The sunlight died and the stars came out.
From Ed's perspective, one second Oscar was standing there holding his daughter's hand and in the next he was lashing at the back of the man's legs with that weird cane of his, practically parkouring over their low fence to get there. The man fell hard to his knees in surprise and Oscar looked over his shoulder and shouted "Run!" His daughter, big wet eyes, pained expression, hesitates for just a second before she turns around and takes off sprinting.
After she does so, Oscar moves to stand defensively in front of Ed, lifting the cane and spinning it in his hands before tapping it down hard on the earth before them.
"I don't want to fight you," the boy says in what Ed thought was a shockingly calm voice for a teenage boy recovering from an unknown trauma, smooth and level. It lacked the fumbling, polite, and awkward timbre that usually accompanied Oscar's words. His movements are just as measured. It was nothing like how he was coming out of the woods that night, gaunt and wild-eyed. His posture was deliberate, his gaze unwavering. His gloved hands tighten around his cane. "But I will if I have to. Leave him alone."
The man practically gyrates in place, like a haunting, undulating ballerina, jumping to his feet before jerking to an unnatural halt.
"Hello, hello? What's this? Another precious bird for the slaughter in good Edwin's wake? How quaint!"
"Oscar," Ed croaks out. "He's after me! Go after Umber and keep her s—"
"Do it yourself!" Oscar snaps back at him without even turning to look at him. He didn't say anything further, but the entire unmoving, concentrated rigidity of his stance seemed to say, "You're not dying here!"
Without warning, the man slams his cleaver down towards Oscar. Ed shouted in horror.
But against his fears, Oscar hadn't been cut in half. Instead, he was already halfway to striking a pressure point on the man's left side. Nevertheless, the man easily twisted himself out of the way of the oncoming blow in a way that suggested the human skeletal system was more of a guideline rather than a tangible concept that was subject to the laws of reality.
The strange man fought back with an untempered, hysterical vengence, a deadly dancer with his giant cleaver and rattling chain, all mirthless smiles and edges and teeth. Slim, attenuated arms skillfully whirled his massive blade this way and that as Oscar just barely avoided it just in time.
There was a chilling moment when Ed thought it was all over. With a simple flick of his arm, the man managed to smash Oscar over the head with the hilt of his blade and the boy went down. Hard. He'd been hammered to the ground with a ghastly note of finality, like Oscar's body were boneless as well as weightless. Like he were nothing.
The man took a moment to recover and sneer down at him before his gaze slowly rose to meet Ed's.
He laughed and started to take creeping steps towards him. Ed shook in anguish, tears spilling from his eyes.
But it wasn't over. Ed heard a shaky breath and watched as Oscar slowly, miraculously, got to his feet, using that stupid cane of his to support his weight, hands trembling. From his place behind him, Ed saw him square his shoulders. With a shout, the boy launches himself forward suddenly taking the offensive.
Neither Ed nor the assassin expected the relentless staccato rhythm of Oscar's cane lashing out against him. They were swift, brutal strikes that felt entirely counter to his personality. Oscar was a tiny, startlingly merciless, rapid-paced force whose movements, although unrefined, could transition from offensive to defensive in quick succession as needed. From then on, when the man tried to strike he was immediately repelled, when he tried to block or recover, Oscar had already closed the distance, cane bearing down on him.
In a hard-won moment where he had once again cleared some distance from the boy's onslaught, the horrible, wretched man loosens his grip on his weapon and lets it fall until he's gripping the chain attached instead. In a massive burst of power, he whirls the weapon over his head like a turbine.
"Dr. Ed, move!" Oscar was shouting, distraught and desperate, but Ed was too entranced by his fear and shock and memories to even think, staring at wicked white teeth of death glimmering in the dark. He's not certain he even understood what the boy was saying in that moment. Words meant nothing. He remembers his wife and the look in her eyes when he found her... Time seemed to freeze as the horrible man lifted his arm, the gleaming murderous blade rising high above him.
He hears Oscar grunt and then suddenly Ed is on his hands and knees, metal blade slicing the air just above him. Oscar had kicked his leg out, toppling him to the ground in time to avoid the blade that called Ed's name.
The boy in green gave a hiss of pain and Ed managed to shake himself from his trance and look up from the ground in time to see him clutch his shoulder with one hand, blood flowing freely through his fingers. The horrible man laughed.
Ed saw a side of Oscar he thought rarely appeared before others. His teeth are bared, eyes narrowed sharply, gaze focused on his opponent, readying his weapon for another blow despite his injuries. There's a steady, almost frigid determination in his eyes.
Blood drips down the side of his head. Oscar barely seemed to notice.
It was then Ed realized something. Oscar had fought other people before. It was obvious in retrospect, he'd said he'd been shot for a difference of opinion but… you didn't learn to face people like this if you were only fighting Grimm. You learned this kind of combat when your opponents were other people.
"How about this," the man says as if he were at a merchant's stall instead of terrorizing a country doctor, throwing his thin, sickly arms up in a shrug, looking keenly at Oscar. "You let me have Doctor Edwin today, and I'll come after you another day, my dear misled boy."
His voice was so cordial, so pleasant. It made Ed's heart hammer harder.
