AN: The first half of this chapter is in first person for flashback purposes, and it will probably be the only time I actually do this because it made the chapter significantly longer to actually write. Sorry for the wait, I am going to aim for monthly updates for this unless my muse hits me really hard over the head. This will be the last chapter of the story that doesn't have Jaune in it for a while, so fluff galore next chapter.

Some Reviews I should respond to. the guest that asked about the Grimbone, in my version of Remnant, Grimbone refers to mainly the masks and armor plates Grimm has. before they disintegrate you can harvest the armor and use it like any other material. to Gunblade2021 thanks, RWBY's world-building is whack and I have no idea why I'm trying so hard with the world-building on a crackfic.

To everyone else I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

I was a much younger man back when I first met your mother. Fresh out of Beacon and ready to do some good in this world. My first assignment as a full-fledged huntsman brought me to Mistral. Something you probably don't understand about Mistral Ruby, and something Team JNPR as well as Miss Belladonna and Miss Schnee can attest to is that Mistral is a declining nation. It has been steadily declining since the great war after it was forced to pay reparations to Vale and Vacuo. Because of the statutes and limitations put upon Mistral, it has been struggling to train Huntsman and Huntresses to the extent that most Mistrali don't even bother going to Haven unless they absolutely have to, instead opting to come to Beacon or go to Atlas for training.

It's gotten so bad that Northern Mistral has been nicknamed Southern Atlas, but that's enough history for you, I am merely setting the stage so to speak after all. This decline has been an ongoing problem like I said, and it's because of this decline that I found myself in South-Western Mistral, deep within the forest of Hinoki.

I had been tasked with going into the forest and performing a standard purge, something you're father and uncle have no doubt had to do on Patch a number of times if your nodding is any indication. I was told to clear as many Grimm as I could within a week and then return to Vale. it may seem suicidal, sending one man to clear an entire forest nearly the size of a continent but I wasn't the only huntsman in the area doing the job, I was given a specific section of forest to clear, and a week to do so, while others were assigned other sections...

Why are you looking at me like that? What do you mean I'm "less cool" now? I may be a strong Huntsman but no one can clear an entire forest on their own, especially the one covering the entire west coast of Anima!

Ahem now where was I? Ah yes, so I had been going at it, as you kids like to say, for quite some time. It had been three days of clearing Grimm and camping out before I finally met her. I had just finished beheading a King Taiju with my claymore when I felt a small sting on the back of my head, followed by the thunk of something hitting the forest floor below my feet. I looked down and saw an acorn lying on its side.

Before I could even process that new bit of information, the sound of giggling filled the now silent forest, I quickly located the cause of the laughter, there, sitting up in the treeline above was the, at the time, Six-year-old Summer Rose. The moment I noticed your mother, her giggling evolved into full-blown laughter, She let out a rather unladylike snort as she leaned back and slapped her knee.

Your mother, Ruby, If I may be so bold, was a gremlin. She looked the part as well, her clothes were old, much too small for a growing girl her age, her hair was dark red and matted from lack of proper care, and she was covered in a fine layer of dirt. It was most unbecoming If I do say so myself! Don't look at me like that! She was filthy and I dare say if she hadn't met me that day she would have STAYED filthy.

Luckily for her, she had happened to live in the section of the forest I had been ordered to clear…

What's that? Oh yes, Ruby, Your mother most definitely lived in those woods, but let me continue please, you're rushing ahead, as usual.

After her laughter had subsided I cleared my throat and asked her, in MIstrali. "Why hello, Young Miss, what brings you to the forest on this fine day?"

"Uhh." Her eyes widened at the question as if she didn't expect the person she had pelted with an acorn to be so cordial with her, "I umm...I live here?"

Sensing an opportunity to "break the ice as it were" I smiled at her "Are you asking me or telling me?"

That caused her to pout, in an expression not too dissimilar to your own might I add. "Telling!"

