Meetings in the council room were always dreadful. The old geezers that made up the majority of the council were always locked in a small room that could barely fit them all, it was always dark, usually cold, and worst of all was the reason why they would met here. Any councilman will tell you the same thing if you'd ask. "If your meeting is sudden and in this chamber, something bad is happening".

It also didn't help the king was nowhere to be seen. Everyone else was here, so where was King Schnee?

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for coming on such short notice." The chairman of the council stood at the head table. The spot was usually meant for the king, and it seems the chairmen was aware of that too. He kept pushing his glasses up to his face and wiping away a cold sweat as he stood there.

The sight alone made everyone nervous. The chairman of the council, their youngest and most ambitious member, nervous? Something had to be up.

"I'll get straight to the point." The chairman took a deep breath and paused. He closed his eyes tightly, almost too afraid to see the reactions to the news. "During the night... I'm afraid to say... the king's condition had turned for the worse." He stumbled as he spoke. "Only a few hours after his daughter's departure... he'd begun to run a high fever. Soon after that, His Majesty became bed ridden and has been barely conscious as of late. The doctors say His Majesty...doesn't have much time... weeks at best. And at worst... days."

Dead silence filled the conference room. Everyone had become as still and quiet as statues. No one was sure what to say. This wasn't supposed to happen yet. They weren't ready. She wasn't ready to be crowned. Not in her current mental state anyway.

"Why hasn't the princess been contacted?" A councilmen in the back called out. He hadn't raised his voice above a whisper, but in the silence it sounded as loud as an explosion.

The chairman shifted his weight. He now looked even more nervous.

"That's... the other situation we have. During the night, another surprise from the grave had shown up at the front gates of the Royal Home." The chairman motioned for a knight stationed in the room to hand him a folder. The soldier did as he was told, and the chairman spread the contents down and across the table. They were photos of a middle age blonde woman.

The members of the council were starting into conversation and outbursts when the chairman silenced them with the loud boom of his fist hitting the table. The chairman then went back into his original posture and addressed them all again.

"Can someone please explain to me why the famous Glynda Goodwitch, the terror of the North, had just shown up at His Majesty's front door? Something usually difficult for someone who has been dead the last few years?"

He quickly scanned around, looking for a reaction or response. He found blank stares and silence.

"Well, in that case," He continued. His new found courage leading him in his verbal charge.

"The long dead huntress had shown up looking to speak to the king about the knights that were escorting Ms. Schnee. When we explained the king's condition and that the great and powerful Ozpin had taken them away already, she became quite confused. She went on to explain that Ozpin is, in fact, dead. And that it would be impossible that he could've have been here last night."

The tension was so thick in that room, you could've cut it with a knife. Some of the members were just staring at the chairman, still processing what he was getting at. Some of them had long since realized and had started getting up and pacing. Others just rested their heads in their hands or on the table.

Except one.

An older gentlemen sat at the opposite end of the table from the chairman. He had a head of gray wavy hair, and long beard of white that curled up on itself. He wore glasses equipped with attachments for magnification; He wore an aged blue mechanic jacket that had a blue star for a logo on the front, while on the back it had fairy like wings printed. He had looked bored and very distant since the meeting had started, even with the announcement of the king's imminent demise.

It wasn't until this latest development that he actually looked interested. Almost...excited really.

"So in short," The older man spoke up. "Someone claiming and looking like professor Ozpin kidnapped the, to be, Queen?" He leaned forward from his seat some. An amused smile forming on the corners of his lips. "And you gents just let her go? Just like that?"

The chairman slumped back into his seat and started rubbing his forhead in frustration. Of course when everything's going to hell, he's going to give them a hard time.

"Dr. G, do you find it amusing that we have a crisis on our hands? Don't you have any compassion or sadness. Hell, any appropriate feelings for the current situation? The King is going to die. The Princess, is missing. And you find this, amusing!?" His voice had grown louder with every word, becoming a shout by the end.

All the other members of the council looked back over at the old man. Dr. G was known for his controversial program, but he was also known for being heartless. None of them had expected him to care one bit about any of this. I mean, when you do nothing but design machines to kill for living, compassion usually isn't your strong suit.

And, as expected, Dr. G just started quietly laughing to himself before addressing everyone again.

"If you haven't noticed young stuff, whether the King dies tonight or months from now doesn't really matter. You're acting like this is the first time we've been told he's a dead man walking."

