Chapter 1: The Dusty Man

AN: New chapter here quick note any text in BOLD is part of the author's notes unless it's a shift in the story. I've done my best with the grammar and that stuff sorry for any mistakes

POV: The Dusty Man minutes before (AN: who am I kidding we all know who it is).

Qrow was walking down the main road after finishing off his mission on the more scenic route, taking out and drinking from it before putting away, looking up at the sky seeing the sun setting he turns off the main round think 'Guess I must camp to night'.

Walking around with that thought in mind Qrow sets about to find a place to camp, it doesn't take him long to find a good spot. Setting up a ring of stones for the fire pit, Qrow stands and goes about to find firewood that he can use but he has no luck finding any near his camp and must move further out, Qrow cursing his Semblance for his bad luck moves further away to find some firewood.

After a minute or two and trying to find usable firewood and having little luck, Qrow's years of experience being a hunter alerts him that something is approaching, after a few seconds he starts to hear what sounds like rolling thunder approaching, confuses Qrow casting a brief look to the sky to see no clouds at all focuses his attention back towards the sound only for his eyes to widen briefly as he sees lightning weaving its way through the trees.

Readying hand on his sword (No given name) ready to strike at a moment's notice, as the lightning got close it tripped over a tree root, (What terrible luck :P) seeing the lightning dissipate revealing a small five to six-year-old boy who began to tumble uncontrollably.

Qrow quickly let go of his sword and moves to catch the boy, getting into the path of the boy Qrow braces for the impact, with the boy flying into Qrow's arms Qrow is push back half a dozen to a dozen feet back stopping a foot before colliding with a tree, looking down at the boy with surprises at the speed they collided at and is briefly reminded about Ruby, who he had not a two months ago had to catch Ruby after she unlocked her Aura and Semblance, shaking the memory from his head he looks at the boy to see a silver eye along with a silver and gold eye looking up at him.

As the boy's eye starts to close start to close Qrow speaks "Hey, kid you okay?" Qrow stops speaking seeing the boy's eyes fully close lets out a sigh once again cursing his luck, putting the boy into and more comfortable position Qrow carried him back to his camp, thankfully he had collected some firewood to use although it's not much.

Placing the boy down near the fire pit Qrow sets up the wood and lights it, turning his head to the boy who begins to shiver due to the cold night air, standing Qrow removes his cloak to put over the boy only to pause when the boy's tail uncurls into nine and wraps around himself to keep the cold at bay, putting his cloak back on and sitting down near to the kid.

Getting a better look at the boy Qrow picks out a few details, the most prominent ones being the cloak, the tear marks on his face and the nine tails, after those three he can see the boy holding three disks close to his chest the final thing that Qrow notices is the extremely large amount of Aura that the child has, sighing Qrow realizes that he is in for a long night.

Qrow did get some sleep in the night when there wasn't any Grimm that were attracted by the boy's Aura, feeling the morning sun on his face Qrow slowly woke up scratching and popping a few bones her looks over to see the boy had shifted in the night but remained asleep.

Pulling out his Scroll to look at the time to see that it's 06:48 in the morning, Qrow thinking for a moment and internally debating whether to call in or not only to start scrolling through his contacts before stopping on one that said "Ozpin", tapping on the contact Qrow waits for Ozpin to pick up, after a few seconds the sound of the other side connecting is heard (Finally some talking :D)

"Good morning Qrow" came a calm voice from the other side as it continued "I wasn't expecting you to call so soon" there's a brief pause before it asks with a little more seriousness in it voice "What's happened?"

Giving a small yawn Qrow replies "Morning Oz, yeah neither did I", letting out a short breath Qrow continues "I ran into a snag, while it ran into me."

"Can you explain further please?" Ozpin asks before the sound of coffee being drunk can be heard.

Nodding Qrow replies "I can do one better and show you" after saying that Qrow turns the Scroll to video chat mode and turns it to the sleeping Faunus.

Looking at the Faunus boy Ozpin raise his eyebrow slightly before taking a sip and asks in his usually calm voice "Why is he there?"

Turning the Scroll back to face himself before replying "No clue he was just running at extremely high speeds"

When Ozpin's focus is brought back to Qrow and his answer he takes another sip of coffee before asking "And what happened to you?"

Looking down at himself to see that his jacket/suit? (not sure which) has many tears in it and his already tattered cloak even more tattered along with many places covered in dirt, giving a slightly nervous laugh Qrow replies "Had to fight Grimm for most of the night"

This caught Ozpin's attention as both eyebrows raised before his face returned to his usual expression and asked with all seriousness "Why were there so many Grimm?"

Giving a sigh Qrow turn the Scroll back to the Faunus before answering "He would be why, and it's also because of the amount Aura he has"

Ozpin pinches the bridge of his nose and says "It's too early for this," taking one more sip of his coffee Ozpin Speaks once more "Find out what you can without pushing too hard, I'll see what I can find this side, have a good day Qrow"

Qrow nods once to this and says "Got it, have a good day" after saying that Qrow hangs up and puts his Scroll away and turning his focus to the Faunus and then leans back against the tree to wait for the boy to wake up while keeping an eye out for any Grimm.

POV shift: Rai waking up five hours after Qrow's talk with Ozpin

Giving a small groan as he wakes up feeling all his muscles in screaming pain, sensing that he isn't alone and hearing the crackle of fire near him tells him that he's not alone.

Trying to turn his head to look around only cause's pain to shot up his neck and let out another groan of pain.