What Oscar didn't have was endurance and while Oscar was fast, he clearly wasn't untouchable and he also didn't have perfect control over his Aura either as indicated by the other numerous small cuts on his body that Aura might have deflected and healed by now. He stood between Ed and his assassin, breathing deeply, hands gripped tight on the hilt of his weapon.
"No thank you," Oscar responds, almost breathless, same polite tone creeping back into his voice. He then addresses the terrible man, sounding—to Ed—impossibly brave for such a tiny, panting boy. "I'm giving you one chance to stand down."
As if he really needed to think about it, the man pauses and tilts his head to the side and to such an extreme angle it was hard to believe there were any bones in his neck at all.
"No. All filth must die. Dogs beneath our feet and those who roll in the mud with them. If you intend to stand with them, then I must exterminate you, too."
He sees a brief flicker of confusion appear on Oscar's face—because of course he didn't know about their history—before the man is moving again.
Stance wide, the assassin brought his weapon down hard and fast, intending to overwhelm and overpower the boy with the sheer weight behind his angled swipe. The boy stooped low, rolling through the space under his legs, rose to his feet, deftly twirled his cane for the proper grip and in one smooth motion twisted his body for maximum torque and slammed the point of his cane into the side of the man's ribs.
There had to at least be some bones in there, because Oscar had knocked the wind out of his lungs and gaunt, bony fingers clasped themselves over his ribs. His gasps were drawn out and wretched.
Oscar switches to another grip, two-handed, and readies his cane, prepared for another attack if it came.
That was when Ed's front yard flooded with light and the authorities arrived.
What Oscar hadn't known was, just like there were radicalized groups of faunus who used violence and fear to spread their message, there was also an equal and opposite force whose operations revolved around exposing, humiliating, and killing faunus along with their family and supporters that liked to call themselves, in sick humor, "Animal Control." They percolated throughout the continents, forming sleeper cells that worked to uncover suspected faunus and sent strike teams to kill or frame them for heinous crimes that supported the narrative of their cause.
"The bastard individuals who work alone like to call themselves 'Zookeepers," Ed murmured venomously as he finished explaining while patching up the wound on Oscar's shoulder. The boy sat atop Ed's kitchen table where he'd told him to so he could better dress his wounds. He was a doctor. After the man had been chased off, it was the closest place for treatment.
The boy looked sad, and tired. He clearly wished he could have done more but as things were, he was lucky not to be suffering from a concussion. He'd had to put stitches where the assassin had slammed his hilt, too.
"Sorry he got away like that," said a very muscular woman walking into the kitchen who looked apologetically at Ed. "We didn't expect him to be able to break out of those cuffs like that. I don't know if that was his Semblance or what, but the way he just… ugh, rearranged the bones in his body so he could slide out of them was… uncanny. It caught us off guard."
This was Marin. Huntress, detective, faunus, and one of Ed's old friends. She had spotted markings on her skin, short, white wafting hair that gave her an ephemeral halo around her head, and a tail that closely resembled a snow leopard's. She handled special victim crimes in the surrounding area… meaning she was the one who had all the faunus-related cases dumped on her shoulders by virtue of being one of the few faunus in the local force. She was short, stocky, and incredibly muscular. She wore a crop top, high rise jeans, a blue duster, and an attitude that didn't give a damn about how someone associated with the law should dress.
The boy winced in pain when Ed dabbed his shoulder wound with peroxide.
"How is Umber?" Ed asks Marin bluntly, focusing on stitching because if he didn't he was going to lose it right then and there. He'd been on battlefields before, an experienced medic in a group of Huntsman with a Semblence that kickstarted the healing process, but it was different seeing Umber there. He couldn't keep himself together. He felt… ashamed.
He then scolds Oscar, pulling the boy's hand away from the stitches on his head. "Young man, stop touching that or so help me."
Oscar looked at him wide-eyed and flustered while Marin gave Ed his answer.
"I don't know what to tell you, Ed. When she came running in screaming, I feared the worst for you. She's a mess. Physically, she's fine, but… well, the one good thing in this fiasco is that you had this cute, little hunter to bravely defend you."
Marin clasped a hand on Oscar's uninjured shoulder and smiled broadly. She looked like she was seconds away from pinching his cheeks, calling him adorable, and taking him home as a pet.
Looking up at her, eyes half-lidded, as if this happened a lot, Oscar responds with rare annoyance creeping into his voice, "Please, don't call me that."
Oscar looked, and sounded, tired. Ed just felt more guilty. Marin just laughed. She put her hands up in surrender. She was probably trying to lighten the mood for both their sakes. Ed appreciated the effort even if it didn't make him feel any better.
"Alright, little lad, alright."
Oscar just made an annoyed huff and looked even more tired after that. That made Ed smile. He gave only the smallest chuckle. It was nice to know that even after everything he'd been through, the kid could still be a kid, grumbling over being viewed as small and cute, the curse given to children everywhere.
"You did good," Ed leans in and tells him softly. Oscar looks to him in quiet surprise. And then responds just as softly.
"He seemed to know you."
Ed finishes the stitches and Oscar painstakingly shrugs his combat jacket back on.
