Another rough week at work. Been one hell of a weekend thus far as well. People calling me to scream emotionally at me because they feel they're being unfairly targeted, others saying they don't think it's fair for them to be threatened with redundancy for the actions of other people. Redundancy isn't a threat, though. It's an unfortunate thing that has to happen when a company goes under. The company isn't threatening anyone by offering it; the company is paying it as thanks for their service as it closes down.

Sigh. Drama, drama, drama.

Cover Art: Aristeo Storm

Chapter 36

Qrow was used to hangovers. When you experienced them enough, you got used to dealing with the thumping and the aches. Everyone had their preferred cures, from crazy shit like drinking egg yolks to more sane stuff like eating a load of greasy breakfast. Qrow was in the middle, more of a down some painkillers and get on with it kind of guy.

Raven, evidently, was a weep and writhe sort of person.

Or she just wasn't used to this yet.

"Ughhhhhh..."

Raven curled tighter into a ball on the seat she'd been put into, drawing her knees up into her chest. Qrow snorted, lounging with his head back, while Summer sat prim and proper, knees together, hands on them, eyes on the floor.

And Ozpin stood.

"I am disappointed in you three."

"Geez," joked Qrow. "Racist much?"

"Excuse me?"

"We spent the day out at a White Fang rally supporting faunus rights."

Qrow sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fine. I am proud of you for that bit, but not what came after."

"We made friends and got invited out for drinks by the faunus. Raven made a new bestie."

"D—Did I...?" stammered his sister. "I can't remember..."

"You didn't make a new bestie," Summer hissed. "I'm your bestie. Kali is a whore!"

Raven looked confused. "I slept with a hooker...?"

Ozpin sighed. "Miss Branwen, look at me. I'll show you a tried and tested method to sober up." He leaned in, and Raven, eager to not feel so shit, did the same. When Ozpin put his fingers in his mouth, Qrow cursed and covered his own ears. "Fweeeeeeeeee!"

The sharp whistle made Qrow's head throb despite his best efforts. Raven, having leaned in, buckled and spasmed, falling off her chair with a cry and curling up on the floor. Ozpin stopped and stood back, crossing his arms again.

"And let this be a lesson on why you shouldn't drink yourself to this state."

"You prick!" howled Raven. "I trusted you! Bastard! Asshole! Ahhh, my head!"

"The best lessons are those that are remembered."

"Only lesson we've learned is not to trust you," Qrow grumbled. "Geez. We weren't causing any trouble. We didn't get into any fights or make a scene at the hotel. Who ratted us out and why? We've been good." Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "—ish."

"I wouldn't call being seen fighting counter-protestors as being on your best behaviour." Ozpin revealed a picture on his scroll of Raven punching a bald man in the face. Behind her, Kali was cheering with her fist in the air. Qrow groaned. "You're fortunate you're not Beacon students, and that you weren't carrying any weaponry to mark you as huntsmen and huntresses. As such, this is being blown out of proportion by both sides. Faunus friendly news stations are proclaiming you the upcoming generation of caring progressives while anti-faunus stations are calling you brainwashed youths."

"Luckily, I know the truth – that you're simply idiots," he continued. "And that Miss Branwen seeks out combat like a fish seeks water." He put his scroll away. "But I'm going to have to reiterate my earlier point, or maybe explain it in greater detail. When I asked you all to stay out of trouble, I meant not getting into any fights outside of self-defence."

"This was self-defence," Raven mumbled.

"Was it?"

"Yeah. I was defending my self's ability to say what the fuck I want in public."

Ozpin sighed. "And was this man preventing you? Or was he just sharing his own opinion, as twisted and horrible as that may have been?"

Raven grumbled but didn't answer.

"That's what I thought. As I said, I can't and won't punish you given this happened before you joined Beacon, but I need you to understand that this matter with the faunus is tense. Politics always is. If you were students of Beacon and you did this, the school would be expected to act, and the headmaster might be forced to punish you harshly just to avoid a media frenzy linking Beacon to so-called faunus extremism."

Faunus extremism. What a fucking joke. They hadn't seen shit yet.

"That kind of attitude is just going to push the faunus into it," Qrow said, offering a rare warning of the future. "You back them into a corner where their protests don't work and some of them will start looking for other ways to drive the message home."

"Let us hope it does not come to that, Mr Branwen."

"And when it does?"

