Headmaster Arc had a lot on his plate. Really, when did he not? Sure, Salem might've been fended off, Cinder busy with establishing her kingdom, Ironwood for once not bothering him about that battleship, Shade being rebuilt, and Beacon's school year just ended, but, he still was ridiculously busy.
All of his students were at their homes, enjoying their lives, while he still had to clock in at Beacon just to do paperwork in preparation for the utter hell that would be the next year. There were applications to go through, scholarships to award, council members to placate, repairs to approve, budgetary concerns, a whole host of complaints about Tsune, and rumors about human sacrifices from his fan club.
Why hadn't he taken all of their budget again? Oh, right, he did. They just found a way to subvert that somehow. Jaune blamed Roman, though the thief proclaimed innocence while consulting a hooded student on how to properly make money.
Thank god he still had members of his staff. Sure, Ghira and Kali went back to Menagerie, he convinced Willow to go back to Atlas in order to manage the SDC, and Jinn could realistically not do any paperwork (somehow that violated the wacky ass rules the gods set up), but, everyone else was still preparing!
Ok, sure, Port was just out adventuring as 'preparation,' which was technically correct, given his lessons were just comically long and boring flanderized tall tales about his hunts. Tsune was also out with him on a similar basis, which was that she'd be using Port to keep her medical game intact in an environment with limited supplies. As she explained it, it was testing the waters for a possible lesson using the same principle. And no, it wasn't an excuse for the two of them to have fun in the middle of the forest.
They hadn't even thought of it until they mentioned it.
Regardless, the others were still with him, thankfully. Sienna, for some reason, stuck around as his pseudo-secretary. Though now, she often consulted Jaune on the matters of the Faunus. Still remembering Adam's last words, he engaged and even started some of these conversations.
With her prodding, he'd sent some hunters to Menagerie both to protect it and was working to help establish an academy there. She also helped him use his position as council member to propose bills relating to Faunus rights and served as a sort of consultant regarding that sort of thing. And in return, she helped him with the mundane task of paperwork.
In his free time, he often talked with Oobleck about some mundane things, like some new artifact Bart had found or what's happening abroad.
Oscar and, by extension, Ozpin, had been faced with two options of what to do over the break. Either stay in Beacon and deal with the staff forcing him into paperwork, or go with Ruby and Yang to Patch and deal with Oscar's raging hormones. Ozpin took the obvious choice and fucked off to a beach house in Vacuo he kept under a fake name after withdrawing money from a bank account he set up in his past life in case he died. Oscar stopped complaining when he mentioned the beach house had the luxuries the farmboy could only dream of.
Lucky bastard.
Glynda was there as always, prepping new lessons, revising old ones, maintaining equipment, and pitching in for the processing of applicants for the new year.
Roman and Neo hadn't left either, for some reason. Roman because he actually had some things he wanted to plan for the school year (which almost gave Glynda a heart attack) And Neo because both Roman and Jaune were there. Plus, since Professor Peach had retired, they needed someone to teach Literature, Mathematics, and a few other Gen Ed classes.
Why did they teach Gen Ed? Why? It was required by the council. Why did people training to become hunters need to know what the fuck the square root of 302159 is? Nobody knew, but that didn't really matter. Neo was preparing to become the Gen Ed professor. The irony of a fraudster like himself hiring someone not even remotely qualified for the position he was initially hired for was not lost on him.
Anyways, part of him being busy included interviews for incoming students. They'd come in, be interviewed by him, and leave. And somehow, he got some of the most batshit insane answers to his questions.
"Why do you want to attend Beacon?"
"Well it all start-" The potential student then recounted a ten minute long tale about how she was looking for her long lost brother, who ran away from home when his dream of becoming a hunter was denied by his parents. No, it was not one of his siblings, and yes, he made sure to check the list of applying students just to make sure this long lost sibling existed. He had a few guesses as to who that could be, but if she got in he'd let her hunt on her own.
"Describe to me what your philosophy as a hunter will be."
"Death to the heathens?"
"Lie, cheat, steal, and survive?"
"Corn for the Khorne flakes"
Seriously!? What was up with some of these applicants? And the worst bit is, that typically, the weirder the answers, the better the student preformed at their combat school!
"Jaune, we're still at work, it's the middle of the day, and there's still a few more applicants," Glynda said, watching as Jaune drank straight from the bottle of some booze he pilfered from a student's dorm. In response, he looked up with eyes so tired that she could've sworn he was older than Ozpin (reincarnations included).
"If I have to listen to a convoluted backstory involving secret siblings, blood feuds, vendettas that sound like they span far longer than the applicant's lived, or what sounds like the most over-developed fanfic character's backstory one more time, I will jump out of the window." Before she could respond, Jaune handed over a transcript of some of the interviews. After a few moments of reading and shuffling papers, she took the glass Jaune poured, gulped it down, and left the room.
It seemed like they were going to put that off for a little bit.