Ruby Rose sat alone in the room, clutching her legs to her chest. She stared through the table in front of her as she rocked herself back and forth in her chair. The echoes of Crescent Rose piercing through Aspen's stomach rang in her mind, and she pinched her eyes shut against the memory. Biting back tears, she buried her face into her knees. She'd… she'd killed her. She'd killed Aspen in front of thousands of people, including the girl's parents. They were her parents, right? They had to be. Why else would they have been there? She was going to get kicked out of Beacon for this, she knew it. She'd messed up, failed her team.
"Miss Rose." Ruby looked up toward the door, and though her vision was too blurry to see who it was, she recognized Professor Ozpin's voice. With a sniffle, she rubbed the tears away from her eyes. The Headmaster stepped up to the table, setting a large plate of chocolate-chip cookies in front of her. Normally, Ruby would have attacked the treats but, after what she'd seen—what she'd done—she didn't have the appetite. Recognizing the young leader's abnormal behavior, Ozpin moved to her side of the table and sat down on the edge. "Ruby," the man said gently, resting his hand on the girl's shoulder, prompting her to drop her gaze again, "I know this isn't easy for you, but I need you to tell me your side of what happened."
Ruby again buried her face in her legs against the memory of Aspen laying on the ground, desperately trying to remove Crescent Rose from her stomach. The girl had watched enough TV and movies to know that it was better not to remove a bullet or a knife unless you had something on hand to stop the bleeding, but that hadn't made pushing back on her scythe any easier to bear. "I screwed up," she whispered, pulling her head away from her knees just enough to speak clearly. "I got scared and I froze. I couldn't stop her from hitting Yang, or from choking Blake, or from throwing Gambol Shroud at Weiss."
"You didn't do anything wrong," Ozpin reassured her, leading the girl to look at him in confusion. "What's important is that you overcame your fear and faced her alone, even though she defeated everyone else on your team. Now, why did you do that?"
Ruby bit her lip. "Because there was no one else. Because I had to protect them."
"And that is exactly what being a Huntress is all about: protecting those who cannot protect themselves despite your own fears."
The girl hung her head guiltily. "Except I… I… I killed her."
"Far from it."
"W-what?" Ruby looked up in shock. "Aspen's still alive?!"
Ozpin nodded. "And expected to make a full recovery."
"B-but how?"
The man stood. "She's a remarkably resilient girl, and the medical team got to her just in time." Ruby was confused. Crescent Rose had gone all the way through Aspen—the image of the tip pushing out against the hoodie was burned into her memory. How could she possibly recover from that, much less survive? "You should also know that both the feeds and the shield around the arena were blacked out before the… incident: What happened in the arena will remain there."
Ruby blinked at the professor as he walked back around the table. "You mean I'm not going to be expelled?"
Ozpin stopped and shook his head. "No. We are continuing to look into what happened but, as I said, you did nothing wrong and are not at fault." He began to leave, but once again paused. "In the meantime, I would recommend you focus on the rest of the tournament." There was a slight gleam in the man's eye that made Ruby feel a bit better. "Perhaps you could start by getting your energy back." The girl looked at the plate of cookies as the man left, still not feeling like eating.
Well, one or two couldn't hurt.
(-)
Oliver rolled his fingers on the table, the staccato of nails on metal offering the only reprieve from the silence in the room. He glanced over at Laurel on his left who was staring silently at the door. Sighing quietly to himself, the gunslinger leaned back in his chair. "What do you think they're going to do to us?" he asked idly.
Laurel gave a small shrug. "If we're lucky? I imagine they'll just take away our licenses."
The Huntsman frowned. "Yeah, I kinda figured that too." He shifted himself in his seat. "On the plus side, I'll be free to pursue my dream of knitting at a professional level."
His partner gave him a look that wasn't quite a glare, but still got the message across that this wasn't the time to joke. "There's something wrong with that girl."
Oliver sighed and leaned his head back. "So you keep telling me."
"You saw the same thing I did. Her wound? The way it—" Laurel paused to shove her hands together, interlacing her fingers.
"Stitched?" the man suggested.
"Yeah. That kind of thing isn't normal. She should have died from—"
The pair's conversation was interrupted as the door opened and a tall man entered, carrying a coffee mug in one hand and a pair of thick folders in the other. Oliver swallowed as he recognized the man, and he saw Laurel stiffen in his periphery as she did the same. They must be in serious trouble if the Headmaster of Beacon was the one interrogating them.
