A.N. Sorry for the delay, I did quite a bit of work on Technician's Order the last week. Also, I've found that as I have exhausted my reserve of mostly written chapters, I may need to drop to a post every other week.
This is when we start settling into the story as we finish off the first arc. Combat is a part of Glynda and Shirou's way of life and how they met but now we will be settling into a more sedate pace.
Chapter 5: Placing into a Sword Stand
After finishing the dishes, taking a shower, wiping away any traces of her tears, and completing her morning rituals, Glynda was ready to face the day.
She brought up her scroll and scowled as she looked over her schedule and To-Do List.
Patrol Vytal Festival, Meet with VIP from Vacuo, Meeting with Ozpin at 2, Negotiate for Huntsmen to help patrol Menagerie, Commence preparations for Award Ceremony…
All useless now that the Vytal Festival had been ruined. The falling into open warfare with the Grimm and White Fang simply made most of her list flat out impossible.
As for Ozpin…
Glynda pushed aside the grief by reminding herself that Ozpin wouldn't be gone forever. He'd be back, in a new body with a new plan now that the old plan had been foiled.
Even if they would have to act like strangers for a time until Ozpin was strong enough to protect himself.
Glynda inhaled, disciplining her emotions before opening her eyes again.
Yes, she'd just have to postpone that meeting with Ozpin. For several years.
Refocusing her attention back on her list, Glynda deleted the items that couldn't happen now. She knew for a fact that the White Fang had murdered Menagerie's ambassador for being a 'traitor to the Faunus'.
Okay, what did she need to do instead?
The sound of the door opening caused Glynda to look up from typing in her first item.
Shirou entered the door, blinking.
"Oh, didn't expect you here," Shirou said before walking over to his bag and bending down.
Glynda eyed him, gaze momentarily wandering to his butt, and wondered what he had come back for. Also, wasn't there something she was supposed to do with Shirou?
Ah yes, she was going to have him meet Ozpin.
Even if he wasn't a magician which, after a good night's sleep to overcome her initial knee jerk reaction, seemed less likely. The man at least did have power comparable to that of a Maiden's. In addition, he would be a valuable ally now that Salem had her own Maiden. And if Shirou's claim to using magic was true, it would be worth getting in touch with Ozpin using emergency procedures.
Unfortunately, their emergency plans had all counted on technology that was dependent on the CCT or Qrow, who was taking his nieces back to Patch today. And she disliked having to rely on Qrow. He was an exceptionally skilled fighter and information gatherer but you couldn't rely on him to be civilized about anything or to even stop drinking for one.
But needs must. She had no other option with the Tower down. She'd have to send a message by Qrow. In order to do that, she would need to find him, preferably before he left the city with his nieces. Which would now be the first thing on her new To-Do list.
"Is there something you need?" she asked, putting her scroll down in her lap.
"Nah, just grabbing some more posters of my sister," Shirou casually commented as he straightened, some papers in his hands. "Found a few good spots to put them up but ran out at the last one I found. Also, it is a good way to find people to help as well."
"Your sister?" Glynda asked in curiosity and a little worry, looking a little closer at the paper which had a large image of a girl on it. Putting facts together, Glynda got a conclusion. "Is she missing?"
"Yes," Shirou affirmed, his face solemn, his eyes tight with worry. "She was kidnapped several years ago. I managed to get her free but lost her almost as soon as we got out. I've been looking for her for… a few years now."
"Quite some time," Glynda said, mind racing. "Could I see one of those posters?"
"Sure, why not," Shirou agreed amiably as he walked over and handed her one.
Glynda examined the hand-sketched portrait of a young black-haired girl with golden brown eyes. Miyu was adorable, Glynda noted. Quite young too judging by the birth year. Much younger than her estimate of Shirou's age.
But she had never seen anyone like Miyu. And Miyu was not a name associated to any form of color like Remnant's recent naming traditions. She would have noticed if she had heard it.
"Is this picture accurate?" Glynda asked before realizing the confusion her question could generate. "I mean, is this recent?"
"She probably has grown since then," Shirou admitted. "Should be a teenager by now but I have no idea what she would look like now after puberty."
"I have seen black haired girls with brown eyes," Glynda admitted, tapping her scroll to see if she still had any pictures of her students. Regrettably, without the CCT, she couldn't access the school databanks. "But I haven't met anyone named Miyu though."
"Unfortunate," Shirou sighed with resignation. Almost like he was expecting it, Glynda noticed with a wince.
Glynda hastened to assure Shirou that she could help. "But I can send out word to my colleagues and associates…" Glynda trailed off as she remembered that the CCT tower was down and that she couldn't communicate with anyone by scroll.
"Do you think they could help?" Shirou asked hopefully.
