All credit to respective owners.

-Y.A.R.N.

Ozpin woke after an undetermined amount of time, face pressed against a pillow as his body ached from the transfer. He forced himself to his feet and stumbled to the door of the room he had built next to the transfer device, using his cane to help support himself. The mind-broken girl was still there, eyes vacant and mouth open as she lay against the machine, she could've been mistaken for a corpse if her chest wasn't moving in time with her raspy breaths. He had the foresight to let Pietro and his daughter have the weekend off as he gathered the activation sequence for the machine and how it worked. He wanted to be sure that if the need arose, he could operate the machine without Penny or Pietro there to possibly stop him. He knew they were the good kind of people who didn't want to hurt others, and had they realized what exactly they had been working on, they would've blown it up rather than ever repair the power transfer device.

It was a smart move on his part to have the vault empty so no one heard his cries.

The power transfer was agonizing in a way he had never thought possible.

It was like someone had ripped out his insides, filled the space with molten lava, cooked his organs and then froze them before they shoved them back in and sent the lava streaming through his veins as he howled. Even the girl with her broken mind had screamed in agony as her powers were forcibly being taken and copied into Ozpin's body. The pseudo blast core gleamed like a star as the excess power was drained into the construct to not cause excess strain on the recipient. When the transfer ended, the clamps opened and two participants slumped to the floor. Ozpin managed to stumble over to the room he made for that exact purpose and fell onto the bed he placed in it. He couldn't fight the pain as he blacked out and let his exhausted body finally succumb to the welcome shadows of unconsciousness.

Now that he was awake, he had to know if this worked.

Ozpin took a deep breath and raised his hand with his palm facing up, grasping the thrum of power that was swimming under his skin.

A layer of dust rose from the ground and swirled around him in a furious storm; with a small effort of his will it began to coalesce into a sphere hovering over his hand. Ozpin flicked his wrist and sent the dust sphere flying into the wall where it exploded and caused a spiderweb of cracks to spread out from the point of impact. Ozpin stared at his hand and smiled, satisfaction purring in his chest as he finally had what he wanted. He turned to the girl and walked over to her, his body aching unable to dampen the fierce sensation of power that he now had under his command.

He was a conduit.

Finally.

"Amber Autumn." He said softly, kneeling next to her, "You truly have no idea what I owe you for what you gave me. As repayment, I will take you to my associate. She should be able to piece your mind back together. Of course, you will need to have some of your memories removed, but it won't matter, forgetting all this is for the best. The best for both of us."

With that said, Ozpin used the very dust he gathered and used it to coalesce under her into a makeshift stretcher. With a small command of his will the dust stretcher lifted Amber into the air, and as Ozpin began to walk towards his car, the girl remained quiet and insensate as he took her away.

This was only the beginning though; there was still a whole spectrum of powers and abilities out there for him to acquire. He also wanted to at least get familiar with the power he now possessed, running off with only a vague idea would only trip him up if it ever came to a sudden need to use it. Learning how to utilize his abilities to the bare minimum — at the very least — would help him when he found more Conduits to to power himself further. He would become so much more than human, so much more than any single Conduit could ever hope to be.

It would be all his, he would become the strongest Conduit that ever existed.

Stronger than Delsin Rowe.

Stronger than Cole MacGrath.

Stronger than The Beast.

The strength he would gather would help him protect the people who didn't know how dangerous the world around them was.

He was the only one worthy. The only one who knew what had to be done and had the will to make the tough decisions that would usher in the new age.

His son would be his most loyal right-hand and they would rule together for the many years to come.

Cinder Fall walked throughout the city, secretly disappointed by the most recent conquest of the mind she had achieved.

It wasn't the resource she was searching for.

The girl's powers had pushed her harder than anything else she had encountered, and it took several powerful probes to finally make a chink in the defenses her powers set up and invade her mind.

But it was a hollow victory as far as Cinder was concerned.

The girl's terror didn't help and she lacked the will to fight Cinder off with all the power she could've.

At least the girl provided some challenge, more than the still-recovering Yuma.

Still, it wasn't what she wanted.

Had she tried to break someone who had Yuma's fury and defiance and that girl's power?

The outcome may have been different and Cinder needed someone to make the outcome different.

Cinder needed to find someone who was strong.

Someone who wouldn't give up, who wouldn't succumb to fear and be able to resist her fully.

She was searching for someone who could defeat her and resist her manipulation entirely.