The good doctor got up from his seat and started walking around the table. His eyes never leaving the chairman as he spoke.

"And I can't help the fact, the Queen, is gone because you idiots couldn't figure out this 'Ozpin' was an impostor. He must have been using his aura with a special kind of Dust crystal to create an artificial allusion semblance. But of course, none of our knights are trained to see through illusions. And, of course none of them are old enough or even competent enough to notice his uncharacteristic behavior. And, of course, none of you decided it was worth your sweet time to look further into whether it was true he'd returned, and if he was who he claimed to be."

Dr. G stopped right in front of the chairman. They both were staring each other down as the doctor finished his lecture.

"Say what you will about them, boy, but a robot wouldn't have made that mistake. In fact, any one of my creations would have stopped him right there and we wouldn't be having this discussion." He leaned in very close to the chairman's face, whispering words that only the chairman could hear. "It's that very reason why hunters are a dying breed. And I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of dealing with imbeciles that can't let go of the past and except the new."

The doctor leaned back, staring at the chairman for a final moment before turning back towards his seat. All eyes remained on him even after he settled again, waiting expectantly for his next words.

Though before Dr. G started on, he ordered all the knights stationed in the room to leave post haste. Once they all left, he spoke up once more.

"Now, since I don't see any of you coming up with ideas, here's what I propose," He said, passing down a sheet of paper and pen up to the chairman.

"We enact the temporary council control act, but this time in secret. You all known the last time the council took control for the monarchs, it was a disaster. The public would never agree to it again, and there would be chaos if they knew that the king was bed ridden and the queen missing. The only thing we need to tell them, is when we decide to say the king has died and that Weiss Schnee has been crowned Queen of Vale. We can act saying it's by her orders, and also forge any paper work to make it look legitimate."

The chairman scanned through the paper a couple times before drawing his attention back to the doctor.

"It is a temporary solution, and I'm going to leave the details to the cover up and what you want to do with King Schnee to you folks. In the mean time, I'm going to need the council's green-light to release my latest creation to help fix this problem."

One of the other members of the council spoke up before the chairman could. "Creation? None of the members of this council or His Majesty have ordered you to create another one of those horrific droids!"

"Don't you have enough killing machines at your disposal? Or are the rumors true and you expect us to follow in the lines of Atlas?" Another member spoke up.

"Be silent and let me speak!" The doctor hissed. No more outbursts came forth.

"While you simpletons are running things, I'll be sending my latest project to hunt down the Queen." He paused to push up his glasses. A smug smile beginning to show.

"You see, things have been extraordinarily easy for me and the rest of the Blue Fairy team. We've been designing and producing robots with the same quality and efficiency with only half of the grants you or Atlas provide us. So, we've put that leftover revenue towards... other projects. Mainly one I've been been designing and working on for years, hoping to surprise both Vale and Atlas."

He pause for dramatic effect. Allowing all the members of the council to completely sink into his words as he gaze shifted to the ceiling.

"Imagine a droid. One that you truly thought was human. A droid, that could blend into the crowd, that could act like any ordinary person. One that could adapt to any culture and group, but one that also had the power to take on an entire army if necessary. A machine with one of the greatest intelligence computers ever created, and one that could even produce... an aura."

The doctor turned his attention back onto his perplexed audience.

"Well, we've created such a machine. Dubbing it as the, 'No Strings' Project. And let me tell you," He paused again. Focusing only on the chairman.

"They, are combat ready."

WWWWWWWW

"Mom, what are you doing here?"

The woman calmly turned away from Nora to face Jaune; even let her trusty Dust crop drop to her side without worry. Nora on the other hand still had her hammer raised to strike again.

The two must have had a brief skirmish of sorts. Nora's grenade shells were scattered about, and fresh craters now lay here and there. Jaune could only figure Nora must've ran out of ammo, so she went for melee combat. That was probably the only reason he didn't hear the fight during his return.

"Nora, stand down." Jaune ordered as he approached closer.

Nora's eyes broke off from the stranger to Jaune. "You know her?" She panted with both surprise and anger between heavy breaths. She was clearly exhausted from healing Ren, let alone with this fight.

The two blondes meet eyes.

"Yeah. I did say 'Mom' for a reason."

Jaune set Pyrrha, who had fallen asleep, down by Ren. To his relief, Ren looked much better. Most of his injuries looked healed, and the dent in his skull was all but gone. He still looked pretty beat up, but otherwise he looked like he just needed some rest.