"I would be surprised if not even one of them had never met her," she said confidently. She and Ozpin had contacts with schools, not only their fellow Hunter schools but the preliminary schools as well. And Miyu's age fell right into that range. It would just be a couple of calls away.
Only she literally couldn't make those calls.
"The problem is, I can't call them," Glynda gestured towards her scroll. "We need the CCT tower up and running to make any calls. But once it is back up, I can call them and ask about your sister. If they don't know her, then at the very least they should be able to engage their colleagues, one of whom is bound to know her."
Shirou stiffened. "Telecommunications are down?" he asked in worry.
"Yes," Glynda reaffirmed. "The CCT technology is the basis of cross-continental communications. Without it, no one can make calls throughout the entire world."
"And that would apply to emails as well?" Shirou asked, apprehension growing on his face.
"Yes," Glynda answered before she glanced back down to the poster. The poster which only had an email address and no physical address to contact.
"Oh, Shirou," She whispered, the magnitude of what had just crossed Shirou's mind striking her. Without the CCT, he couldn't hear back from anyone if they did know Miyu. "I'm so sorry. I'm sure that you'll find her."
"It's alright," Shirou said heavily after a pause. He probably was collecting his emotions. "I just need to help get the CCT tower back up. Where is it?"
"Beacon," Glynda told him, closing her eyes, heart dropping in her stomach as she told him the bad news. "But we would need to get rid of the Grimm first and the Wyvern before a team from Atlas can start rebuilding the tower."
Silence draped the room as Shirou sat down.
"And while the tower is down, nowhere on Remnant can communicate?" Shirou asked with a heavy heart.
"Yes. Only by word of mouth or messengers now." Glynda opened her eyes and looked at Shirou who had a pained look on his face. "Even at the earliest, I estimate that it would take at least three weeks for word to make it to Atlas, a CCT team to come down from Atlas, and then to repair the tower. Possibly longer depending on the damage sustained."
Shirou covered his face with his hands as he thought.
"And this is the most dangerous time on Remnant," his muffled voice drifted through his hands. "Everyone will be in a panic, people will evacuate their homes, chaos will spread and crime will spike."
"And the Grimm will be attacking everywhere, politics will become tense, and the Kingdoms will be on the brink of war," Glynda filled in, heart sinking as she faced the full implications of Salem's attack.
"Yes- what was that about the Grimm?" Shirou asked, removing his hands from his face. "Aren't they always attacking?"
"Don't you know?" Glynda asked with a frown. This was stuff taught in every school. "The Grimm are attracted to negativity."
"I hope you are talking about negative electrical poles?" Shirou asked, some wit creeping into his voice.
"How you know about magnetism but not Grimm is a mystery," Glynda dead-panned back.
"I've had an out-of-the-world curriculum," Shirou drily responded.
"Your curriculum could have used more practical classes such as Grimm Studies instead of astrology," Glynda snarked before sighing. "But no. The Grimm are attracted to the negative emotions of humanity."
"Huh," Shirou said before falling silent again.
"Did you not know that?" Glynda asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Did Shirou not get a formal education?
"No, I didn't," Shirou confirmed.
"Shirou," Glynda started before deciding just to be direct about it. "That is something that everyone knows. Every school, every teacher knows to teach that to their students. There is no way you couldn't have known."
"I never completed my education," Shirou admitted.
Glynda straightened up in shock.
"Never completed!" She yelled, offended at the waste. "What do you mean, you never completed your education?"
"Well, I was once in school," Shirou admitted, looking up at her, his elbows on his knees. "But then my sister was kidnapped so I spent my time trying to get her back. She is more important than a General Education degree anyway."
Glynda lowered her glasses to better glare at Shirou.
"Even if your priorities are focused on your younger sister, it does not excuse the neglect of your education." Glynda lectured. "An education is one of the most valuable things you can possess."
"Perhaps," Shirou said non-committedly. "But my sister was taken. Everything else just, became less important after that."
Glynda could see the reasoning behind it. But…
"Why didn't you go to the police then?" Glynda asked, pushing her glasses back onto her nose. "Leave the authorities or the professionals to do the job while you finish your schooling."
"They wouldn't even be able to find her, much less rescue her," Shirou growled. "I was the only one who would."
Glynda frowned at that. She knew that life rarely went the way it was supposed to. The Grimm and the casualties they inflicted had made that clear enough over her career.
But why was Shirou so sure that the police wouldn't have been able to find her?
"Welp, can't be helped," Shirou said with a sigh before climbing to his feet. "Better go find the army."
"The army?" Glynda asked in a bit of surprise at the change in subject. "What for? For all that they do, I don't think finding your sister is one of their objectives. Especially at the present."
"The army would be the ones who go and retake Beacon right? So I'm going to see if they need any help with that." Shirou said reasonably. If you were a person who had no education. "That and I would rather not walk up to Beacon. The climb up the cliffs is a bit much for my tastes."