Cinder may have been a monster, but she still did have to find companionship or at least something to feel less alone, thought it was mostly out of necessity at this point. Her contract with Ozpin and his associates didn't count as he was simply holding her life hostage. Her activation of the Conduit gene had not been quiet and while no one knew what had become of her hometown due to her initial testing of her abilities, Ozpin did. She had done her best to hide her involvement after the city was on lockdown as she left mere days before anyone came looking into the sudden strange behaviors of the people there. But not everyone on the planet were fools who couldn't connect the dots; people knew something was up with her as she was the only one to seem to be immune and were already digging before Ozpin had gotten involved. He had shut them down with ruthless efficiency before he took their notes and tracked her down to offer her a choice when he had finally cornered her.

She would be hunted down and arrested if he made anyone — or everyone if it suited his threat to be more terrible — aware her past.

Or she could work for him and retain her anonymity in the situation involving the droves of mind-damaged people she left in her hometown.

The choice was nothing more than a already bloody dagger wrapped in silk as she became a slave to his demands until she figured out a way to destroy the leash he held on her.

She hated that she couldn't beat him on her own; having power and still being powerless against someone who technically didn't have power. Her own combat abilities lay in her telekinesis and mental manipulation, neither of which were enough to fight effectively. She had focused on mental manipulation when she was free and if she were to gamble on an ability that would actually affect Ozpin, it would be with that. The problem was that it required direct contact with the head to affect her target and even without powers, there was something about Ozpin — something that just felt off — that made her feel like he just might be able to resist her powers. When it came to her telekinesis, he very carefully kept her from honing her power to a point where it was a decent threat. Flinging a pebble at anyone the speed of a toddler's fastest speed was basically all she could with how little she had invested in it. She needed someone who could fight, who stood a chance against Ozpin and be able to dismantle his influence. Or — worst come to worse — someone to distract him from watching her as meticulously as he did so she could grow stronger.

She hated her dependency — which may be temporary or may be permanent — on someone to fight her battles when she was supposed to be strong enough to handle it. But while a part of it rankled her, she also wasn't ignorant of the fact that humans were supposed to be pack animals at the end of the day. Being a conduit didn't change that either, for all that they could've been classified as the next genetic step forward in evolution, they were just humans with superpowers.

She was supposed to be above it, above what she considered the weakness of the pack mentality that made any organization only as strong as their weakest link. Men wanted to be with her and women wanted to be her; she was supposed to be more than enough for herself. If she hadn't been caught, that would have been entirely feasible and probably what she would have become.

Ozpin made that impossible and that was made him so repulsive despite having the will to stop Cinder, which was what Cinder wanted most out of a possible partner. How important was her grandiose position of Head of The CCS if she was used as a puppet for someone else?

It was nothing.

It all didn't mean a damn thing as far as she was concerned.

She had hoped that Ozpin would let her go if she provided a small batch of the Conduit listings she compiled and readily handed them over, but she had unwittingly only tightened the noose around her neck. Now she was using her powers on unwitting or unwilling test subjects for some stupid Conduit Utopia or whatever else Ozpin was planning.

Because while Ozpin was a good liar, Cinder was just as good if not better.

She could see it in her eyes when she broke the natural conduit, there was a gleam of an excitement she had never seen in him before.

It worried her because he had never expressed any form of excitement over what he had watched her do.

Regret, sadness, and maybe shame.

But never excitement.

Something had changed.

In Ozpin or his plans.

He wasn't trying to recondition them to be upstanding citizens like a processing plant like he used to. There was a small delay of two to three days that just started with the natural conduit girl and that was a noticeable aberration in his pattern. Ozpin didn't do anything without an insane amount of forethought and planning, he was a frighteningly smart individual. He had planned the scheduling of his reprogramming system to maximize the amount of socially acceptable Conduit being churned out. Why would he waste time when it would only hinder his plans?

Something about the girl had been unique, and Cinder knew — in an leap of dread and instinct — that it had to do with the girl being a natural Conduit.

And despite the fact Cinder like to portray herself as unafraid…

Ozpin's new plan — since she had no idea what in the hell it was anymore — terrified her to no end.

At that moment, a part of her wanted to refuse.

Anything to hinder him and spare the poor girl, but she was no fool.

But she had no choice.

She never did.

So she took what pleasure she could from the situation and watched as the husk of what was once a vibrant young woman was wheeled out of the chamber.