"He was part of the cell that murdered my wife. His name is Rhys. I found… I found her right after he—"
"Eddie," Marin interrupted urgently but not unkindly. "Now that you've finished, we need to put you and Umber up somewhere else. He got you here once, he can get you here again. Now that we know he is here and after you two like we feared, I think we can set up a sting. When your girl came in, I had one of the squad take her to somewhere she thought would be safe. Do you know where 'The Pines' is?"
"Oh!" Oscar starts, slowly and hesitantly raising a hand, "Um, that's me. My aunt's farm, actually."
Marin claps her hands and beamed.
"Good! We can set up operations there!"
Oscar looked alarmed.
"What's the point!" Umber was yelling in frustration, ripping her hat off in rage and throwing it on the ground when they arrived back at his aunt's farm.
"Umber… sweetheart…"
His aunt was trying to calm her down. Oscar didn't think she'd known Umber was a faunus until just that moment. Aunt Emma tried to reach down to put a soothing hand on Umber's shoulder, but the girl pushed away.
"Things were just starting to feel normal! But Mama died, we ran from the city, and they're still after us! I'm so scared! What's the point of this… this stupid thing if it doesn't even help!"
She kicked her hat and then fell to her knees, biting her lip trying not to sob and failing.
With his good arm, Oscar silently crouched down to pick up the hat from where it landed. Aunt Emma sat down on her knees in front of Umber. She gently takes the little girl's hands and squeezes them.
"I know you're scared. It's not your fault. You can't help the way you are, Umber, and you can't help the way people look at you. But all of us are here for y—"
Umber jerked suddenly away and ran out of the house, tears streaming from her eyes. Ed startled and almost ran after her, but Oscar grabbed his sleeve.
"I got this."
He headed out the door to look for her.
Oscar had been conscripted into an endless war. The faunus were also participants in the same endless war, knowingly or unknowingly, but also had to fight another one on a different front from people who should be allies. That was far too much to ask of anyone.
He remembers one late night asking Blake about her bow and—
No… No, wait. That was Ozpin. He, Oscar, had never seen Blake wear a bow in her hair and over her ears. He'd never seen her with her ears covered at all while traveling alongside her, but he could still remember the conversation well enough, nevertheless. Cane grasped in one hand, steaming mug in the other, dark night sky through the window he asked a younger, much more cautious, standoffish Blake:
"Why do you wear that bow, Blake? Why hide who you are?"
"You may be willing to accept the faunus, Professor Ozpin, but your species is not."
"True… but we are continuing to take strides to lessen the divide."
"With all due respect, you need to start taking some larger strides. Until then, I'd rather avoid any unnecessary attention. I want people to see me for who I am, not what I am."
Memories of team RWBY or JNPR before he met them made Oscar feel confused and extremely uncomfortable. It felt almost like spying on them. Pushing that aside for the moment because it wasn't time to have an identity crisis yet again, Oscar could understand Umber having some hard and complicated feelings over her hat as a faunus in a discriminatory world.
He found Umber just inside the open doors of the barn, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. She flinched when she spotted him coming over but didn't otherwise move. Oscar sits down next to her, cross-legged and looked at the stars in the sky above them just beyond the threshold. Umber scowled at the hat clutched in his hand.
After what felt like forever, Umber spoke, voice strained.
"…Thank you for saving Daddy."
"I really didn't do much. It was Marin who actually saved him."
He didn't think he was being humble, it was just the truth. His skills still weren't even close enough to protect someone, let alone himself. He'd barely fended off Rhys and he had barely fended off Neopolitan.
A soft sigh. Umber shifted and leaned against his side, head on his shoulder. Oscar stiffens in surprise. Uh…?
"I was there when… when Mama was killed. H… He took her… l-like a trophy."
She reaches a hand up to touch one of her tiny antlers, as if needing to be reassured it was still there. With sudden understanding, Oscar wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulder and waited.
"I'm tired of being scared all the time," she tells him, eyes glistening up at the stars.
"Me too." She looks at him, startled.
"But you're human! You can fight!" she says harshly, pulling away, eyebrows angling at him sharply.
"And lose," Oscar says, tapping his injured shoulder, the one grisly with his own blood on his jacket.
She stares at the drying blood before her gaze almost guiltily drifted down to her prosthetic leg.
"You're not a faunus," she says finally. "N-No one's trying to kill you or… or hunt you down for who or what you are."
Well, the first part was true, he was very definitely not a faunus, even if the second part wasn't. Although most people only tried to kill him because of the wizard in his head or because he was in the way of raising a city higher into the sky and leaving millions to die, but this wasn't about him and it didn't make Umber's feelings any less valid or inaccurate.
No one called him a filthy faunus and spat at him in the street even after multiple apologies like what had happened with Blake. No one looked at him the way people looked at Blake or denied him entry anywhere because he was of "questionable character" like Cordovan had done. No one in Atlas spread rumors about him not earning or deserving a position (which he personally didn't have anyway, but that's beside the point) in the Atlas military, let alone the Ace Ops, like with Marrow. No one murmured "diversity hire" behind his back.
"You're right."
What else could he say? The part of him that was strategic, the part of himself he associated with Ozpin, would have tried to reassure her, earn her trust, point out the improvement that has slowly progressed through the years. But it didn't help Umber right now. Umber was ten. She wouldn't care about social progress. That's not what mattered to her. Umber's mother was still dead and she was still being targeted, afraid for her life.
