eyes and took a couple deep breaths, his hands still firmly on Jaune's shoulder.

"Ok, thank you, " Qrow started, "Run back home and wait for me to get back, if anyone else shows up that's not me, have your dad distract them while you take your mom and your sister and run away, understand?"

Jaune nodded, whatever was happening was clearly various serious.

Qrow smiled once he got confirmation, "Good boy, now go, if the worst comes to past go into the city, i'll find you." Before Jaune got a chance to say anything Qrow was already running back into the forest.

Instead of running Jaune gave his wings a good flap while pumping aura into his legs, once he was a solid height above the trees he scanned the area to see his house was only a short flight away. What would have been a 10 minute walk was a 2 minute flight. Jaune ripped open the glass door that was connected to the kitchen and led to the backyard. Immediately Jaune saw his mother who was just getting started with dinner. Jaune's father was helping her by cutting up something by the sink, whatever it was that he was cutting Jaune couldn't see.

Joan turns to greet the boy and Qrow, but there was the distinct lack of an alcohol smell and Jaune's face was full of worry and fear, adrenaline was making his emotions much clearer. Joan immediately became concerned and rushed over to him. She crouched down to be eye level with him, Noah coming in shortly behind her.

"My son, what's wrong?" she asked while holding his shoulders in place.

Jaune took a few shaky and sporadic breaths before calming down enough to answer. "Me and Qrow were just training in the woods, then we started to walk back home but Qrow saw something in the woods, whatever it was really freaked him about because he just picked me up and ran."

Joan and Noah shared a look of shock and slight fear before turning back to face Jaune. "Where's Qrow now?" Noah asked.

"I don't know, he went back into the woods before I could stop him. The last thing he told me was that if someone other than him came out of the woods, we should run into the city and that he would find us later."

Noah sighed before stroking the back of Jaune's head. "Good boy." He gave Jaune praise but it was more so to help calm Jaune's nerves. Noah then stood up and turned slightly to address Joan.

"Stay with the girls, I'll grab my rifle." Noah told her in a commanding tone. She gave Noah a quick kiss on the cheek before semi-running to find the girls. Noah then turned back to Jaune and crouched back down. "You stay here and watch for Qrow ok? I'll be right back."

Jaune just nodded in response. With that, Noah rushed upstairs as Jaune pressed his face up against the glass door to the backyard.

Meanwhile

Qrow was worried, like really worried, that fact that he was worrying was worrying. Needless to say his brain was starting to work in overdrive. Most of his thoughts were questions, what was Raven doing here, what did she want, how long had she been watching? Qrow knew how his sister thought, the first possibility was that Raven had somehow learned of Jaune's grimm DNA and was planning to kill him before he became a possible threat, second, she was was just keeping tabs on all his endeavor, but she'd never done that before so that was unlikely, and third, and most terrifying of all, she was planning to kidnap the young lad and was going to use him for her own clan, Raven valued power over everything else and if she was the same potential that Qrow saw than... well Qrow would rather die than ever let his bitch of a sister take Jaune away from his family.

Now it was just a matter of finding her and getting answers. He was in the training area in hopes of finding clues, hell, maybe he would be unlucky enough that she'd still be there. He looked around for a while until he heard a ruckus from behind a bush. Behind said bush was Raven, unfortunate, but also the disintegrating corpse of a seer. Now that did throw Qrow off, why in the world would there be a seer here and why would his sister take care of the pest.

Before anymore thoughts could plague Qrow's mind Raven called out to him, "If you're gonna spy on me at least do a half assed job of it." she said without turning to face him. The comment made a vein bulge out of his forehead. He walked out from behind the bushes to confront his sister, his right hand was hovering over Harbringer's handle.

Once he was fully out of the bushes Raven finally turned to face him, the good news was that Raven was here without her accursed mask on, no mask meant this wasn't clan business which allowed Qrow to relax a little, the bad news was that Raven was here in the first place and she was stood over a grimm corpse, both were scary in there own right but both of them that once was terrifying.

"What do you want?" Qrow asked, his voice was clouded with anger and concern. Raven didn't respond right away, instead she looked him up and down, analyzing every little movement he made.

She sighed before letting out her response, saying, "After I heard that Yang took Ruby into the forest to look for me, I decided to start keeping tabs on a few people, you included. This place was one of the few places you returned to on a semi-regular basis."

By the end of it Qrow had removed his hand from his weapon but the veins in his forehead were bulging red in a comical fashion. The action might have been comical but the situation was still very serious.

'Why did Raven Care now? After all the horrible things that she's done, she chooses to keep track of her family now.' the thought itself just made Qrow angrier. "You still didn't answer my question. What do you want?" This time he asked with an edge, all but demanding answers.

Raven actually frowned slightly, she knew that reconciliation would be difficult, if not impossible, but she didn't expect this strong of a reaction, the boy must have been more important then she initially thought. "I'm not your enemy here, Qrow, I've been helping you with that kid a while." she tried.

"For some reason I find that difficult to believe." Qrow shot back.

Raven looked down and shook her head. "Whether you knew it or not, these seers have been showing up for a month." She said while crushing the remaining seer under her boot.

Qrow had no response for that, Qrow had always known that something was off, he'd known for a while, but he could never find what it was. In all honesty the seer made sense in his mind, he knew that Salem would be curious to see how her little experiment went. If Raven was telling the truth then there was no telling how much Salem actually knew.

Qrow knew he couldn't attack Raven, so instead he just let out a long sigh while running his hand through his hair. After a while Qrow continued, "Why are you doing all this?"

That made Raven smirk, and put Qrow on alert all over again. "That kid, I know he's a faunas but I've never seen a faunus with more than 1 animal trait, let alone a faunus that could fly. The boy is clearly special, I'm just wondering how special."

Qrow closed his eyes and took a second to absorb all she said. She said she had never seen a faunus with more than 1 trait which meant that she hadn't seen Lilly, which was good, she also called him a faunus so she didn't know that he had grimm DNA.

He opened his eyes again and met Raven's gaze. "You can have him."

Raven snorted before saying, "Fine by me, too much responsibility."

Qrow let out 1 finally sigh, hoping to be able to end this conversation, "Alright, now if you'll excuse me, I left a young boy alone in the woods by himself." Qrow turned and left before Raven could get anything else in.

Jaune had only been waiting for about 20 minutes but it felt like days, Joah was keeping the girls out of the kitchen and trying to act like nothing was wrong while Noah was on the roof of the Arc household and was scanning the tree line for movement.

The girls were really confused and were constantly questioning their mother, they just wanted to see Jaune, who was still in the kitchen for some reason, and where was Qrow, he usually said goodbye before he left but he was nowhere to be seen, Maybe he forgot something, that had to be it, in fact the girls could hear the back door open and the smell of whisky wafting through the air.

I'm sorry for the massive delay, I've got school stuff that I need to worry about and it took a while for me to actually get everything written and organized in the ways that I wanted. On the plus side, my summer break begins in about a month so I'll have more time to work on the story.

Again, I'm sorry but I hope that his chapter starts to make up for it, sorry about this chapter being a bit on the longer side.

Thank you all for reading and I do hope you enjoyed,

Th3TexRex.