"The last I heard, Atlas's army was planning on withdrawing from the city," Glydna recalled what the officers had been saying last night. "The recent massacres created a wave of hatred towards Atlas and James felt it was a good idea to withdraw before more Grimm came."
"And before any riots start," Shirou sighed before standing up. "Well, shouldn't Vale have its own army? I can go talk with them."
Glynda couldn't help herself. She smiled, barely holding in a snort.
"Vale's military has been a joke for decades now," she told him, her smile dancing behind her expression. "Not even the officers expect the army to be any good. Vale's council likes to forget that they even have an army."
"What?" Shirou said turning to face her from next to the door. "You mean, Vale invited a foreign army to come in and occupy their capital city without even having a reliable military force? They just counted on telling the general that if they wanted him to leave, he would just leave?"
Somehow, Shirou's completely disbelieving expression struck Glynda as funny.
"Yes," She affirmed, nodding her head to Shirou's increasing disbelief. "Yes, they did. If you want fighting done in Vale, you either go to the Hunters, as led by the Headmaster of Beacon Academy, the Air Force union, or the Engineer's corps. The Engineers if you want to have automatic turrets and walls built for defense, or Hunters if you want a group that can actually walk anywhere faster than a slug. And the Air Force union will only accept your request if you want an escort for a ship."
Shirou gaped at her before shaking his head.
"And just when I thought this world couldn't get any crazier," Shirou said under his breath to himself.
"We live, we used to live, in a time of peace," Glynda defended. "The Great War and the Faunus Right Revolution are over and we won't be descending to fighting again. Vacuo hasn't recovered from it and the other kingdoms are still trying to expand back out to their old boundaries. There is no point in us fighting each other."
Shirou looked like he wanted to object, like he didn't believe what everyone knew, but he held back his tongue.
"So, who should I talk with about getting transportation to Beacon?" Shirou asked.
"Normally, the ticket office. The air buses run on the hour," Glynda said drily. "But for a military expedition…"
Glynda scowled at the reminder of the current lack of organization. Beacon's fleet of vehicles was still up at Beacon. Their pilots were either dead or scattered down here. She had no clue where anyone was and, without scrolls working, no way to find out.
"I'm not sure," she ended up admitting. "Before we could try to reclaim Beacon, we need to reclaim Vale, otherwise the citizens and politicians will flip. And before we can do that, we need to find and organize the Hunters. The students too while we're at it. Only after we have the citizens feeling safe and our Hunters ready to fight, can we get around to actually trying to eject the Grimm from Beacon."
"And to find them, you need the communications," Shirou said, frowning. "So, is there a way to just fly me up and drop just me off? I might as well start clearing off the Grimm while waiting."
"Except," Glynda hated to admit it. "There are too many flying Grimm over Beacon. The Grimm have been flocking to the corpse of the Wyvern and the flying ones are almost migrating there. It would be a one-way suicide expedition for a single Bullhead and even then I can't think of a way to guarantee a landing. If we had more than one, the chances rise but…"
Glynda trailed off, hating that she didn't even know how many of Beacon's Bullheads had survived and were in Vale.
"But you need the organization for more than one," Shirou sighed. "All right, so nothing I can do about Beacon."
"I'm sorry," Glynda apologized. She wanted to help but she couldn't in good conscience risk the lives of her remaining personnel for a suicide mission. And even if she did have the people, the internal politics of Vale would hog-tie her hands from lending aid until the citizens of Vale felt safe.
Well, safer at the very least. Glynda didn't doubt that public confidence in their safety would be rather low after the battle. Vale hadn't seen real combat inside the city for decades until this year when they had two separate incidents.
Which would mean that more Grimm would be attacking the city, drawn by the constant low-level fear and insecurity.
At least for now, it should be quieter. All the Grimm that had been nearby, as in all the way out to Mountain Glenn, had already came to Vale. It should take some time before their numbers replenished.
Glynda hoped. She needed information too! But with her scroll unable to communicate, she couldn't receive reports or calls either.
"It's not your fault," Shirou said resignedly. "You didn't cause the White Fang to attack or bring the Grimm here or reprogram the robots. You caused no part of this atrocity."
It's not your fault.
Glynda was silent, her heart touched.
How much had she blaming herself for this, she wondered as she felt her eyes burn from unshed tears. She was the deputy head-mistress of Beacon one of the symbols for the safety of Vale.
And she had failed to protect. Salem's agent had won, not only ruining the Vytal Festival but killing Ozpin, stealing the power of the Fall Maiden, and destroying Beacon. And while they had managed to keep Vale from falling, the loss of so many symbols in rapid succession must have spread terror across the entire world.
Which would bring the Grimm, which would cause more fear, which would bring more Grimm.