I laughed and bent over to pick up the acorn she had thrown at me, I quickly tossed it back to her, which made Summer yelp in surprise as she tried to catch it. Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for me she lost her balance on the branch and fell with a shocked scream, only to be caught by yours truly in a display of great skill might I add!

What? I'm allowed to brag Miss Rose!

…

Anyway, I quickly caught her and tried to not recoil in disgust at how filthy she was, I looked down at her in her big silver eyes and said the first thing that came to mind…

"You're filthy."

That caused her to start pounding at my chest with her tiny fists and start throwing around some very colorful MIstrali language, specifically curse words from Argus, which narrowed down the region of Mistral she was from in my mind.

After she had calmed down (or wore out her vocabulary of cuss words I still don't know to this day), I set her down and before she could run away I asked if she wanted anything to eat.

Something you will learn once you get further into your training as a huntress Ruby is that hunger, true gnawing hunger, is a very powerful motivator. Especially for one as young as your mother was. I want you to understand this, Your mother was shorter than you by the time she was fifteen. By the time she was an adult she barely reached past five foot, five. That is what happens when you spend a year in a forest surviving on what you can, you are going to be taller than her by the time you're seventeen, and by estimates, you'll still have a good few inches to grow before you're done.

So you better believe she sat down immediately once the offer of food was made, that's how starved she was. It didn't matter that I had a sword bigger than she was, It didn't matter that she just saw me butcher a King Taiju, It didn't matter that I was a stranger. I had offered her food, and to a girl, especially a young Mistrali girl who barely understood Mistrali traditions, that was enough for her.

In Mistral, offering bread and salt is a tradition followed by almost everyone, so much so that it even bled into Menagerie and Atlas to an extent. I doubt you'll see Miss Schnee offer it to anyone, but watch team JNPR when you enter their room at some point.

One of them WILL offer you food, Mister Arc might not, since his family is more Atlesean than Mistrali, but Miss Nikos, Miss Valkyrie, and Mister Ren will definitely do so. The Mistrali are very hospitable people, and Your mother, young as she was at least understood that. So offering her food instead of shooing her away or attacking her was already a green light for her to trust me.

I'm eternally grateful that she did.

If she had been from anywhere else, she would have reacted much differently. If she had been from Vale she would have stayed for food long enough to fill her pockets and run. If she had been from Vacuo she would have tried to stab me and run. If she had been from Menageire she would have just fled, and I don't want to even mention what Atlas does to children without guardians…

Anyway, being the Mistrali girl she was, she sat down and waited for me to provide the promised nourishment to her. So I quickly got to work, I set up a ring of rocks for a small fire, and before I lit it I offered her the only provisions I had on me at the time. I...am embarrassed to say that I have quite the sweet tooth, I drink more hot chocolate and sweetened coffees than I care to admit...my Doctor likes to joke that my veins are seventy percent caffeine and thirty percent chocolate.

So, It shouldn't surprise you that I handed a six-year-old girl a very VERY large bag of cookies.

Ruby, I implore you to never mention any of what I am about to say or tell you to your father, your mother loved him, truly, but she was very secretive about her childhood for a reason. If he finds out that I am the reason for her and by extension your cookie addictions he will find a way to poison my hot cocoa again, so please, keep this between us?

Your mother was ecstatic, she immediately grabbed two? Maybe three cookies and stuffed them in her mouth with glee. I didn't really stop her, the poor dear looked absolutely famished, that was my first error when dealing with your mother. Like I had said, your mother was starved, not enough to where she looked like skin and bone, mind you, but enough to need proper nourishment and food management before she ate certain things. Chocolate and sugar are a few things that starving people should avoid, the moment your mother finished her fourth cookie she started to go into shock.

I quickly abandoned my efforts to start a fire to rush over to her side. I didn't have anything on hand to treat what was ailing her, and I knew for a fact that there was no real civilization for miles that could help her in time. So I did the only thing I could at the time, I unlocked her aura.