The part of Oscar that didn't bend, the part of himself he associated with older, more dreamlike memories he couldn't quite grasp or understand yet… a sword, a crown, a scepter, would have told her what to do. She was a child, she needed direction, it didn't have to be complicated. Fight. Except Umber was still ten and no one had easy answers to complex issues like division and hate. No one could be expected to fight against that alone.
But Oscar wasn't a combat school headmaster and Oscar wasn't a king. The part of Oscar that was Oscar, dark earth, pale green sprouts reaching towards the sun, golden wheat dancing in the cool breeze on a hot summer day, had a different answer..
He reached out to hold her hand.
Silence. He chose to wait. This was Umber's moment. Not his. What was the point in valuing individualism and expression in this world after the Great War if you railroaded people into what you thought their narrative should be? No. Umber was afraid, Umber had something to say. Umber needed a chance to talk about herself because she never gave herself the time. She took to her prosthetic leg fast, but with something like watching your mother die in front of you, he'd feel grateful for anything that would reassure him he could run away, too.
"I… don't know what to do," Umber said after a long time, clutching his hand tight, voice shaking. "T-That man… I'm scared. Daddy's scared."
"It's okay to be afraid," he tells her, pulling her into a hug and a strong memory of Ironwood appearing in his mind, eyes haunted and distant. He shakes it off. He's not sure what to say to comfort a child, but he thinks about what he would have wanted to hear when he was scared, of when wanted reassurance when it seemed like the world was all but falling apart around him.
"You're safe here. You don't deserve this. We're here to protect you."
The little girl is motionless at first, but only seconds later she is hugging him back tightly and intensely.
"Aaugh! Ow—!"
Oscar pulls away. His shoulder was throbbing.
"Oh gosh!" Umber cries, reaching her hands out and stopping just short for fear of hurting him again. "Oh gosh, I'm so sorry!"
Oscar holds up his hands, wincing, dropping Umber's hat on accident, "No, it's okay! I forgot about it too."
Their eyes fall on the hat between them. Umber looks at it in disgust before her gaze flickers back to him.
"Daddy says you prob'ly had a friend who was a faunus. Says it's obvious. Did… did they hide it?"
"Not when I met her. Before… I think so, but she never hid her ears in the time I knew her."
"Did people—?"
"Yes. And she always had her friends who love her around to rely on and protect her when she needed it."
One of them going so far as to blast a man into a dumpster before any of the rest of their friends could maul him. Weiss was just faster on the draw. Or, and he didn't know the full story, going toe-to-toe with the man who hurt Blake in the past, both physically—sword through stomach—and emotionally. Although he didn't know as much about that last part. Granted, Yang seemed to have that covered.
All of them would protect Blake if it came down to it because Blake was a faunus and she was loved.
He holds out Umber's hat.
"I'm here for you, too. This, though, I think, is your choice."
Umber considers.
After a few weeks, it almost felt like being back at Atlas because of all the people. Except much warmer, in the country, and his aunt was there. Ed, Umber, Marin, and her partner stayed with Oscar and his aunt on the farm. Apparently, there was a squad "around" but Oscar had yet to spot him in the few weeks that followed. He did get a letter in the mail saying he was selected for a personal interview with the headmaster of Beacon to discuss consideration for early acceptance. They included a number he should call to set it up with Beacon administration.
He wasn't entirely surprised, but he was deeply relieved.
And then very quickly deeply anxious. He'd get to speak to Past-Ozpin directly. He'd get to see his face, what he looked like, his mannerisms and how he held himself. Back when he was traveling to Haven, it had felt far too intimate to think of Ozpin other than just a disembodied voice in his head. Somehow it was just easier. And, like many other things, Ozpin had never shared. He'd have to talk to an Ozpin that didn't know him and might be suspicious of him. An Ozpin he couldn't tell the full truth to. Not yet. Not until he could be trusted with telling his own truth.
Regardless, Oscar couldn't afford the trip to Vale and back for an in-person interview and he was upfront about that to whoever ran the administrative side of Beacon. He'd been assured there would be no problem and that a video interview via Scroll would be just fine. He'd log in to a portal on the network and he'd be able to connect to Beacon communications no problem.
So he set up a time for an interview over the Scroll and all he had to do was wait.
…Anxiously.
He felt that the Headmasters of combat schools rarely did personal interviews, so this almost definitely had to do with Ozpin being more curious about the Long Memory other than anything else. Aaah, what should he do? What should he say?
At least there was Marin around to practice partnered sparring with. She had been delighted to find out Oscar knew a little hand-to-hand. It certainly helped relieve stress even if Marin was leagues better and far more skilled than he was.
He was used to that, though. Literally everyone he'd ever sparred with before had gone to combat schools and had been involved in this war longer than he had—fought Grimm, fought Salem's forces, were literal military leaders or lieutenants of secret world-saving brotherhoods. If there was any relief, Oscar was pretty sure he was still picking up Ozpin's muscle memory.