And the cycle would continue, decimating Hunters and causing thousands, if not millions, to die until the world stabilized again.
All because she had failed.
"Hey, you alright?" Shirou asked, his face crossed in a frown as he looked over at her from his seated position. "You look like someone killed your dog."
"Oh," The man winced. "I'm sorry if someone did. I didn't mean to-"
"I'm fine," Glynda said abruptly. She didn't trust herself to speak without a tremor in her voice right now.
She took a couple of deep breaths before speaking again. "I've never even had a dog anyway."
Shirou was silent, his brow creased.
"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked finally.
Glynda considered it before answering.
"There is nothing to discuss," she simply said.
Even if he was a magician, she couldn't tell him everything. Secrets like Salem's existence were secrets for a reason, and she didn't want to touch on them.
Shirou studied her a bit more, making Glynda want to shift a bit in her seat.
But she was the deputy headmistress, headmistress now, of Beacon. She did not act like a nervous school girl.
"All right," he said slowly, his head cocked, still staring at her.
"What are you going to do, Shirou?" Glynda asked to get him to stop looking at her like that. Like he was trying to see through her. It made her feel awkward, like she was a decade or two younger.
"Me?" Shirou asked, somewhat surprised. "What am I going to do? In regards to Beacon and Miyu?"
Glynda nodded, glad at the successful change of topic.
"What can I do?" He barked out some self-scorning laughter. "I can't build a new telecommunications system or tower. I don't have the time, money, or knowledge to do that. I can't get transportation to Beacon and climbing those cliffs alone is suicide with all the Grimm all around. I'll be half dead of exhaustion by the time I got to the top. I can't wipe all the Grimm out in one strike else I destroy the CCT tower as well. Not to mention that if I am close enough to shoot the Grimm, the cliffs are in my way so I can't see where the Grimm are and I'm not some legendary Archer who can shoot without knowing where my target is."
"There is nothing I can do," Shirou sighed. "But if I do nothing, then nothing will be done. I can't stop. I have to keep looking. But without the CCT, there is little point in looking. Getting the CCT back up so that I can hear from others is the best way to search right now."
"Maybe I can go to the army. Find out if there is some unit that wants to reclaim Beacon," Shirou shrugged. "There is bound to be some sort of task force on it. Maybe Atlas will leave some men to help. I don't know. If nothing else, I could find some Hunters and see what they would need in order to take back Beacon."
A pause.
"Shirou, I am a Huntress," Glynda said slowly. Didn't he know already? Had she told him?
"I thought you said you were a teacher?" Shirou asked, surprise in his features. "At Beacon."
"Yeeees," Glynda said, leading him on to the obvious conclusion.
He still looked a little confused.
Glynda sighed. "Shirou, all the teachers at Beacon are Hunters. Beacon is a school for Huntsmen and Huntresses. How can we train the protectors of tomorrow if we aren't Hunters as well?"
"That makes sense," Shirou agreed after a moment of thought. "Experienced professionals would help improve the quality of education using know-how learned from direct experience. Would help save more lives that way."
Glynda smiled.
"So if you are both a teacher and a Huntress, then I suppose you would know who I should talk to," Shirou concluded. "So, who should I speak with about getting your campus back? I presume you would like it back sometime before summer vacation is over?"
"Our lessons do go a lot smoother when we have classrooms to teach in," Glynda agreed with a smirk. "But I do know who you should talk to. It is rather obvious."
Shirou blinked at her before frowning and thinking for a bit.
"Peter Port?" he gave a haphazard guess.
Glynda stared flatly at him. "Does our school look like it is- never mind. Despite its current desolate state, Peter is not our Headmaster."
Who would trust Peter to be in charge of a school? He would take the entire student body on one of his adventures and half of them would never come back as they ran from one adventure to the next. She knew her students and most of them would choose to try and top several of Peter's stories rather than do even one essay.
And then she would have to track them all down, one at a time in order to give the final exams because while that had been how Peter had learned to be a Huntsman, it wasn't feasible on a large scale. Peter had learned the skills he needed in the field and then passed the fourth-year exams, including the academic ones, when he came back to the city.
They couldn't have that many unregistered Hunters wandering around like Peter had done. It would be chaos!
But to be fair to Shirou, Glynda currently didn't know where half of her students were so she could see how Shirou might think that.
"Guess not," he said, drawing another conclusion. "So, someone obvious, someone I already probably know. Peter's wife? Can't be Bart, he's the history teacher…"
Glynda pushed up her glasses so that she could pinch the bridge of her nose.
She swears, this man gives her as much of a headache as Ozpin sometimes.
"Um, I don't really know," Shirou said awkwardly. "I haven't really kept up with the news."
"I'm the deputy headmistress," she said exasperatedly. Upon catching sight of Shirou's mouth opening, she continued. "Yes, I am also the combat professor. I had both positions while Ozpin was still around."