Ozpin sighed. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

For fuck's sake. Qrow wanted to argue but he knew it wasn't Ozpin's real reason. The immortal was just giving them a snappy answer to make them back off. The reality was that he couldn't force people to change their minds, and that trying to would just make the public rebel at what they saw as the "establishment" trying to control them. Plus, as shit as it sounded, they had more immediate concerns. The White Fang would become violent in ten or more years' time. Mountain Glenn was going to be overrun within two.

"I'm still going to the protests," Qrow said.

"I can't and won't stop you. Just resist the tempting urge to lash out at those shouting against faunus. You do more damage by ignoring them as it is. Hitting them now has just made the man into a martyr for his side."

"Raven didn't kill him." Qrow hated that he wasn't certain about that. "Did she...?"

"No. Of course not. But these are civilians in the safest city in Vale. Their definition of `martyr` is far below what an actual one is. Faunus rights is a difficult topic," he admitted. "And it's not one where logic or reason factor all that often. You have large multi-billion corporations playing the sympathy card against legislation to improve the lives of faunus workers, and average people on the street somehow believe that the wealthiest companies in the world are victims in this. I swear the IQ of a person drops by thirty points the moment politics comes into it."

Easily. Qrow couldn't remember there being this much political drama in the past, but then he and Raven hadn't given a shit. Maybe the fall of Mountain Glenn had overridden it as well. Given Vale a tragedy to bond over and wash away the political arguments. That or the parties behind it had lost power after such a colossal fuckup.

"What's made it get so bad?" asked Qrow. It was all well and good knowing the future but he was beginning to realise his lack of knowledge of the past was more pressing. "How did this all kick off?"

"You want a history lesson with a hangover?"

"No," cried Raven.

Summer shook her head.

"Sure." Qrow nodded, earning two sets of glares. "Hit me."

"Very well. Much of the sentiment against faunus stems from the faunus rebellion and the Great War. The faunus technically won that, for all that their reward was to practically be exiled from Atlas."

"How did that even happen?"

"Certain faunus sold out the rebellion." Ozpin snarled that out. "They won the war but then when it came to the peace agreements, vast amounts of money were offered to select faunus if they would water down their side's demands. Greed won out and peace came at a more even spacing then it should have. This was bad for the faunus, as they'd obviously made a lot of enemies by upsetting the status quo. Atlas, especially, took the loss the hardest, believing they would have won the war if the other kingdoms hadn't been so weak."

"Naturally, there were also many families torn apart by the violence, which didn't help matters. Add into that the typical propaganda that happens in any conflict and you have most of the non-faunus population having grown up in an era where every news station and TV show was portraying faunus as shifty, untrustworthy and villainous. Politics of fear ran rampant, with campaigns won on the back of stopping faunus culture `invading` good, hard-working human lands. The last ten years have started to ease a little, but the people in power today are still those who grew up under the war. I won't say it pardons them, but they grew up in dark and dangerous times where faunus were enemies, and they can't let go of it. Much of those beliefs are also passed onto their children."

Qrow nodded, following along. He'd never lived through an official war, the one with Salem being about as unofficial as you could get, but he could see how living in fear for almost a decade would shape you.

"Are things improving?"

"A little. As those who suffered the most grow old, the younger generation comes in with less and less baggage. It's ever said that the young forget the lessons learned in the past and that's true, but they also forget the bad lessons as well as the good ones. The burning hatred for faunus fanned during the war to boost recruitment is drifting from the minds of people, leaving behind an older generation called `bitter and cruel` and a younger generation called `unpatriotic and naïve`. It's a story as old as time itself, and one that has played out so many times it might as well be comedy."

One that Ozpin had been there to see happen, too. Qrow could imagine growing frustrated with human nature when you saw the same mistakes and trends come back on repeat. The man might have been immortal, but he wasn't all-powerful, and he couldn't force humanity to change the way it was.

"What can we do, then?"

"Join the protests. Encourage people to see the non-violent side of the faunus."

"Kali won't like that."

"I've no idea who this young woman is but, if she's anything like Miss Branwen, then I encourage you to try and temper her outbursts. She does more harm than good."

"She keeps her people safe from human throwing rocks!" snapped Raven.

Ozpin closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. "It is disgusting, and I agree, but – and this will sound bad – it might be better to let the faunus be hit with rocks." There was a gasp from Summer and Raven, but Ozpin continued. "Not because they should be driven off, but because bloody and brave protestors bleeding from the face will evoke sympathy from the masses. It will immediately turn every moderate person against the counter-protestors."

The girls relaxed, realising Ozpin was just being exceptionally calculating, and not actually supporting the idea of the faunus being hurt. Qrow had known he wouldn't from the start, and so hadn't panicked at the worrying statement.