Ozpin took a sip from his mug before tossing the two folders onto the table. Hesitantly, Oliver leaned forward to look at them; they were files. Their files. "Oliver Cyprus and Laurel Tawn," the older man said, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. "Eight years ago, you were partnered together at Shade Academy, alongside Gray Tetrio and Ej Alebrijes. The four of you were eliminated from the Vytal Tournament in your first year, but won in your third. After graduating, the two of you continued to work together, taking only a single personal trip outside of Vacuo in that time." The Professor took another sip from his mug before giving the pair a hard look over his glasses. "Perhaps you could explain to me what it was that brought you to the Vytal Tournament this year?"
Oliver didn't like how specific Ozpin's information on them was, but it made sense that he would have access to their full records. He glanced toward his partner, catching her just as she looked at him. If I take the heat for this, maybe they'll let her go. "It's my fault, sir. I was the one who agreed to bring the girl here despite Laurel's warnings. I shouldn't have roped her into this."
"Uh, you didn't rope me into anything," Laurel interrupted. "Coming here was my choice."
"Except you only came to keep an eye on—"
"Ahem." The two Hunters immediately came back to attention as the Headmaster cleared his throat. Ozpin took a long sip from his coffee before speaking. "You were rather quick to take the blame for this incident, Mister Cyprus, which tells me you two already know why you're here." The man set his mug on the table before leaning in and folding his hands together. "In that case, I will get straight to the point: Help me understand why I had to explain to a fifteen-year-old girl that she didn't actually kill the girl who attacked her team."
Oh, man. Oliver hadn't even thought about how traumatized the Rose girl had to be after going through that. When he got out of this—if he got out of this, he was going to have to... Well, he was going to have to do something.
Unfortunately, Laurel didn't possess quite the same level of tact regarding the situation that her partner did. "Are you kidding? She's only fifteen?!" The black look the woman received from the headmaster for her outburst gave her pause, but she continued regardless, if a little more cautiously. "With all due respect, she's training to be a Huntress. We kill Grimm, and it's not a pretty truth but sometimes we have to kill people too."
Ozpin's humorless look never faltered. "Be that as it may, I would hope you agree that those of us who have endured such an experience should do whatever it takes to prevent it from happening to those who have not." Laurel didn't even try to argue, hanging her head in what Oliver knew she would never admit was shame.
"We found the girl wandering in the desert on our way back from a mission last week," the gunslinger started after taking a deep breath. "She was dehydrated and somehow hadn't been killed by the Grimm in the area, so we took her to the hospital and tried to figure out where she could have come from." He shrugged. "Didn't find anything. When she came to, she couldn't remember anything about herself, so we, uh, came up with a name for her."
"Aspen?"
Oliver couldn't hide his surprise. How does he know her name? "Right. Aspen Gray. We didn't want to leave her on her own—"
"You didn't want to leave her on her own," Laurel interrupted.
"Fine. I didn't want to leave her on her own, so we gave her a place to stay—"
"I gave her a place to stay."
Oliver rolled his eyes. Hadn't she just been willing to take the blame with him? "Anyway, out of nowhere she says she wants to be a Huntress and that she wants to fight me. I honestly didn't think she'd win, so I agreed to bring her here to the Vytal Festival if she won, though I was going to do it regardless. I figured I could at least get her started on the path."
"And she beat you?" Ozpin asked, filling in the blanks.
"She beat both of us with our own weapons. Hell, we barely even touched her." Oliver took a deep breath before continuing. "She's fast and she's… she's strong. Stronger than most fully-trained Hunters."
"Indeed," the older Hunter noted, taking a sip of his coffee. "I believe Miss Xiao Long and Miss Schnee can attest to that fact." He set the mug back down. "And all this happened within a few days of her being admitted to the hospital?"
"The day after she got out, actually." Oliver hadn't seen most of the fight with RWBY, so he wasn't sure what the Headmaster was referring to, but decided it was best to move past it. "I should have known it was too early for her to be doing something like that. After our fight, she… died; her heart stopped. We were about to try resuscitating her when she came to on her own."
"You brought her anyway?"
"We couldn't force her to go to the hospital, so we made her agree to go after the tournament," Laurel said, apparently having finally decided that Oliver was taking enough fire from Ozpin without contributing her own. "Of course, we also made her agree not to fight anyone, and that clearly didn't turn out too well."
The Headmaster nodded as he processed the information. "How was she acting before she jumped into the arena?"