"Ozpin, Ozpin," Shirou frowned, looking like he was trying to recall something. "Wasn't he the man you bullied me into agreeing to meet?"
"I did not bully," Glynda defended herself. "I simply insisted. And I do want you to meet him. If there was anyone who would know about magecraft or magic, it would be him."
"But he is dead," Shirou helpfully pointed out. "Or at least, you and the other professors were talking about him like he had died."
Glynda kept her mouth firmly shut. She knew that Ozpin wouldn't stay dead. But she wasn't in the business of making herself look insane, which she would if she told Shirou that Ozpin wasn't truly dead.
Also, Ozpin's secrets weren't hers to give. She shouldn't tell a stranger about things that were held private to Ozpin.
"Be that as it may," she said instead, trying to get the conversation over to a different track. "I am the next in line for leadership of Beacon Academy. If you want to help us reclaim Beacon, we would be more than happy to accept your help."
"Actually," Glynda trailed off as a thought struck her.
Shirou was going to stick around here and help. To be honest, they needed the help. And she needed to have Shirou meet with Ozpin's next body anyways.
So why not keep him here?
And there was one thing she could do to keep Shirou around for a while. For four years in fact. It would also take care of him not finishing his education. And if Ozpin didn't come back in four years, they would have bigger concerns.
Now all she needed to do was to sell it.
"Actually… what?" Shirou asked, obviously wondering what she had been about to say.
"Shirou," Glynda asked, determined and, to tell the truth, a tad nervous. She had never done this without Ozpin before. "What do you think about joining Beacon Academy and graduating as a professional Huntsman? We are paid rather generously to travel and fight, and you are exceptionally good at the latter."
She was telling the truth. Very few Hunters could take down a Goliath. Fewer could solo an entire herd of them. And if someone had, then usually they were a Maiden using their powers to do so.
"Well, it sounds good and I wouldn't mind doing so in normal circumstances," Shirou scratched his head as he replied. "It would certainly make filling out a passport much easier. But I would rather look for my sister first and take care of getting a license after I find her."
"I understand," Glynda said. And she did. Any sibling worthy of the title would naturally prioritize their relative's well-being. "That is why I am offering a deal. Come to Beacon, study here for a few years, and while you do that, I can put out through my contacts and the other Huntsmen and Huntress Academies to look for your sister. If someone finds her, then we can easily contact you and reunite the two of you. It would be a few thousand people looking for her. If they don't find her, you can resume your search after getting your accreditation with much greater ease. And there are places where civilians, no matter how strong they are, simply do not have access. Places that a Huntsman instead of a civilian could get access to. It might take some time now, but it would allow you greater resources and help you find her much faster."
It was true. More regimented places like Atlas had entire sectors forbidden to everyone but Hunters. And Menagerie still held anti-human prejudices. The only way to access the entire area of those continents would require a man to be a Huntsman as they were needed to fight the Grimm which were everywhere other than the occupied cities.
Well, used to be everywhere but the cities, Glynda thought as she glanced out the window at the darkened city of Vale. Now the Grimm occupy portions of the heart of Vale. Nowhere was safe now.
"And searching through Vale now would be difficult," Shirou mused. "Refugees would be fleeing everywhere. I could move on from one village only for Miyu to move into it after I leave. We would miss each other and take decades to redo it all."
Glynda blinked. "Sounds like you have already considered that flaw in your search."
Shirou shrugged. "Considered it. I could have tried to use the government databases but the price that I needed to get through Mistral's red tape was beyond my means and they don't record children anyways. Only choice was to look for her on my own. But if she was also moving around, then I could end up missing her completely. The only way around that was to leave something behind that would let Miyu find me. Ergo, the wanted posters. They might not help me find Miyu but they will let her know that I am looking for her and give her a way to contact me if she sees one."
"A wise choice. Or at least it was before the CCT tower went down," Glynda nodded in agreement. "If she is looking for you, which I have very little doubt about seeing your concern for her, then leaving a trail of bread crumbs behind would allow her to find you. "
"Only the bread crumbs are made of paper," Shirou grinned.
"Yes, much less edible." Glynda said dryly. "Certainly a wiser choice than leaving food items where anyone, especially a hungry teen, could eat them."
"And oddly enough, these crumbs tend not to go mysteriously missing when the geese fly in," Shirou commented with a smile on his face before becoming serious. "It sounds like a good idea. But I was under the impression that Beacon was currently out of commission."
Glynda did not sigh at the reminder that they would need to recapture Beacon as well. "Yes, the current residents don't seem to be encouraging our return. They appear to be laboring under the misapprehension that they can steal our academy and we won't do anything to take it back. We just need to recover Vale first and make it habitable again before training more Hunters."