Ah, Good, your gasp of shock means your father hasn't been negligent in his teachings of aura and the lore behind its use. As you no doubt know, unlocking someone's aura is a very intimate act, it requires a familiarity between the person unlocking the aura and the person having their aura unlocked. Doing so when you don't have any connection whatsoever can lead to a multitude of problems for both individuals. It can be as minor as a connection between the two, a soulbond if I were to be so crude, or it could end up as bad as a sharing of memories, a sharing of the self as it were.

But I had to risk it, This girl that I had just met, someone innocent, might die because of my folly, I had to risk it! So I placed a calming hand on her forehead, and spoke the words spoken to every huntsman and huntress since time immemorial, and hoped beyond hope that doing so would save her.

It wasn't a sure thing, aura does many wondrous things for a person. It can heal wounds, prevent illness, you understand all this. Something that aura wasn't well known for at the time though, was boosting your metabolism and balancing the chemical makeup in your body. Your mother was suffering what is known as Refeeding Syndrome, she was severely malnourished, so suddenly introducing sugar, and a lot of it, into her system at once sent her body into immediate shock and like I said earlier, caused her heart to start failing.

Once her aura was activated though, her heart began to beat regularly again, and after a few minutes, she was breathing regularly again. Once I had managed to get her into a sitting position, I gave her mineral water and told her to drink it slowly. I took the cookies from her and we sat in silence as I started the fire.

She wasn't better, not by a long shot but her aura was keeping the effects of the Syndrome at bay, though I knew she'd need actual medical help within the next few days, an aura can do many things but keeping a problem like Refeeding Syndrome at bay took constant use of aura, so getting her to a hospital within the next few hours had become a top priority for me.

I looked at her "We need to get you to a hospital." she paled at that and shook her head.

"No!" she waved her hands in front of her face rapidly "No hospital! They'll take me back to Kokuo!"

It took me a moment of looking over my mental map of Mistral to realize that Kokuo was not a town or village, but a person, and I asked as much. "Who is Kokuo?"

It took her a moment as she sipped her water slowly, wincing at the pain in her stomach as she did so before she started to explain who Kokuo was. Apparently, Summer's mother and father had been researchers from Vale, they had come to Mistral two years prior to my meeting her, and had met an unfortunate end at the hand of some bandits while they were out looking over an ancient ruin deep within the jungles of southern Mistral. Summer, then five years old had been sent to live with her mother's sister, Kokuo, who from what Summer had told me at the time, cared very little for her sister's daughter and abused her regularly. Which resulted in Summer running away from Argus and hitchhiked her way south to Hinoki where I met her.

After a few moments of silence, I stood and poured water and dirt on the small fire smothering it. I quietly placed my weapon and pack on my back and hoisted your mother into my arms. She squeaked and I smiled at her, "I won't let you go back to her, we aren't anywhere near Argus anyway, so I doubt anyone's looking for you...umm" it was at that moment I realized I didn't even know her name.

She weakly giggled at what I assume was my very lost look and muttered out a weak "Summer Rose." to which I smiled at her.

"Summer," I began making my way towards Nanshu, the closest settlement to me, about two hours walk for a person wandering through the woods, but for a trained huntsman? Barely a thirty-minute run. "We'll get you fixed up right away and then we can figure everything out from there, okay?" she nodded into my chest and I picked up my pace.

You wouldn't believe it based on my demeanor and gait today Ruby, but I swear to you I broke speed records that day.

We spent a week in Nanshu, I had managed to get ahold of my superiors in Vale and told them that my mission was complete and that I was staying in Mistral to handle a few personal matters, and then I waited.

Your mother recovered quickly, thanks to her aura and the treatments the small town's doctor provided for her, and soon she was back on her feet ready to try and make a break for the forest once more, luckily I had managed to catch her one night as she was getting ready to leap out the second-story window.

"And where do you think you're going?" I said as I entered the room, your mother squeaked and landed unceremoniously on her bed with a thump and a pout.