Oliver took over the explanation again. "She seemed normal enough watching the fight, though she got really tense at the end. I didn't see it until after she started running, but her eyes were massively dilated. Like, barely-see-her-iris dilated." He shook his head. "I can only guess that some kind of fighting instinct kicked in while she was watching, but I didn't see that when we fought."
Ozpin took one final sip from his coffee. "Is there anything else you feel would be relevant?"
The pair of Hunters looked at each other. "You know about what happened after she got stabbed?" Laurel asked.
"I do."
"Then no, there's not."
Ozpin looked them over for a moment. "In that case, I would ask that you stay here until someone comes for you." Standing, he retrieved the files from the table and turned to leave.
"Right," Oliver said with a confident nod. "Not a problem." Once the door had closed behind the Headmaster, however, the man slumped forward onto the table. To his left, Laurel sagged back into her own chair, the breath escaping from her lungs. Oliver looked at his partner, head resting on the cool metal. "We are screwed."
(-)
Aspen carefully inspected the metal cuffs that bound her wrists to the table. They were more than a little uncomfortable and tight, but she made no effort to remove them. Oliver had told her to do whatever the guards said, and she didn't want to let him down again. Still, she wasn't sure what purpose the cuffs were supposed to serve. Maybe they wanted to make sure she didn't go anywhere? Why have two guards with guns standing in the room, then? Whatever the reason, she would be glad when they decided to remove the restraints.
Shifting in her seat, the girl frowned at the stiffness in her abdomen and looked down instinctively. Though she couldn't see it under Laurel's poncho, she could feel the black scar tissue weaving through her body, even along her spine. It didn't feel quite as large as it had earlier but, without actually looking at it, she couldn't be sure.
Aspen looked up at the door as she felt a new aura approach. She wasn't sure how she knew what to call the things each aura felt like, but this one in particular felt like powdered chalk. There were several different emotions flowing off the figure, though no single one in particular stood out. As it grew closer, Aspen picked up on something else. There was a smell, one she found vaguely familiar, something she had smelled since she'd been in the desert. She found it difficult to describe. It seemed both bitter and… inviting was the only word she could come up with.
The door opened, and the two guards standing in the room stiffened as the chalky man walked in. He was tall—a bit taller than Oliver perhaps—with loosely-kept gray hair and an oddly-shaped wire and glass accessory sitting on his nose. Aspen didn't care much for it, but, as the man gestured for the two others to leave, her attention was drawn to the cup the man held. It was made of some kind of hard-looking material—ceramic—and had a strange symbol on one side. She didn't care for that either. What had her attention was whatever was in the cup. That was what she was smelling, though she still didn't know why it was familiar.
Aspen's eyes remained fixed on the cup as the chalky man sat down across from her. The vessel swung around in front of him before rising to meet his lips. Aspen continued to watch as the man drank and lowered the cup, setting it down on the table, though keeping his fingers wrapped around the handle. The liquid inside was black, though it seemed to turn to brown near the edges.
"Miss Gray, my name—"
The girl looked up at the man, her brow furrowing slightly. "My name is Aspen."
The man smiled, but something about it seemed off. "Yes, I am aware." Aspen was confused. If the man knew her name, why had he gotten it wrong? "As I was saying, my name is Ozpin. I am the Head Master of Beacon Academy." Aspen stared blankly at the man; she knew what the words meant, but the arrangement didn't have any meaning for her, particularly in the context of the man's introduction. "Tell me, do you know why you are here?"
Aspen did her best to ignore the overwhelming scent of the liquid in his cup. "This is where the guards brought me." It seemed obvious. Did he really not know that?
Ozpin's lips thinned as he briefly closed his eyes. "And do you know why they brought you here?"
"No."
With a sigh, the chalky man let his smile drop before taking another sip of his liquid. Setting it down, he released the handle and left it near the middle of the table. "Miss Gray, what you did was—"
"Aspen."
"I beg your pardon?"
"My name is Aspen."
"Yes, I know."
"Then why do you keep calling me 'Miss?' "
Ozpin paused for a moment and shook his head. Without answering her question, he continued. "What you did was unacceptable. Under different circumstances, you would be arrested for assault and possibly attempted murder. Given how events played out, however, I wanted to speak to you before a decision was made." Reaching forward, the man took another sip from his cup before setting it back down in the same place. "I'd like you to tell me what happened in the arena, from your perspective."