"And I do need to search Vale for Miyu," Shirou said, as he started to slowly nod his head. "If she is somewhere here, then I need to find her before the Grimm do."
"And our staff are currently engaged in search and destroy missions here," Glynda pointed out. "We certainly won't object to bringing along a helping hand. We'll even consider taking two."
She glanced down at Shirou's two scimitars buckled at his waist.
"Wait," Shirou suddenly furled his brow. "Didn't Hunter Academies require their students to come through special schools and programs? I've never been to any school on Remnant."
"That is how most of our students join," Glynda agreed as she walked around the table to approach Shirou. Fortunately, she had aced her history classes back in her own days as a Huntress student, so she knew how the Hunter Academies had been established. "But it wasn't always that way. The Hunter Academies are based off the premise of the vocational college. We'll accept anyone that can make it through our qualifying exams. That was how the first generation of Huntsmen and Huntresses started after the Great War. Those prep schools weren't around back then so we recruited from among the soldiers and veterans who still wanted to fight the Grimm. We have no age restriction and our students receive governmental scholarships for the duration of their training."
"As for the exams," Glynda waved off the idea of Shirou not passing them. "They are much easier than taking out a single Goliath, much less everything I have seen you do over the past day. I don't think you need to worry about a lack of schooling prior to Beacon. We have taken in students with little to no formal education before. You might need to take some more history classes than your fellow students and you might end up doing remedial classes for a few years. But you don't have a bad mind and you seem to be quite determined. If you can apply half of that determination to find your sister to your school work, it would not surprise me if you manage to complete a full education in four years at Beacon."
"Hmm," Shirou considered. "And what if I refuse?"
"Well, I will still put out word through my contacts. I am not heartless enough to deny a man help in searching for his sister," Glynda answered, still pacing. She and Ozpin had recruited talent who had gotten into trouble before. Like Ruby Rose and Blake Belladona. But that was usually done with the pair of them, not just herself. And Ozpin did most of the talking. "But it will be harder to get in contact with you and even harder to get you to where we find your sister if we first need to find you. And with the CCT down, no one will even be able to efficiently communicate across the waters until we get Beacon's CCT back up and running again."
She shrugged. "If I don't know where you are, I'll certainly try to get word out to you. But it would be ironic if we end up holding Miyu at Beacon for four years and graduated her as a Huntress while we try to find you instead of your sister."
Shirou snorted. "That's a good point. So, I need Beacon in order to receive communication from all the flyers I've already put up. And if I help you reestablish both Beacon and Vale, it will allow me to search for Miyu here until I can be certain that Miyu isn't in the city of Vale."
"Also," Glynda stopped walking and turned to Shirou as she realized something else she could use to tempt him to Beacon. "We do send our students out with professors into the field and city for assignments. Just because you are at Beacon, doesn't mean that you can't use your breaks and extracurricular activities to search for your sister while here."
Shirou looked much more interested now. And at least it would mean that one of the students out wandering the town isn't smashing places up like clubs, stores, docks, and highways. It would be a pleasant surprise to not have a student looking to see how much trouble they could generate in one night.
'Yes', Glynda celebrated in her mind. 'Stay here. Stay at Beacon. At least long enough for me to find Ozpin's successor and have him interview you.'
"Alright," Shirou slowly nodded. "If that is the case, then I'll guess I'll be going to college."
"Then let me be the first to welcome you to Beacon, Shirou Emiya," Glynda said with a smile on her face as she shook hands with her future student. "Please excuse the lack of facilities."
"Pleased to be here, Glynda, no, Professor Goodwitch" Shirou smiled as he shook her hand. "Even if pamphlets took some 'artistic liberties' with the facilities."
For some reason, Glynda felt her smile become more brittle when Shirou addressed her with 'Professor Goodwitch' rather than her first name.
Shirou dug through the bag of his remaining possessions, brushing past his folded-up clothes, looking for the paperwork and passport, which he thinks he remembered packing at the very bottom of the bag.
Glynda needed his records and without the CCT, paper was the only way to do it.
Admittedly, she didn't need them right now. In fact, she wasn't even here to take the papers, having just left to see a colleague about a message she needed him to take and deliver before he left the city.
Shirou wondered who the man or recipient was. Was he her boyfriend?
Shriou frowned. He shouldn't be prying into his beautiful professor's romantic situation. She wasn't interested in him and he didn't have time for a relationship anyways. Besides, it would be rude to pry into someone's relationship status.
Unless it was Miyu's relationship. Then Shirou had the elder brother's prerogative of interrogating… making sure that the boy was worthy of his sister.
On an unrelated note, Shirou noted some of his swords and weapons that would make excellent tools for …persuading an unworthy boy to go looking for love with someone else.
But an important element of that train of thought led Shirou to frown as he finally found and pulled out the binder containing the paperwork that was his identity in this new world.
Miyu.