"You're not bad," Marin tells him, helping him to his feet after she'd knocked him down. "Your stance isn't terrible, you've got the right movements, but your footwork is stiff. But, don't worry, you'll get there."
"That's… encouraging, I think?"
The faunus detective settles into a lower stance, raises her fists.
"You're not what I was expecting at all. I don't mean to bring up bad memories, Eddie said I shouldn't, but you'll find I'm a blunt kinda gal. 'Pologies in advance. I was the one who took the missing person report from your Aunt. From what I was told, and what Eddie first told me about you after you got back, I was expecting someone… well, less like you."
"…What did you have in mind then?"
He is in the middle of feeling an incredible surge of guilt at the mention of his aunt grieving over him, back when he was missing and maybe in the future should he die in war, when suddenly, Marin throws a fist at him. Oscar reacts in time to bring his guard up and deflect the blow. He goes a step further, wrapping his arm around hers, locking it in place, and uses his shoulder and her momentum to throw her to the ground beneath him. Qrow had done stuff like this. Have conversations interspersed with physical bouts.
…Ironwood, too.
Although Marin at least was closer in height to Ruby so he had a better shot at successfully maneuvering around her like this. He also felt less intimidated. Or… confused. Even though he'd been friendly and Oscar learned a lot, sparring with Ironwood had been… an interesting rush of thoughts and feelings. Especially with Ironwood's goal to bring Oz to the surface…
This time it was Oscar who held his hand out to help Marin up. She gives a short laugh once she gets to her feet, brushes straw off her shirt, and then looks at him. She gives a wistful sigh.
"I expected someone lost. Instead, there's a sort of intensity to the way you move in training like this, hard and fast. You're not someone who's lost, you're someone who's driven."
She throws a jab and Oscar barely manages to dodge in time. She'd toppled is concentration in an instant. He'd never thought of himself like that.
"At least when you're paying attention," she tells him as he took a step back to put some distance between them. "Don't let little ole me distract you. I see why Ed thinks you're such a mystery. That way you sometimes hold your shoulders back, head lifted, eye contact—the way you walk with an even, measured tread reads as extensive training. You don't always do it, but then you also get all self-conscious when people talk to you."
Oscar ducks his head under Marin's incoming kick and then moves in close on her inner flank, aiming for her solar plexus. Without even needing to register his movement, Marin catches his wrist.
"Which, I get. You're, like, twelve."
"Actually, I'm—"
BAM! Roundhouse to the face. He lands in a cloud of straw.
One day… he thinks to himself, dreamily staring up at the clouds above, he will stop getting hit in the face, but today was not that day. So much for going easy on the injured kid.
"You know, that wound on your shoulder is gonna scar," Marin told him, helping him up again and out of the straw. "Along with that, you've got this mysterious vibe people are gonna love when you're a bit older."
She says this grinning madly like a family friend who was trying to set him up with their child. Little did Oscar know at the time that Marin had six eligible daughters.
In the moment, Oscar grimaces, face flushed. Why did everyone act like this?
"I… don't think that's going to happen."
Marin laughs wholeheartedly.
As headmaster of an academy, let alone one geared towards combat, there is much that requires Ozpin's personal attention. His administrative staff worked hard and diligently, but there were some matters that must be left up to him. Along with his "side job," as Qrow calls it, his schedule was bustling with appointments, duties to fulfil, plans to determine.
However, this? This he made absolutely sure to have time for.
The interview finally begins.
"Hello, Oscar Pine," he starts once their terminals had connected. "So, you want to come to my school."
The boy freezes for a moment staring at him like he was a ghost before blinking slowly and then responding.
"Oh, um… Hello? Yes, I do. Sorry if the camera's shaky, I don't have anything to put the Scroll on to keep it stable."
In that moment Ozpin recognizes it as the voice from his dreams. He had found the boy. A youthful face, wide, expressive eyes, and messy black hair. Freckles and a tanned complexion, he looked far, far too young and it broke his heart remembering some of the dreams he'd had.
The boy was sitting in front of a second story window that overlooked the fields below. Far off in the distance he could see a mountain and some forest, the moon rising high bathing everything in cool moonlight. In contrast, inside the room, the light was warm and pleasant, although Ozpin didn't get the impression it came from electricity. Maybe a lamp.
His head was tilted to the side as if he were trying to figure out whether or not he was coming through. Ozpin could see recent stitches in the hairline right near the boy's temple.
"I can see you just fine, Mr. Pine. From the moon outside, it looks like it's late in Mistral. I apologize for keeping you up."
"No, it's okay," the boy is quick to reassure him. "I stay up this late reading most nights."
The camera shakes a little as the boy looks at something off screen. Perhaps his collection of books?
Ozpin steeples his fingers, his chin resting on them, staring at the mystery boy before him. Background checks were notoriously hard to conduct when you lived in a world where huntsmen and huntresses could come from all walks of life, from outside the kingdoms surviving and fighting on their own, to living in dubious groups, such as the Branwen Clan had been to Qrow and Raven. Ozpin didn't like to deny entrance because someone's past history seemed hidden or muddled. He wanted Beacon to be a second chance for those who wanted to take it. He wanted it to be a place where children could learn and grow and come into themselves. It didn't mean he wasn't careful, however. Qrow and Raven wouldn't the first to attend Beacon for the purpose of learning how to kill huntsmen. It was unlikely they would be the last, either.