Aspen involuntarily looked down at the cup as she recalled her memories of her fight with the Ruby Team before quickly looking back up at the man. She still couldn't remember the smell. "I told them I wanted to fight. We fought. I was winning, and then I was…" She glanced down at her stomach again. "…impaled by the crushed petals."
"Crushed… Do you mean Miss Rose?"
The girl thought for a moment. "No, Ruby Rose. Like the name of her team."
"Of course." Ozpin made to pick up the cup, but stopped himself. "Actually, Mi—Aspen, I was hoping for a more detailed account of your fight. What were you thinking? What were you feeling?"
"I saw the Ruby Team beat the other hunter-students, and I felt like I needed to fight them." Aspen struggled with how exactly to phrase what she had been feeling. "I saw better, I heard better, but when we were fighting, I could only feel them."
"You 'could only feel them?' "
"Yes."
"Could you explain?"
The girl did her best to use the words that had come to her while fighting. "One of them, her aura felt like… little fires in a place with… sand and water. She was angry, and it burned. It only got hotter when I hit her, but it stopped once I hit her enough. The one that felt like my... hoodie was annoyed, and it… itched inside me. I wanted to make her stop breathing so it would stop. The shattered glass girl's annoyance dug into my skin and I wanted to break her even more, but Ruby yelled at me before I could. She wasn't as afraid at the end, but the entire time it felt like she was stabbing me in the chest. Then she stabbed me in the stomach with her scythe."
Ozpin seemed hesitant to continue, and Aspen could feel two main emotions coming off the man. One was disgust—no, that wasn't quite right. It was something less harsh. More... aversion, like a handful of dust gently blown into her face. She wasn't sure why he was feeling it—after all, she had simply been explaining what she'd been thinking and feeling, like he'd asked.
The other emotion was harder for her to pick up, not nearly as demanding of her attention. It was soft and subtle, like a blanket placed around her shoulders when she wasn't paying attention. Sympathy. The emotion further confused Aspen as, from her understanding, sympathy and aversion were effectively opposites of each other. Why would the man be feeling both at the same time?
The man gently tapped his fingers on the table. "Would it be alright if I examined your wound?" he asked leaning forward slightly. Aspen nodded and stood up as straight as she could with her arms attached to the table. Reaching across the table, Ozpin took the hem of the poncho between his fingers and lifted it up and away from her body. The action inadvertently allowed the girl to look down through the hole in the poncho. She couldn't quite see the scar, but she could see that the shirt around it was perfectly clean, without a single drop of blood staining it. As she thought about it, it made sense in her head, though she wasn't sure why.
"Remarkable," Ozpin breathed in fascination. Despite his tone, however, Aspen felt the briefest moment of fear flicker through his aura as his aversion grew. "You say you can feel a person's aura?" he asked, letting the poncho drop as he leaned back. Aspen sat and nodded, clenching her fists as she struggled to keep her eyes on the man. It was driving her crazy that she couldn't remember where the smell was from. "What is that like?"
"I can feel them pressing against me. Some are… stronger than others, and they all feel different."
"Such as shattered glass and crushed roses?" the man ventured.
"Yes."
"What does—"
Aspen's will finally broke, and she reached out for the cup. Unfortunately, the chain connecting her wrists wasn't long enough for her to do more than brush her fingers against the warm ceramic. She strained against the metal, but it only dug further into her wrists. Ozpin watched her for a moment before sighing and pushing the cup into her hand. With the vessel in her grasp, Aspen brought the steaming liquid as close to her face as she could, resting it just below her nose. The smell was strong and invigorating, but still didn't fully trigger her memory. As a scowl began to appear on the girl's face, Ozpin asked, "Do you like coffee?"
Aspen froze. 'Coffee?' Looking down into the liquid, she rolled the word around in her head a few times. It seemed like an appropriate word for the drink, even if no real meaning came to her. Cautiously, she moved the rim to her lips and poured a small amount into her mouth. The coffee was completely bitter, containing none of the other scents she had smelled, but she couldn't say that it tasted bad. It was better than the 'popcorn,' at least. As she swallowed the liquid, Aspen finally remembered where she'd smelled it before. When she had woken up in the hospital, Laurel had had a cup of coffee, which she'd dumped out and filled with water for her to drink, but there had still been traces of the beverage in the cup.
Satisfied, Aspen lowered the cup and set it back on the table, as close to Ozpin as she could. The man looked at the vessel for a moment before leaning back in his chair. "As I was saying, what does your aura feel like?"