"I need you all to stay out of trouble," Ozpin finished. "I don't mind if you have a little drink and fun, but no more instances of you being carried back like this. Am I understood? The city isn't in a great state."

"Yes sir," they mumbled as one.

/-/

They'd split up after Ozpin's telling off, Summer and Raven wanting to sulk and rest off their hangovers and Qrow being a lot more used to dealing with it. He headed out to the nearest library, one with computers, and sat down to do a little searching through old newspaper articles about faunus relations and, of more imminent concern, Mountain Glenn.

Man, you'd think a time traveller wouldn't have to do any research since I'd know everything already. Turns out only knowing what happens after the start of Beacon isn't good enough to change things.

In terms of time, it was probably around now – or maybe a week or two from now – that he and Raven actually decided to come to Beacon. They'd still be in the tribe, having survived the winter and come back in to become raiders. By now, they'd have run into Ozpin once and seen the difference in strength between huntsmen and normal people, and Raven would be pushing him to follow her to Beacon to learn their secrets.

Which meant all this stuff going on right now was alien to him.

And he'd not cared about anything outside Beacon for practically his first year at school. He and Raven had hated the city, thinking it full of weak people with weak ideals. It wasn't until their second year that they went native and accepted in their hearts, if not in their minds, that life here was better than it was in the tribe.

It wasn't hard to find details on Mountain Glenn. In fact, the hard part was sifting through the vast amount of stuff on it. Speeches from the developers, press releases, proud sponsors, huge celebrations, diplomatic agreements. Vale had practically been boasting about it to the whole world, and the city had been dominating the headlines in every newspaper for almost the past five years.

Crazy to think it'd become so much of a tragedy that people hardly dared talk about it in the future. A minute of silence each year, where people would shuffle around with hunched shoulders, but otherwise nothing else.

The headlines he found interesting, he set aside to download onto his scroll and read through back at the hotel.

Mountain Glenn enters final stages of development. Speculative homes up for sale.

Districts sell out quickly in residential areas of Mountain Glenn.

Major companies open new offices in future city.

Atlas agrees research and development industry for Mountain Glenn worth 12 million.

Over 200,000 families to become pioneers in Mountain Glenn.

Vale promises stationed huntsman corps.

Underground railway will connect Mountain Glenn and Vale with travel times under 30 minutes.

Mountain Glenn hailed greatest victory of the century.

A little premature on the last one, but everything looked good. The construction of the walls had gone off without a hitch, the Grimm had been fought back, the homes were being built – and they were being sold at reasonable rates. Everyone knew Mountain Glenn was a risk, but it was the solution to an overpopulation crisis from what he was reading.

And it was a haven for working-class families who didn't have so much money. It was even being said that people could live there cheaply and commute back to Vale for work if they wanted to. Two cities, connected by rail, with the promise of more cities in the future. All Vale needed was for this one to succeed, and it would begin a new era of expansion the likes of which Remnant hadn't seen since the Grimm first arrived.

"I can't believe how big this could have been," he muttered to himself. "I thought the fall of Beacon was the worst thing in the future, but this is so much more. If this succeeds..."

He didn't dare imagine it.

How was he meant to make it succeed, either? He was a teenager not even into Beacon yet, and it'd fall within the next twelve months. Even if he somehow got himself over there, it wasn't like he could singlehandedly fight the Grimm off. Not even in his prime would that be possible. The best he could do was help in the tunnels to limit losses.

But if he could...

If this could actually work out...

Just imagining it sent shivers down his spine.

And increased the pressure on his shoulders.

"Is that... Qrow, isn't it?"

"Hm?" Glancing up, he spotted the dark skinned face of Hazel's older sister. The one who would die in Beacon in the future. "Oh, hey. Gretchen, right?" Alive for now, and so much easier to save than Mountain Glenn. He'd just need to figure out the date of her death and break her leg in a training accident.

She couldn't die if she couldn't go out on her mission.

Maybe I shouldn't act so blasé about that but better a broken leg than an early grave.

And it was nice to have at least one easily solved problem.

"Hey." Gretchen came over and stood nearby. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be at the gym with Hazel."

"We went out drinking last night. Hangovers and fitness don't mix, at least for me." He trailed off, "How about you?"

"I'm trying to find out what Beacon's initiation is."

"You're aware of it?" He was surprised. Most students didn't know there was one.

"You too, huh? I mean, it's kind of obvious if you look at how many people go to Beacon and how many they actually keep there. Unless over half the people who get into it suddenly change their mind on day two, there has to be some test."

Smart.