He fixes the boy before him with piercing stare.
"Tell me, how does a farm hand like yourself learn to fight the way you do? You have a rather, shall we say, unique style."
"…I read a lot of books."
It was a blatant lie, but not one Ozpin thought the boy expected him to believe going from the look on his face. He wants to ask about his weapon, but he's not sure he will be given a straight answer. Even though young Oscar appeared calm and collected, he saw little signs that he was hopeful and nervous in turn. It wasn't exactly something uncommon among interviewees to be nervous but want to appear calm. It didn't necessarily mean they were harboring ill intent.
Under his gaze, the boy self-consciously brushes his fingers against his stitches.
Ozpin's eyes flickered over to Glynda who sat across from him in his office where Oscar couldn't see looking disgruntled. Although that didn't necessarily mean anything. In all his lives, he had encountered no one else who channeled such energy into being disgruntled though day and night.
"Mr. Pine," Ozpin leans forward as if to get a good look at him. "Why do you want to be a Huntsman?"
"I don't," Oscar answered flatly, spine ramrod straight, meeting his gaze with green-gold eyes, resolute and unflinching. As the headmaster of an esteemed Huntsman academy that many would-be hunters wanted to train at, Ozpin would have been taken aback at such bold honesty if he didn't sense that there was more to come.
"I hate seeing people get hurt, I never know what to do, and Grimm still scare me. But…"
Here it was, Ozpin thought. Every normal applicant had a pitch as to why them and it looked like Oscar had finally decided to get to his own. Was he a normal boy like all the rest? Was he something sinister laying in wait? Was he… another Oz?
"I…. think… we live in a divided time," the boy tells him after much consideration, eyeing him thoughtfully as if trying to gauge his reaction, as he had been doing this entire interview. "Grimm, the White Fang, anti-Faunus discrimination, systemic societal inequality. I think… there are people out there who want us to fight each other instead of working together and trusting each other. I think fear does terrible things to people, even good people who want to do the right thing. I think the power of fear is compelling but what we decide to do about it matters."
The boy pauses giving him a pointed look, as if waiting for his words to sink in before he continued.
After the moment passes, he places a hand meaningfully on his chest, holding his Scroll one-handed and Ozpin felt his heart stir and a memory flicker in the back of his mind—hurt, thoughts spiraling, it's all over, falling, falling, falling, the horizon beneath him as dawn broke, wind howling, and he lands with nothing and no one around him, every sound muffled by snow.
"I made… a choice. To put other people before myself. There's people I have to protect and I'm more frightened of losing them than I am of anything else. So no, I don't want to be a huntsman, but I need to be one."
The boy looked to him in anticipation. His words felt genuine and were chosen with such care that it was hard to think he would be lying. Ozpin felt inspired, maybe even touched.
He carefully watches his youthful face, keeping his expression neutral.
"Why now?"
"Huh?"
Ozpin flapped a hand vaguely.
"You want to waive the age limit, correct? Why attend Beacon now? You must have some pressing reason, Mr. Pine."
The boy scratches his neck and looks away briefly.
"…Because I don't think the world has the luxury of time and I want to be ready."
Ozpin's eyebrows raise and he opens his mouth to ask him what he was referring to because it sounded awfully like he knew—
On the other end of the line, there was the sound of breaking glass. A horrified high-pitched shriek, a precipitous crack, an unpleasant laugh. The boy's eyes went wide and his face went pale.
"I've got to go."
His voice was small and quiet, barely even a whisper. On screen he begins to grab something to the side of him, expression changing from apprehensive to determined.
"Wait! Mr. Pine, what is—?"
The mystery boy killed the connection.
Ozpin was left half-risen from his seat in alarm, hands on his desk, staring at his screen.
He'd been so entranced, watching the way Ozpin's tousled hair fell a little in front of his face, seeing those stupid glasses, hearing his… voice. A voice he'd known for what felt like forever now. A real person with a real voice. He'd looked so… No. No time. He hated to do it, because this moment was so important and he already felt so disoriented and in over his head, but Oscar cut off communication, snatched up the Long Memory beside him, and soundlessly got to his feet. He could hear shouting below him in the barn. Carefully, he crept towards his door and silently opened it.
Marin's partner is on the floor with a mangled arm and bleeding from his stomach. The sound of glass had actually been the mirror over the sink along with the sink itself, porcelain falling in pieces when Dr. Ed had been thrown into it.
The horrible man was here, effortlessly holding Umber in the air by her glossy curls, kicking a lantern onto a stray haystack. Flames eagerly burst forth and hungrily ate up all before it, giving Oscar a heavy lump of fear in his stomach. The mother sheep and her lambs scatter, frantic and terrified, crying out into the night.
Oscar spots Marin just outside the barn door, she spots him on the floor above.
They both nod.
Marin charges in. Oscar slides rather than climbs down the ladder checking on Marin's partner first before Ed. The stomach wound looked bad, he didn't know about the arm. He ran over to check Ed. He was the doctor here.
"'S fine, 's fine," Ed hissed, touching the wound on his head. "I'll take care'a him. You… go do what you do."