Aspen frowned. That wasn't something she had thought about before. Closing her eyes, she focused inward, searching for the unique texture that would mark her aura. She expected it to push outward, countering the inward press of all the others, but she didn't feel anything. It almost made her feel… empty. She opened her eyes. "I don't feel anything."
"Perhaps you have simply become accustomed to it."
Cocking her head, the girl considered that possibility. "No. It's just not there."
Aspen could feel the aversion from the man continue to grow as he frowned and picked up his coffee. Taking a sip, he held the cup in front of him as he leaned back in his chair. "I spoke with Oliver and Laurel. They had some rather… interesting things to say about you." The man paused and looked at Aspen. She couldn't tell if he was expecting something from her, so she just stared at him with a neutral look. "They said you want to be a Huntress." Another pause. "Is this true?"
"Yes."
"Why is that?"
"I heard them talking. I like the idea of it."
One of Ozpin's eyebrows arched upward, giving the man an odd appearance. "And what does your idea of being a Hunter involve?"
Aspen answered quickly. "Tracking Grim and killing them."
The man adjusted the wire frame on his nose with his free hand as he leaned forward. "What if I told you that killing wasn't a part of being a Huntress?"
"But Laurel said she thought she'd be killing Grim by now," the girl stated confusedly.
Ozpin nodded. "Consider this a hypothetical situation." It took Aspen a good second to work out what the word meant. "If killing were not a part of the job, would you still want to do it?"
"I… I don't know." The man's aversion grew, as did his sympathy. Aspen looked down at her hands, more confused than anything. Had she said something wrong? What was wrong with wanting to kill Grim? If that was what Oliver and Laurel did, why shouldn't she be able to?
"Aspen." The girl looked up at the man. "Do you know what Grim are?" Aspen's mouth opened, but she had no words, so she closed it and shook her head. She wasn't sure why, but the motion felt natural for the situation. "Do you know what you are?"
The girl once again shook her head. The man leaned back as she continued to stare at her hands. "I… I know there's a word for it, but I can't figure out what it is. Normally, the words just… come to me, but this one hasn't and I don't know why."
There was a long pause before the man spoke again, a low level of… hope coming off his aura.. "I believe the word you may be looking for is 'human.' "
Aspen considered the word. Human. Human. It seemed to apply to Ozpin, and certainly to Laurel and Oliver. When she tried to apply it to herself, it didn't quite feel right. She frowned. Human. Nothing. Black hair fell into her face as she shook her head again. "No, that's not right. That's not what I am."
A scraping sound filled her ears as Ozpin pushed his chair back to stand up. Any bit of sympathy or hope the girl had felt from the man was gone, replaced by revulsion and… a bit of fear. Walking over to the mirror that covered the majority of the wall to her right, he looked at himself as he drank from his cup. As Aspen began to return her attention to the uncomfortable restraints on her wrists, the man spoke. "Miss Gray, I am going to give you two options." The girl opened her mouth to remind him of her name, but he motioned for her to be silent. "The first option will be to undergo an initiation, a test to see if you are fit to be a Huntress." The man turned away from the mirror to face her. "If you succeed, you will be trained alongside a group of students at my academy. Should you fail, however… Well…" He took another sip of coffee. "I would hope, for your sake, that you do not fail."
Despite being offered everything she'd been trying to achieve, Aspen couldn't help but feel annoyed. After everything she'd done, she had to do even more to become a hunter-student? Hadn't she proved herself enough? There was another possibility, though. "What's the other option?"
"The same outcome as failure, but more immediate."
It took a moment for the threat to sink in. He's not giving me a choice at all. Aspen's eyes narrowed. It's a challenge: Win or die. I can do that. "I will do it."
Ozpin smiled, but the look in his eyes was predatory. "A wise choice." Without another word, the man left the room, leaving Aspen to sit alone in the room.
(-)
Laurel closed her eyes, her face scrunching up in annoyance. "Can you stop?" she asked. She was patient—especially when it came to her partner—but even she had her limits.
Immediately, Oliver stopped drumming his fingers on the table, leaving the room in blessed silence. The man sighed, and, as Laurel opened her eyes again, she saw him slump backward in his chair. "Sorry. It's just… It's been, what, two hours?"
The orange-haired woman shook her head in disapproval. "So? Would it hurt you do something else with your fingers besides that?"
There was a good two seconds of silence before her choice of words registered with either Hunter. Oliver smirked. "Sometimes I wonder if you do that on purpose."