"Well...I better now! And you say when I better I can leave!" She spoke in broken Valean, though it was her native tongue she hadn't used it in years, something I was trying to remedy for reasons I would soon make obvious to her.

"Well, I said you wouldn't have to go back to your horrid aunt, not that you could leave. Especially not through the window."

She groaned at me, "Where I go then?" She pouted her silver eyes glinting in the dim light of the room. "I have no one, mama gone!" she crossed her arm over her chest "papa gone too, only me."

Now here was the kicker, I nervously rubbed my thumb across my knuckles, a habit I am glad to have broken, and asked "Well, would you like to come back with me to Vale?" the moment I asked that question she looked at me with an intensity no six, nearing seven, year old should.

This girl had been on her own for so long, and she could scarcely believe that a man she had met in the woods, not a week before was offering to basically adopt her.

"You…" she slipped into her Mistrali at that moment "You would do that? Take me with you?"

I nodded at her, quickly walking over to the bed and giving her a side hug. "Of course," I frowned "I feel responsible for what happened to you, and you deserve better than to be shoved off to some orphanage…" I looked down at her and patted her head "After all, I unlocked your aura, that makes me responsible for you, in a way... you're like my apprentice!"

She looked at me with wide silver eyes not comprehending what I was talking about. "Apprentice?" She slowly pronounced the word in Valean, not understanding. "Aura?" she asked, confusion written on her face, and my frown deepened before it turned upright into a smile, I was always a teacher at heart, Ruby, and I think your mother was what really awakened it in me.

I explained everything the best I could, what aura was, what a huntsman was, and what my job was. She didn't really understand, not that I blamed her, she was six after all, but the thing she really latched onto was the idea of Huntsman, she had seen me kill the King Taiju, she had heard some stories of Huntsman from her parents when she was little, though she had forgotten them. So hearing about it from me, and learning about what I did lit something inside her, and she agreed to come with me to Vale, to in her own words "Become a hero."

Ozpin looked at Ruby who stared at him with wide eyes that reminded him so much of her mother it hurt sometimes. "The rest as you say is history. I didn't have an apartment of my own in Vale proper, so we stayed at Beacon in a room provided by the Headmaster at the time, I taught her everything I knew about swordplay, history, math, literature, and so on and when she was ready, she trained to become a Huntress, went to Beacon and eventually graduated and had you." He smiled at her and Ruby grinned weakly back. An awkward silence permeated the two as the fire they sat by crackled lowly in the dark.

After a few moments, Ruby broke the silence. "So you're...like my grandad?"

Ozpin guffawed "Oh now that does make me feel old." he ruffled Ruby's hair much to her annoyance "but yes, technically and legally I could be considered your adopted grandfather, though your mother was legally my apprentice, not my daughter."

Ruby raised an eyebrow at him "Did she call you dad?"

Ozpin recoiled a bit "Yes, quite a few times actually."

"So...you're my grandad."

"I...well" Ozpin didn't fluster easily but honestly Ruby's stare was making it hard not to get embarrassed.

"Grandpa Ozpin!" Ruby quickly launched herself into her newly minted Grandad.

"Please don't call me that…" He groaned good-naturedly, he patted Ruby's back as she looked up from his chest with a grin.

"Grandpa Oz then."

Ozpin sighed through his nose "fine...but only in private."

It was then that the bullhead had finally arrived and Ozpin quickly extinguished the fire they had cultivated. The two made their way into the bullhead and sat down, much closer than they had been before they left.

Ruby still had questions though. "So you said you used a Claymore...but Long Memory isn't a Claymore. So what happened to your old sword?"

Ozpin, who had grabbed a cup of coffee from one of the Pilots grinned "Well, your mother liked to remind me that only knights and kings used, and I quote, really cool swords." Ozpin sipped his coffee "and then said that I should stick to my grumpy old man persona and get something more suited to it, like a cane."