Rai starts to hear footsteps coming closer to him begins to worry, soon the steps stop a few feet away and the sound of someone sitting down and the sound of something being take out opened and drunk, before he hears "Tch, running out need to get more." then whatever it is put away.

"Hey, kid you wake yet?" jumping a little at the male's voice and sudden question, quickly send another wave of pain, opening his mouth to speak only results with a dry cough exiting his mouth.

Hearing the man sigh and mumble "Of course" to himself and move closer, feeling arms carefully lift him up and take out something (no It's not the flask that he drinks from) that sounds three quarters full, feeling the top of it place against his lip he hears the man say "Drink slowly, there's not a lot". Doing as he says Rai feels the cool water flow down his throat.

After drink for a few seconds the canteen is pulled away and Rai is slowly lowered back down, looking at the man Rai sees the same one that caught him after his tumble, only that the man has claw marks on his clothes and has spots of dirt covering him, feeling tiredness come to pull him back to the land of dreams, slowly closes his eyes and hears "Sleep we can talk later", from the dusty man before falling to sleep.

POV shift: Qrow

After giving the boy some water to drink and setting him back down to see the boy slowly closed his eyes and telling him to get some sleep. Qrow turns back and sits down at the tree he was at earlier Thinking 'Now we wait' giving a sigh he pulls out his flask giving it a shake to hear it be one tenth of a full flask, giving a frown he puts it away.

Pulling out his Scroll to see the time is 11:53, decides to find out if Ozpin has found anything, scrolling through his contacts to find Ozpin's and tapping on it, and waiting for him to answer.

After a few seconds, Ozpin answers "Hello Qrow, got an update on what's happening by you" the way Ozpin said that sound more like a statement than a question.

Giving a nod Qrow replies "Yeah, he woke up" Qrow pauses and give a quick look to the boy and continues "He woke up letting out groans of pain."

Ozpin nods and asks "Were you able to ask anything?"

Giving a shake of his head Qrow answers "No, and when I did ask he let out a dry cough and gave some water before he fell asleep again", pulling out his flask and drinking some of what's left before putting it away

Hearing Ozpin drink some of his coffee turn back to him to hear "I see you're still drinking that gasoline".

Qrow quickly snaps back "Hey, it's not a bad drink", before asking "Did you find anything your side?" and stirring the conversation back to the topic at hand

Nodding Ozpin Says "Yes but not much, Glynda if you would"

"Yes, sir", and a few seconds later the symbol that the boy has pinned to his cloak, "After looking through our records to see if we could find anything that matches… we found this one", and a second later the symbol of an open Lotus bathed in flames appears next to the other one.

Qrow raises one of his eye brows before speaking "It looks familiar, whose, is it?"

Taking a sip of his coffee Ozpin answers "This belongs to a Mister Cobalt Zilar, who was Team leader for Team CLAS", nodding to Glynda the image of Cobalt shows (may do Rai's family description in a separate chapter) up before Ozpin continues "Team CLAS was second only to your team Qrow, He along with Sapphire retired almost eleven years ago,".

Qrow nodes to this remembering his first bout against Cobalt and being soundly defeated by a large wave of fire, pulling his thoughts back to the present Qrow asks "Do we know where they are?"

Sadly, Ozpin shakes his head and replies "unfortunately no, but what we do know is they moved to an unnamed village and that's it…" before Ozpin and continue the sound of ringing can be heard.

Qrow giving a sighs says "I'll call you back when I know more".

Ozpin nods and says "good luck Qrow" only for Ozpin to reach for his Coffee and knocking it off the table.

Qrow nodes and ends the call before he is unable to keep in his laughter

Quick shift to Ozpin

Giving a sigh and thinking 'What a waste of coffee' and then summarily blame it on Qrow Semblance, looking towards Glynda who has a slight upwards curl to her lips trying and failing to fully suppress a smile, as he goes to speak the ringing comes again reminding him that he has another call.

Back to Qrow (I'm evil and I know it :P )

Getting his laughter under control Qrow turn his focus back to the boy, only to see tears start to roll down his face as the boy starts to toss and turn restlessly as lightning starts to spark round.

Quickly Qrow stands up and moves to the boy, sitting down next to him Qrow places a hand on the boy's head and gently stroking him while humming a gentle tune like what he did for Ruby at times when she was having nightmares.

POV shift: Rai's nightmare

Rai awakes in the open market of his village looking around knowing something doesn't feel right. He slowly walks down the empty street stopping when he hears bestially growls and the sound of screaming, looking around once more only to see the town in flames.

Rai recognizes that scream as his sister's running as fast as he can in the direction of the scream, as he turns the corner he sees her on the ground push herself back away from a Grimm with terror in her eyes.

Seeing his sister endanger Rai starts shaking in both fear and anger, fear because he already saw her die once and anger at the Grimm that looms over his sister, Lightning starts to coil around him as the Grimm raise its claw and as Rai is about to charge it.

Everything stops as a gentle tune slowly rings out, the lightning around Rai slowly fades as does everything else blinking once the scenery changes to the cliff top with him and his family enjoying a day out wanting to forget what he just saw Rai loses himself into the more pleasant dream.

POV shift Qrow

Gently stroking the boy's head while humming the gentle tune sees the lightning slowly fade away lets out a sigh of relief he slowly starts to get up when he feels the boy's hand grab hold of tattered cloak stopping him from moving, sitting back down next to the boy who curls up closer to Qrow and into a ball using his tails puts a small smile on Qrow's face as he gently brushes his hand over the boy

AN: YEAH and another chapter down there'll a lot happening in the next chapter I think, maybe, not sure you'll find out until next time