The truth was that Beacon didn't have that many students. In all reality, the school was kind of small. You only had a set number of teachers and, unlike a typical school, everyone was studying the same subject. It wasn't like a university where you had hundreds of lecturers and thousands of students.

Ozpin, in this time anyway, was the combat instructor. The singular combat instructor. Glynda handled it in the future. Either way, they did it alone and for every year group. Same as how Oobleck taught history for every student in Beacon.

That meant class sizes couldn't be that large, because if you took a hundred students in each year then you'd have one teacher trying to teach a hundred people. You also couldn't split classes because there weren't enough teachers for that. The goal was quality over quantity, with an exceptional few huntsmen being created.

So, as crazy as it sounded, Beacon really only had about forty students in each year.

Ten teams, since the numbers always had to be divisible by four.

It was a tiny amount, one hundred and sixty across all four years, but forty students to each classroom was also about the most that could be managed without educational quality suffering. Have more than that and getting everyone to spar in combat class would take forever. It already meant twenty spars, each taking about five minutes, for a combat class that would take over an hour and a half.

In truth, Qrow thought Beacon should have expanded – it had the room – but he also knew it wasn't Ozpin's call. The school's budget came from the government, and they'd have to double the number of teachers they had to take on more students. It would basically double the cost of running Beacon, and that'd mean higher taxes.

Right now, the city of Vale was in a golden age – especially since they thought Mountain Glenn was going to succeed. The overpopulation had also stressed the finances, along with the general cost of investing in and making a whole new city. There wasn't money to go around, and there certainly wasn't enough to stomach a doubling of costs relating to an academy.

"Yeah, I figured the same," he said. "I mean, at least forty people from Signal got accepted into Beacon and that's how many they take for a full year. Then there will be those coming from abroad. They must have some way of picking the best ones out. The rest get to apply elsewhere or try and make it as huntsmen the old-fashioned way."

"The dangerous way. I can't take that risk with Hazel relying on me. I'm all he has. That's why I'm trying to find what the test is."

"I can respect that. Family is important." Plus, he knew she'd succeed unless he somehow mucked up her chances. Unlikely when he'd be hunting down Summer or Taiyang as his partner. Not Raven, since she'd be after him. He needed to force STRQ together. Even so, he didn't mind cheating a little here. "I figure it'll be something involving the Emerald Forest."

Gretchen cocked her head. "You don't think it'll be a combat test or a spar?"

"Nah. They know our scores before we enter, but the one thing the schools before don't show is how good we are in a dangerous situation. Plus, they have a forest full of Grimm right there. Makes sense to use it."

"I guess it does. Fight Grimm, then?"

"I think everyone who gets into Beacon will be capable of that. This has to be something where the best are picked out. Winners and losers. Maybe it'll be a race or a mission with an objective. First ones to complete it win."

He was pushing a little close to revealing it at this point, but Gretchen was going to succeed so it didn't really matter. Besides, while it might make some small amount of sense to let her fail so she didn't die later on, that wouldn't guarantee her survival either. If she didn't make it into Beacon, she'd have to risk becoming a huntress through real-world experience.

And that was way too dangerous. The survival rates for that were under sixty per cent. And a good portion of those survived but were forced to retire due to crippling injuries. Becoming a huntsman outside an academy was more than doable, but it was absolutely survival of the fittest, and those that survived turned into exceptional huntsman. Exceptionally skilled, but also exceptionally scarred.

"That makes a lot of sense, actually." Gretchen grinned and shuffled over to sit down. "So, what are you looking up? Mountain Glenn...?"

He didn't need to keep it a secret and so let her see. "I'm just curious is all. I never really came from Vale so Hazel mentioning it was the first I'd heard. A whole new city sounds like a crazy idea, though. Are we sure it's safe?"

"I'm sure they've done their research on it. And, I mean, they're going to have huntsmen there and Vale itself is half an hour by rail away. If Grimm were sighted outside the walls, it'd be easy to ship huntsmen over to deal with them."

True. Which made it even more obvious that something had gone wrong inside the walls. It was the only explanation for why the problem had gotten so bad that all the huntsmen in Vale couldn't get on top of it.

Somehow, the Grimm got in. But how? A small number would kill a lot of people but they'd never be enough of a threat to force the city to be abandoned. It'd have to be a huge army, but how the hell do you sneak a horde of Grimm into a city? It doesn't make any sense.