Once Pyrrha was settled, Jaune looked over to his still armed teammate and motioned for her to come over. She complied, though Nora's eyes never left the strange woman.

"Will you put that away. I need you to help Pyrrha." He whispered.

Nora instead put her weapon down beside her, still in arms reach in case she needed it. She finally broke off from the stranger and did a quick look over of Pyrrha before addressing Jaune again.

"She's going to need some work. I can tell just by looking at her she's got a serious head injury, and probably some dislocations. As for internal damage, I'll need to take a closer look." Nora ran a hand through her sweaty and messy looking hair. Jaune almost doing a double take when he noticed how bad they shook.

"But I've got no strength left to even make her finger nails grow, let alone heal her... I'm sorry commander."

Before Jaune could even speak, a bottle of green Dust landed between the two. Both teens looked to see the woman standing right behind them, listening in without giving notice.

"Use that to recover some energy." She said as she begun to walk off into the crash site. She also yelled back, "Jaune. A word?"

Both teens exchanged a brief glance as Jaune rose to follow. But before he got far Nora grabbed a hold of his wrist.

"What's going on commander?" She said. Her eyes filled with the rare look of genuine concern

Jaune could only avert his eyes as he broke from her grip and silently pressed on. He didn't know how to explain everything. He's been dreading this moment for a long time. The day he would have to tell his friends who he really was.

And he thought the shuttle was worst place for it...

Guess the only thing to do now is wait for everyone to wake up and tell the truth. Jaune mentally groaned.

Jaune found his mom not too far into the crash site. She was looking at one of the wings of their ship that had broken off (the one Jaune was actually trapped under), with her arms crossed. When he took a place beside her right, Jaune put his hands in his pockets and the two just stared at the wing. Chirping birds filled the silent void between them for a long moment.

"We lost contact with you." Was all she said neutrally and professionally. Her usual self.

Jaune nodded. "I was trying to get a hold of you guys. But that impostor of Ozpin must've been jamming all signals on his ship, and I didn't get the chance to send any messages beforehand. Everything was just happening so fast I... I should've just told them he was an impostor. But I didn't want to reveal myself, and I didn't know who he was, or if he was on our side..." Jaune's shoulders and head slouched. "There was a lot I should've done. And now I've screwed up everything up. I'm a failure; a shame to both Last Light and Dad..."

Jaune felt a hand on his left shoulder. He was being forced to turn, and before he knew it, he was being held tight in his mother's arms. Her head resting atop his.

"Right now I don't care about any of that. I'm just glad you're alive." She whispered with a slight crack in her voice. Jaune could even feel a tear or two drip onto his head.

After Jaune got over the initial shock that his mom was actually hugging him, he hugged back. His mom was usually so hard on him, trying to make him work harder and faster. Affection had always been so hard to come by...

The two stayed like that for what seemed like hours before his mother let him have some space. Though the two only part enough to meet eyes and talk; neither of them letting go of the other.

"You did the best you could. And your father would be so proud of you." His mother's eyes looked teary and a smile had formed on her lips.

It was so surreal for Jaune to see his mother like this. Then again, it was just surreal to see her again period after a year and a half of only exchanging a message or two.

Jaune gave a quick smile and was about to say a word of thanks, before a thought came back to mind and his smile faded. "Mom. It's great to see you and all, but what are you doing here?"

And just like that, the moment ended. Jaune's mom let him go. She blinked away the water from her eyes, returning her face and tone back into her professional mode.

"I came to find you. Since last night I've been tracking your whereabouts. When I found your teammates by the treeline, Dame Valkyrie assumed I was an enemy before I could explain myself."

Jaune let a sigh loose. "Yeah, that sounds about right. Nora's always been jumpy." He focused straight onto his mom's eyes. "How's the situation in Vale?"

She turned her head to somewhere up in the clouds.

"Nothing's happened. As it turns out, the whole invasion has been sabotaged."

Jaune's mouth nearly fell to the ground as he blinked hard. Did he hear that right?

"What! By, by who? HOW?!" He let out in shock.

Goodwitch closed her eyes, shaking her head.

"A traitor of the White Fang, and two civilian girls that are way in over their heads. And Her Majesty has also gotten involved somehow."

Jaune could feel his heart stop and all the air from his lungs escape.

"Wait. The Princess... she's alive?"