Laurel covered her eyes with one hand. "Sometimes I wonder if you'll ever grow up," she countered. And sometimes I wonder if you act so immaturely because I'm too serious. Removing her hand, she gave her partner a serious look. "You'd better hope we don't lose our licenses, because there is no way you could get a job the way you are."
The man laughed. "Oh, I bet I get a job before you do." Oliver's mood proved to be infectious and, despite herself, Laurel felt the corner of her mouth rising in a small smile.
The atmosphere was broken as the door to the room opened and a rather irate-looking woman walked in. Laurel immediately recognized her as Glynda Goodwitch, even if just by reputation. Without a word of greeting or introduction, the veteran Huntress dropped two thin packets of paper onto the table, one in front of each Hunter. While Oliver cautiously slipped his copy of the document into his hands, Laurel picked hers up quickly, wanting to get the whole thing over with. Her eyes scanned over the text and, having expected to see references to her license and the infractions which had caused it to be revoked, she was surprised to see more instances of "Beacon Academy" than anything else. Flipping to the last page, she saw several lines for signatures. "What is this?"
"A contract," the woman said coldly, forcefully placing two pens on the table. "Headmaster Ozpin feels Miss Gray may have a place here at Beacon Academy." Judging by the way she spat the words, Laurel figured the woman disagreed with the decision and, personally, she couldn't really blame her. "A… special initiation is being prepared as we speak. Should Miss Gray survive, she will be accepted and placed onto a team." That made sense; every other student had to face a proper test before being allowed to attend their chosen academy.
"What does this have to do with us signing these contracts?" Oliver interrupted, though Laurel didn't miss him reaching over to grab one of the pens.
Goodwitch glared at him over her glasses. Pushing a lock of hair out of her face, she sat down and continued. "Given your involvement with the events at Amity Colosseum, suspension of your licenses would not be out of the question." Laurel resisted the urge to shoot her partner an I-told-you-so look. "The two of you have had the most experience handling the girl, however, so it has been decided that your fates will be tied to hers." Laurel really didn't like the sound of that. "The contract contains all the details you need, but should you sign it, you will be taken on as temporary staff through the duration of Miss Gray's initiation. In the event that she completes her tasks, you will be taken on as full-time instructors, and there will be no further risk to your professional statuses. Should she fail, you will lose your licenses."
"And if we don't sign, I assume we lose them anyway?" Laurel asked.
"Yes."
"Fantastic," Oliver quipped. "I love being blackmailed."
The comment earned another harsh glare from Goodwitch. "This is hardly blackmail. Were it up to me, you would be stripped of your licenses without a choice in the matter."
With the man sufficiently cowed, the woman paused to focus on her scroll, tapping through several menus before setting the device down for the two Hunters to see. The screen showed a brief dossier on a Team BRIC, though one of the four member's faces had been grayed out with a large red 'x' over it. "The team we intend to place Miss Gray on has been struggling since they arrived, and their leader has already been expelled. Unfortunately for the rest, this means that they will not be able to continue beyond this semester."
Laurel filled in the rest. "Unless Aspen passes her initiation?"
Goodwitch shook her head. "Even if Miss Gray is placed on the team, they still face expulsion if their grades do not improve." Laurel quickly looked over the limited records the woman had provided on each student; they did not look good. "Part of your duties will be to monitor this team and do what you can to correct their decidedly lackluster behavior."
Oliver hummed as he looked at his contract, though Laurel couldn't tell if he was actually reading it. "You said that we wouldn't lose our licenses even if they do fail, though, right?"
"That is correct, though I cannot say that Miss Gray will have similar protections."
"And you said we're going to be teaching too?"
"That will be one of your duties, yes."
"What are we going to be teaching?"
Goodwitch sighed, though it was barely noticeable. "That has yet to be decided."
"Alright." Finished with his questions, Oliver turned to the last page and quickly signed on the indicated lines. The action earned him a hard look from the veteran Huntress as he handed her the papers.
Laurel rolled her eyes. "Is it alright if I take some time to look this over?" she asked. She knew she was going to sign it, but it would be nice to know what she was getting into.
Goodwitch nodded, much more approving of her decision than she was of Oliver's. "Of course. Take your time." Standing, she turned and left the room.
"You know, she was a lot nicer to you than she was to me," Oliver commented as Laurel began reading through the contract.
"That's because I'm not an ass like you are."
Oliver shrugged. "Maybe." He rolled his fingers on the table twice. "I still got the job before you did."