Oscar didn't need to be told twice. He helps Marin engage Rhys.
"You thought you could sneak, sneak, get away from me, my darling girl, but no abomination goes unnoticed. And none who protect and hide you will go unpunished."
In his grasp, Umber screams and tries to kick at his face, maybe out of fear more than intent, but her legs didn't have the reach. The man continues to laugh as the barn begins to burn around him.
Oscar really didn't get it. He knew some people hated the faunus due to clashes in history, differences in culture, or hate bred into generation after generation. He didn't understand this 'abomination' stuff. He'd talked like this before when they fought before. It sounded… religious? …Maybe?
Regardless, Oscar didn't have time to theorize. Marin went to slam a fist against Rhy's clavicle. Oscar went to strike his arm, force him to release Umber.
There's a sickening sound, like bones grinding against rock. Marin's fist hits nothing but air, stumbling. Oscar does something similar, where there had once been an arm there now was none. He landed hard on wobbly legs trying to switch momentum. Rhys had tipped his entire torso at a ninety degree angle as if he were a marionette, as if spinal structure was optional, holding Umber even higher with the arm that lifted her.
Rhys begins a wheezing chuckle as the wooden beams of the barn begin to catch fire, as if this were the final crescendo in his firey ballad.
He raises his giant blade, chain rattling portentously.
"Uuahahahaha—oof!"
In a perplexing turn of events, caught entirely unaware, Umber stomps on his face, spitting mad. There were still tears in her eyes, actually she was bawling, but something in her had snapped. He'd held her too close when he'd changed the position of his arm.
After she slams both her feet down and he loses his grip, she uses Rhys' face as a trampoline and bounces to the ground. She looks over her shoulder, teeth bared, then runs to Doctor Ed.
The fire grows higher and hotter, climbing quickly to the second floor of the barn. Oh, Oscar lamented, his little library was toast… Smoke was pouring into the little wooden barn now, it was getting hard to see and hard to breathe.
"Get out of here!" both he and Marin yell towards Ed and Umber. The two of them awkwardly start to drag Marin's partner out as best they could, high on adrenaline, one of them with a head wound.
Lots of that going around lately.
Oscar twirls his cane, getting his hands in a steady grip. His lungs feel like they were on fire. They were surrounded on flame on three sides. His heart pounded wildly against his chest, his eyes see a red and gold shadow he knew wasn't there. This wasn't the same, it wasn't the same. He was not Ozpin. He was not going to die in this stupid fire. If he died, then he would die facing Salem with his friends!
Marin squares up, shoulders wide, an immovable wall. She seemed prepared to watch Rhys burn.
Rhys was holding his nose making wet, pained, rasping sounds. From the way blood was pouring out, Oscar thought Umber had probably broken it. He stares at them through his fingers, eyes desperate and frenzied, growing wider and ungovernable.
He swings his blade at them in wide, erratic swoops. A wooden beam falls from the ceiling, separating Oscar and Marin.
"Why can't you see?" the man shouts at Oscar, presumably because he was human, angling his weapon down towards him, slicing through smoke, fire, and wood. "They're lesser than us! A blight! They flee, they scurry, they take, they kill! Trust a faunus and you'll find a knife in your back! Cunning, conniving, they're worse than Grimm!"
Oscar knew he'd inhaled in too much smoke. His legs were weak, he couldn't see for the stinging tears in his eyes, his lungs were drowning in carbon dioxide. He wouldn't be able to dodge that.
A memory surfaces. Aura. Magic. Whatever.
An explosion of green energy deflects the blade to give Oscar enough time to bring up the Long Memory, one hand on either end of it, before it reaches its final descent. Miraculously, he's able to block. He stares Rhys in the eyes as best he could, foot sliding backwards.
"You're… wrong."
Oscar begins to cough helplessly, his eyes watering. He couldn't breathe. His arms grow weak.
Rhys makes a break for it, diving past the two of them now that he had the chance. Oscar blindly stumbles after him, having to jump over a burning beam to do so. Marin gives chase as well.
WHUMP!
Which, apparently, was an escape attempt they needn't have worried about. The man makes it out the barn, but is laid flat and unconscious by one violent blow from Aunt Emma's rolling pin.
"Oh no!" Aunt Emma cries, eyes wide, dropping the pin and clasping her face as they stared at her from just outside the burning building, "I didn't kill him did I…?"
Just their luck that only after Rhys was knocked out should the rest of the squad of police arrive. Marin had a lot to say about that. Most of it curse words.
Ozpin had the boy's Scroll ID now and could call him if he wanted. The headmaster waited only as long as he could endure his growing apprehension before he called.
The scroll picked up.
"Uh? Hello?" the voice answered sounding hoarse and unsure. In the background there was a lot of muffled, chaotic noise and a female voice nearby wondered, "Did we have insurance for that? I can't remember."
"Mr. Pine," Ozpin starts, evenly and just a bit hesitantly.
A different voice in the background was saying, "—and with the help of cute, little—"
He got the impression a hand had been placed over the receiver when he heard a muted, but helplessly exasperated, "Stop calling me that." He heard a few more rustling noises, some shouting, and maybe an alarm. He heard loud laughter and a thump soon followed by an "Ow," sounding suspiciously like voice he knew to be Oscar's.