Even Cinder hadn't been able to pull that off with the backing of both the White Fang and Salem herself. The Grimm corralled by the White Fang had been unleashed on Beacon through the forest, and the breach had let out maybe ten or so Grimm. Enough to cause a disaster but not enough that a bunch of students from Beacon couldn't deal with it. Both had been little more than distractions, fairly easily dealt with while Cinder enacted her true plan and killed Ozpin. To have enough Grimm to wipe out a city on their own, you'd need hundreds of Grimm – several hundred at least.

And there wasn't even a terrorist faction to rely on for it.

"It's as safe as can be," she said, wrong but so reasonable. "If Hazel and I weren't getting accommodation as part of my scholarship, we'd look to move there. But Hazel wants to be close and I don't want to leave him in another city either, even if it's only a half hour away."

"Yeah, that's fair. I'm just curious is all." He inserted his scroll and downloaded the reports onto it. "It just seems a little too good to be true." Qrow tried to think up some question he could ask, something she might know, but what was he meant to say?

"Oh hey, do you happen to know if anyone there has five hundred Grimm as pets?"

Obviously, no one would know, and certainly not a kid his age.

"So," she said. "What are you doing today? Going to the gym? I've been meaning to ask for a spar."

"I'm a little too hungover for that. I think I promised to help out at a rally today, though."

"A rally?"

"White Fang. Faunus rights." He watched her reaction and didn't see any anger. Ozpin had been right about things dying out over time. Gretchen and Hazel didn't have their parents with them anymore, and so didn't have anyone to pass on the general dislike of faunus. "You can come along if you like. It's just handing out leaflets and holding up a sign."

"Eh, I think I'll pass. Not that I don't agree with the cause or anything but I promised Hazel I'd cook his favourite meal tonight and I don't want to be so tired I can't do it. But, um, I'll take a leaflet if you want me to."

Qrow snorted. "It's fine. They're more for people who aren't aware of how poorly faunus are treated. As long as you're cool with faunus, you're fine."

"Yeah. Great. I mean, I am. They're just people, right?"

"Not everyone sees it that way."

Gretchen rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and some people think girls shouldn't be huntresses either. There are always weirdoes out there."

Less so on that front, though that argument was also one that hadn't died out even in the future. There were always the types who argued that if they were in a war against the Grimm, they needed to focus on repopulation and expansion. Thus, more births. Qrow wrote it off as angry virgins unable to attract women thinking it'd somehow be easier if said women were pressured into having more kids, but there was a fair number of women among their number too.

Luckily, it was always a very niche thing that no one took seriously. Less so for the faunus, where Jacques Schnee forced many into awful working conditions...

Jacques Schnee, who wasn't yet a Schnee.

"Qrow?"

"Uh. Just remembered something, actually. A friend of mine needs advice. I'd best give her a call and sort that out. I'll see you at Beacon if I don't see you sooner. Maybe practice your survival skills outside for initiation, yeah? And grab some supplies for navigating your way through a forest. They're not going to fly us all the way out to the deserts of Vacuo when it's cheaper to dump us in the forest right next door."

"Sure. I'll see you around, I guess. Promise me a spar, okay?"

"I promise." Qrow jogged out, already dialling Willow's number.

The answer came very quickly.

"Qrow!" Willow sounded oddly thrilled with his call. "I'm busy but I can put it on hold. Did you want to talk? Is this about my trip? I'll be in Vale tomorrow—"

"Tomorrow? Great. Let's hook up."

He heard the inhalation on her end, then a choking sound. "Y—Yes! Of course. What time? Where shall we go? Should I take care of it or did you have something in mind? I know of a wonderful restaurant we can dine at."

"Sounds good to me. I'll leave it to you if that's okay."

"Certainly! It's more than fine!"

"Say, Willow, that thing you wanted to talk to me about. Is it by any chance about a... uh... arranged marriage?"

"Eh—?" Willow leaned back from the screen and pulled an odd face. "No. Why would you—" Her eyes widened, and colour spread across her cheeks. "Oh! Um. W—Well, if that's your concern then you needn't worry. But I don't fault you. I'm still absolutely single."

Thank goodness. No Jacques, not yet, but it'd be coming in the future. And the guy would make his goals with both helping the White Fang and keeping Willow happy close to impossible. Qrow had never met the guy, but people like him had reputations that preceded them.

"I'm glad to hear it." He wasn't sure why, but Willow managed to look both pleased and very embarrassed. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

"Yes. You will. Make sure to dress up nice."

"Uh. How formal is this place...?"

"Black tie."

"Willow..."

"See you tomorrow, Qrow! Bye!"

The call ended before he could get a word in.

Damn it.

Next Chapter: 29th June

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