He didn't feel right about entering a school for the next four years while he still didn't know where Miyu was. But if Glynda had been right, then this would open doors for him to search in locations that he couldn't reach on his own. And if he got a lead on Miyu, he could always drop out of school.
But it would be better if he could get paid while searching. It wasn't easy to find the money he needed to live and to pay for his search. Usually getting it required him to settle down in a town for a month or two, work as many part-time jobs as he could find, live in a rundown apartment that he would negotiate to rent at a discount in exchange for fixing it up, and give up on sleeping if any of the jobs needed overtime. Collect several paychecks and build up a large enough bank account until he leaves and continue searching for Miyu. Run out of money a few months later and repeat.
But it was still a significant portion of time to just earn money. A lot of wasted time that he could have used to search for Miyu. Now if only he didn't need something as unimportant as food for something called living and walking. But unless it was Halloween, he didn't think Miyu would want to see him as thin as a skeleton.
So, without any alternatives, he had arrived the natural conclusion that he needed money. Money to eat, money to live, money to travel, and money to find Miyu. It would be nice if he got paid to travel instead of paying for food or tickets to make it to the next town. It would mean that he could spend more on hiring professionals to help search. The detectives in Mistral had not been cheap, even with the discount he managed to negotiate in exchange for fixing some things up in their office.
At least the agency had turned out to be worth it. They had given him the best lead he had ever found. Even though it had turned out that Cinder wasn't Miyu, even just a sighting of a woman who looked like an adult Miyu was better than anything else he had found so far.
Years of searching with only one lead, a false one at that. It was tough on a man. Yet for Miyu's sake, he would searching a hundred years with no leads if he had to.
Shirou sighed as he looked at the forged passport and birth certificate. Oh, the information was as accurate as he could make it, age, gender, appearance, and all that but he didn't have a hometown on Remnant or any one of a number of different things like a government ID number or a birth record. That stuff was all false and cost a pretty penny to get forged but without it, he wouldn't have been able to enter Vale without getting thrown in prison.
And he didn't think Miyu was in prison. She wasn't the kind of girl to break rules and was too cute to be held responsible for things she didn't do.
Shirou nodded along with his completely biased opinion.
However, the cost of coming to Vale was that he was almost out of cash. Only a few hundred lien left before he would need to stop and find a part time job or three. But if Glynda was right, then learning at Beacon would allow him to enter a job market that was not only highly paid but encouraged travel. Travel to locations full of people that needed someone to save them from the Grimm.
The dream that Shirou had discarded beckoned at Shirou and he unconsciously set his mouth into a grimace as he reminded himself that he was no hero. He couldn't be a hero.
He had condemned a world to death. He was Miyu's brother, not a hero.
He needed to find Miyu. To protect her.
And if Beacon allowed him to search for her when class wasn't in session, then even going to Beacon wasn't going to be a big drain on his time. It would limit how far he could go, but even then, Vale was a big kingdom. It would take time to explore even the city alone, much less the villages and towns outside of the metropolis. And to be through, he would need to search the entire kingdom, an endeavor that would take years.
And he wouldn't have to pay for his upkeep thanks to Beacon providing food and lodging.
Did Glynda ever say if Beacon had scholarships? They would help if he could start saving up more for when he resumed his search.
"So, what do you need?" Qrow asked, alcohol flask on one hip, Ozpin's cane on the other, and an unconscious niece slung over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Behind him at the seats of the ferry terminal, sat Yang, glassy eyed as she dealt with the shock of her missing arm, and the remnants of Team JNPR, without their most famous member. Ren was sitting between Nora and Jaune, patting them both on the back, all three looking like they had already shed many tears over their loss.
Glynda felt a stab of sympathy. If she had had a favorite student among their year, it would have been Pyrrha. She could emphasize with JNPR's loss of their friend and teammate.
Unfortunately, she didn't have long to talk with Qrow. The ferry was pulling into sight and the group was going to be boarding it.
"I need a message delivered to Ozpin," Glynda said, keeping her voice low to avoid eavesdroppers. A flash of white hair in the corner of her eye caused her to turn her head before realizing that it wasn't Shirou but an old woman. "I met a person, a man, who claimed to use magic and I want him to verify the claim."
Qrow snorted but dropped his voice. "That's impossible. You know that. Magic was lost when the gods left with only a few fragments. And last I heard, a Maiden couldn't be a man."
"I know," Glynda agreed. "Except I watched him with my own eyes conjure swords and arrows out of thin air, throw them at enemies without using hands, and change concrete rubble into an arrowhead. In addition, he also pullied out a weapon that matched the output of a low-tier Dust Missile which he used to wipe out a herd of Goliaths in one strike. All of that without even having Aura as a scratch wound he received from an Alpha Beowolf was still there before he did most of those feats."