Ruby's jaw dropped, her sweet, caring, wonderful mother had said that? To her dad? Ruby vaguely remembered Yang getting a talking too for disrespecting Papa's age in front of Mama so what the hay mom!?

Ozpin leaned back reminiscing not knowing that he was shattering his poor grandaughter's worldview of her mother with every sentence "She had to have been...twelve? When she said that?" He rubbed his chin "I don't rightly remember but I do remember having her help when I crafted Long Memory, we melted down my old Claymore and used the metal to forge the first version of my cane." he thumped the cane against the floor with a smile "I then used it to teach her how to dodge, she was black and blue for weeks but she thought it was worth it."

Ruby didn't really know what to ask after that...until a memory unbidden reached her mind's tongue and she asked something that had been bugging her since she met the headmaster. "Wait, so is you knowing my mom the reason you could make cookies as well as she could?"

Ozpin raised an eyebrow at that "Are you talking about the cookies brought you after you had fought Torchwick?" at Ruby's nod he continued "Ah yes, those were Summer's I didn't do anything wrong don't throw me in jail! Chocolate Chip Cookies, We made those after she had turned ten and snuck out for the first time in her life."

Oh my God, Mom was like Yang. "What did she do?" Ruby dreaded the answer.

"She snuck into a twenty-four-hour convenience store and bought out their entire stock of cookies."

…okay so maybe Mom was like Ruby

"So why was she worried about jail time?" Ruby asked.

"Because she didn't ask if I wanted any before eating all of them, over the course of a week, without telling me." His grip on Long Memory tightened and Ruby swore the bullhead was getting hotter before it cooled. "So, I had a good friend arrest her for cookie theft, Summer didn't know it wasn't an actual crime since she kept falling asleep in her law classes, so she started freaking out about it. Offered to make cookies in recompense, and we found out that she had a talent for it, so I cultivated it."

"What do you mean you? Cultivated it?" Ruby's brain couldn't handle any more mind-blowing revelations, she wanted to just go back to the dorms and snuggle Jaune!

"Just what I said, we practiced making cookies and other sweets for years after that event." sip "how many recipes had your mother shared with you, Ruby, before she passed away?"

Ruby did a quick count in her head before saying that she knew ten of her mother's recipes, Ozpin's smile grew bigger. "Well, your mother had managed to create over two hundred different types of cookies in her lifetime before she died, I happen to have her original cookbook in my office."

Ozpin quickly stuck out Long Memory and jabbed the flat end of it into his Granddaughter's stomach to keep her from completing her lunge. "Excellent lunge, Ruby but we aren't in combat class yet." after she had calmed down he sipped his coffee and continued. "Once we return to Beacon I will, of course, copy it and give you the original, it is yours by right." she gave him a watery smile at that and Ozpin felt like he was on top of the moon, shattered as it was.

The two had arrived at Beacon, and quickly made their way back to his office after Ozpin dismissed Glynda, assuring her that he'd have Miss Rose back to her team soon. He sat Ruby down with a cup of cocoa and went into his room, adjacent to his office, to make copies of the cookbook. A few minutes later he returned and handed the original to Ruby with a smile.

"Now you should head to the forge and get that" he pointed to the wrapped bundle in her arms "Situated before you head to bed, don't worry about being out of your dorms past curfew, I have a note for you to show anyone who would stop you. " he handed her said note. "After that, though you should get some sleep, you'll have to get to work soon if you want to replace Mister Arc's weapon as well as your own."

Ruby nodded and with a quick hug to her grandfather, began to make her way to the elevator before she paused. Turning to him with a grin she asked. "Umm...before I go to bed would you like to come down to the kitchen to help me make some of these." she held up the cookbook "I want to see if I can make Yang the Snickerdoodles she loved so much, and I know Papa liked Mama's white chocolate macadamia nut cookies."

Ozpin gave her a soft smile at that. "Ruby, I'd be delighted." Granddaughter and Grandfather made their way down to the kitchens to create confections that hadn't been made in nearly twelve years.