"Sorry 'bout that," that same brusque female voice was saying, a flickering, crackling sound bleeding through the other line. "Forgot which one was your injured shoulder. Want you to know that the smoke overwhelmed me and how proud I—"
"Yeah, alright. Listen, I'm not trying to brush you off, Mrs. Marin, I'm just on my Scroll right now. It's—" a series of coughs, "—important."
And then an older voice, male, "Oscar, wait just a sec, you've pulled'a few stitches there…"
After a few minutes the noise dies down. He hears a door creak and a soft sigh. The boy must have gone somewhere quieter.
"Sorry about... everything," the boy apologized. Ozpin felt like he could almost see Oscar throw a hand uselessly into the air.
"Mr. Pine… what… happened?"
"Uhh. The police are arresting a 'Zookeeper' for counts of murder and attempted assassination. Uh, and part of our barn is still on fire and I don't think we had insurance since it was so—" thirty seconds of severe coughing, "—old and I'm pretty sure it might have violated occupational safety laws because the second floor didn't have a railing and my entire library got turned to ash and that's, like, thirty whole books! And—"
Ozpin felt it was an inappropriate time to tell young Oscar about Beacon's library that held a lot more than thirty books because where Oscar is from his probably would be considered a library. Instead, he asked, interrupting, probably saving the boy's life from asphyxiation, "You helped detain him? The Zookeeper?"
"My friend was in trouble, so, yeah. Er. Yes. Only a little bit."
From the background he hears another muted voice call, "Oscar! You're alright! I was so—!"
More crackling sounds. Whatever the speaker was Ozpin didn't find out.
"S-Sorry. I know this is probably unprofessional. Can, uh, can I call you back? Everything is kinda…"
Ozpin laughs, "Take all the time you need, Mr. Pine. You sound quite busy."
The boy apologizes again and then hastily hangs up.
Ozpin found out more about the actual incident when he went through the trouble of sending for a newspaper from Oscar's town of residence. In summary it was a Zookeper, like Oscar had said, out to murder the remaining family of a faunus woman he'd killed before whom the family had moved out to the sticks to flee. The police managed to detain and arrest him with the help of a 'cute, little farmboy' and his aunt.
There was a photo in the newspaper of the group at the farm. The boy he recognized to be Oscar, mid-laugh, looking embarrassed and holding a girl with tiny antlers over his shoulders despite the bandages wound around said shoulder. A faunus police detective with spotted markings had her hand on his unwounded shoulder smiling wide at the camera. To his other side, was what looked like a tall man who might be a doctor, who was carefully reaching for the boy's other shoulder, while looking up at the small girl. There was a smiling woman in the back, one hand on her hip and the other hefting a rolling pin, proud expression on her face and more policemen milling around the smoking barn the photo was taken in front of. All of their clothes looked partially singed and there was soot on their faces.
When Oscar eventually called back, he'd described it simply as, "Just helping a friend." No pomp, no exaggeration, no self-aggrandizing. It was refreshingly pure and honest.
Well... besides maybe stealing an Atlas airship with his possible grandmother in the future or maybe the past, Oscar didn't seem like a criminal. And he certainly seemed like a good kid. Additionally, he seemed exactly like the kind of huntsman Beacon looked for in its candidates.
Just to be sure, he called on some of the people shown in the paper to act as character witnesses.
"Why?" asked a grizzled and threatening voice on the other end of the Scroll. "What do you want with him? That lad don't need more trouble. You leave him alone." When he called back for clarification, he got a girl's voice telling him all about how wonderful Oscar was, what books he'd shown her before the barn fire, and how to catch frogs.
Another call resulted with, "Oh, you're asking about the cute little farm boy," and Ozpin finds himself putting his hand over his face and automatically responding, "Please, don't call him that."
And then backpedaling over, "How dare you! My nephew would never steal an airship! Just what do you think you are implying! Who do you think y—!"
Getting reliable information on Oscar Pine from those that knew him was more excruciating than catching rapier wasps. Ozpin massaged the sides of his head. He was getting a migraine.
"Given the courts, will he even be prosecuted?" Auntie Em was asking the next afternoon when Umber and Oscar arrived in their living room.
Marin looks at Aunt Emma, then at them. She gives a sly, sneaky wink.
"Sweethearts, this is the country. He's in my custody. In my jurisdiction. You understand what I'm getting at?"
Oscar looked at Umber, Umber looked at Oscar. They both looked back at Marin. Neither of them got it.
"I think that's enough for one day," Aunt Emma hastily interrupts, a stern hand on both Oscar and Umber's backs steering them back the way they came, shooting a disapproving look towards Marin. "Let's help our little Umber pack, shall we?"
"I'm not little!" Umber grumbles, following along with Aunt Emma.
This time Oscar is the one to laugh.
"Are you sure about this?" Glynda asked once he informed her of his decision, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and looking at him doubtfully like he was taking an incalculable risk.
"Well, there's no arguing he's certainly… an anomaly. I'd rather keep an eye on him here than have him out of our sight, don't you think?"
Glynda didn't look quite as convinced.
Weeks later Oscar received a large manila envelope. He opened it with trepidation…