"Hmm," Qrow hummed in thought. "It could have been a very versatile Semblance or an illusion Semblance. But I see your point. That's a bit too much for it to be normal and too coincidental for him to make that claim to you of all people."
"Precisely," Glynda said quickly as a quick glance showed that the ferry was docking even as she spoke. "Will you tell Ozpin that I need him to interview one Shirou Emiya? I've enrolled him into Beacon to keep an eye on him so he'll be here for the next four years."
"Alright," Qrow agreed as he waved his group of kids up. "I'll tell him. I would wish you luck with Beacon, but you know what kind of luck I have."
"I'd appreciate it if you kept your horrendous luck to yourself," Glynda responded.
The unshaven alcoholic laughed before setting off to the ferry which just finished unloading what few people were coming into Vale.
Glynda watched as four of her students walked past her, all slumped down and depressed, even the usually hyperactive Nora.
Glynda's heart twisted within her chest.
"Team JNPR," she said, speaking up on an urge. It would break her mask of cold teacher that was so important for installing the discipline the trainees needed but she was their teacher. Helping her students was her job! "Remember, the people we lose are never truly lost as long as we remember them. Keep the memory of the girl you knew as Pyrrha Nikos alive rather than her legend that others only saw."
That should be enough emotional aid, Glynda judged. But she needed to maintain a clear distance to her students else they might get distracted and start thinking about illicit student-teacher romances that would just waste their time, annoy her, and potentially get themselves killed.
"So in whatever mischief and trouble you get into," Glynda hardened her gaze at the students. "Don't risk your lives pointlessly. You are the future Huntsmen and Huntresses of Vale and the teammates of someone who risked her life so that others could live. Act like it."
The three students blinked at each other before turning back to her.
"Thank you, Professor Goodwitch," Jaune said choking up but acting as team leader even as his eyes brimmed with tears. "We'll try. We'll always remember her."
"Come on kids!" Qrow shouted from the crowded walkway to the ferry. "We haven't got all day!"
The three students started after him, leaving Glynda watching as five of her students left the city.
And she wondered when she would ever see them again.
Glynda opened the door to her residence, sighing as she found it empty. Shirou had apparently already left.
But, Shirou hadn't left nothing behind. On her bed, Glynda could see a Mistralian passport and some paper documents lying in a protective cover.
Annoyingly, Shirou had been on her mind while she had looked for Qrow. Shirou's smile, his appearance, his words. She found herself remembering him in the most random of places.
It's almost like having a new crush, she thought to herself as she picked up the paperwork, intending to get started on filling out his application right away. Only I'm older and not a teenager anymore.
She wouldn't mind if she had a crush on the man. Shirou was able to keep up with her wit, made funny comments, and wasn't bad looking at all on top of it. And he was a good cook.
He also was definitely a family man if he had been looking for his sister for so long. It took high dedication to look for a missing sister for several years. Coincidentally, it took high dedication for a Huntsman to raise a good family.
And she needed to settle down someday if she wanted to have a family as well as a career.
Glynda shook her head as she placed the papers on the table before taking a seat.
She wasn't going to get married. She was too old by this point. Admittedly, Shirou was around her age so it wouldn't be impossible.
But she shouldn't be thinking like this. Even if the mere thought of wondering if they could marry was going too far.
But if she had even been thinking of marriage, that was probably a sign that she couldn't say that she might have a crush on Shirou.
She definitely had a crush on him.
But maybe he would just turn out like the rest of the men she had had crushes on from her teenage years and up. Perhaps he just looked good on first impression and turned out to be worse on closer inspection or was already married.
Actually, was Shirou married? She didn't recall if he wore a ring on his fingers or not. But the man had spent years looking for his sister, so he might not be. But nothing said he couldn't have gotten married before she was kidnapped or while he was looking for her.
Well, if he was, his paperwork would say so at least. Might as well see if he was the second type of man she would get a crush on. The already taken type.
Shirou Emiya, male, single, age-!
Glynda stood up in her shock.
No, that can't be right!
She read the paper again, hoping that she had misread a number.
Shirou Emiya, male, single, age 19.
Over a decade younger than her.
She has a crush on a man the age of her students.
What was she going to do?! She couldn't have a crush on one of her students! Especially not if he was a decade younger!
For the Vale Army, I admit that I took some liberties. And if it doesn't make sense, that is alright. It fits in with half of RWBY when you think about it. And it certainly does explain why Vale asked a foreign general rather than one of their own to defend the tournament when they lost confidence in Ozpin.
And goodbye canon plot. Have fun wandering around Remnant! We'll stay right here in Vale where it is nice and safe.
(Looks at Shirou and his propensity for getting into trouble.) Nice and safe.
(Looks at nearby Beacon with the horde of Grimm settling in.) Nice and safe.
(Opens browser to search for an emergency shelter for sale.)