She sighed, "I swore… I swore I would never bend a knee to anyone. I couldn't even fulfill that… Now I am just like all the other people in the world. Fighting for causes that aren't even my own…"

In reality, she knew her precarious situation made it difficult to engage in social situations, and that was without the fact she preferred her own company to that of others. Ozpin had eyes and ears everywhere, if she tried to accumulate a power base, he would work to dismantle it as soon as he found out.

Annoyed, Cinder huffed and checked the files she had taken out of her office, she had to start researching the files she had given Ozpin. She needed to find a place where Ozpin's prying eyes could not see her movements. It had been smart of her to hold all the high-tier conduit files from him and only show the bare minimum of potential conduits in the city. If she were to beat him, she needed to know what he knew and start trying to figure out what he could do with that knowledge. She cracked the top file and tilted her head in mildly intrigued consideration as the image of the blonde conduit stood out on the first page.

"Jaune Arc…"

He was an person of interest as far as she was concerned because he was manipulable if she could find the right angle. He had been incarcerated and driven away from his home because of his powers, he no doubt needed support. It would have been ideal if she had found him when he had moved here, alone and desperate for someone to befriend. She would have had all the time in the world to make him rely on and care only for her; but that was just bad luck on her part. And bad luck could be circumvented if she was careful; all she needed to do was worm past his defenses and various allies to influence/seduce/claim him (She was well aware of his current relationship status; she was a stunning femme fatale and he was a red-blooded male, it wouldn't take much effort on her part). She had the full biography of his sudden residency in Empire City made immediately during the night after he had fought and beaten Yuma in the city.

She was very impressed by just how much power he wielded and the finesse and accuracy of his attacks.

Cinder Fall was not an easy woman to impress.

He had only needed the right trigger to set him off and push him to show exactly what she was capable of.

His focused fury and cold expression caught on film as he beat Yuma in the street told her everything she needed to know.

She just needed to find him and she knew exactly where to look where to look.

Blake observed Jaune in a new light.

Literally — sometimes — and figuratively.

Seeing Jaune actually loosen the strict control on his powers with no shame and the relaxed shift to his shoulders was a great thing to see. He chatted casually with what patrons did come, greeting them with the air a man seeing a brother or sister for the first time in a long while. The way he brightened up with a pleased smile and did his utmost to make them comfortable and secure. Jaune had been a good employee and person before, but it was like someone had come and plugged Jaune into a power generator and cranked the dials on what made Jaune a great person to eleven. Jaune was now the sort of employee you don't let go of and the sort of man that a girl would bring home to their parents to be proud of their choice.

Part of which worried Blake.

Many people looked at Blake and saw a quiet girl with a passion for reading and a nearly impenetrable wall of unapproachability. They saw a girl who was decently attractive but too much work to put the effort into to make what could be a minor payoff. Some simply saw her a girl with no distinguishing features from anyone else.

Blake was not really any of those.

What she really had that made her someone to never overlook was a uncanny sense of intuition. She saw the city and there was something now off with her home that she couldn't exactly put her finger on.

Jaune old personality had draw as a gentle and kind boy, but this new confidence and joy her radiated had an dangerously strong attraction he probably wasn't even aware of. Yang had told her in detail at how she guffawed at the looks on the face of his peers when they saw him now and how people were actually seeing him and him being too stupidly dense to even take advantage or notice of it. His charisma that had been muted and suppressed so heavily before was no longer bound and it had flourished.

All of that was great, really. Jaune was a fantastic person who had the break he longe since deserved since the near disaster his life could have been. He finally had nothing to hide from people and his darkest secrets he had found someone to confide in; Blake was honored to be that person to him.

But it had to do with Jaune's recent show of powers.

It had drawn attention onto him, and not all of it would be good.

Blake had a meager understanding of how a Conduit's abilities worked aside from how they usually had to draw from whatever affinity they had gained.

Blake had observed enough of Jaune to realize Jaune drew his power from.

Light.

Not just neon like the activist in Seattle.

Not just artificial light.

Not just natural light.

Not just certain amounts.

No set limit established (as far as Blake had seen).

Jaune endlessly and subtly absorbed all and every type light around him at all times.

Theoretically, Jaune had an endless amount of power to draw from.

And that made him powerful.

And power like that drew attention that was only magnified by Jaune's new attitude.

But not all attention was good because there were always people out there who didn't just see Jaune, but a resource.

An asset to take control of.

A threat to be disposed of.

Not a person, but someone who could be taken advantage of.

And frankly it wasn't Blake had any chance of stopping those people she tried.

She was weak in the end.

And while she could shield Jaune from emotional trauma, what would happen when there was a problem she couldn't help him with?

That worried her.