Work continues to be stressful. Had to fire a few ringleaders for gross misconduct. Their work emails basically showed them going against company rules in a few ways so it's all perfectly legal but they're suing for unfair dismissal anyway. Good luck when they literally left paper trails of conversations between one another talking about how they were going to intentionally under-perform to try and kill the company.

You succeeded, but if you think you're getting your redundancy after that then think again.


Cover Art: Aristeo Storm

Chapter 33


Vale looked exactly like he remembered it.

Which made sense because it was literally the place he was remembering. The dissonance came from things that were present in the future and missing now, like several key buildings and a whole major freeway that his nieces had almost collapsed. This was old Vale – good Vale, he would have said, only to be mercilessly teased by Ruby and Yang.

But he'd been right to say things were better back in the good old days.

That didn't make him old!

"Welcome to the city," said Ozpin, as Qrow, Summer and Raven stepped off the ferry from Patch and onto the stone pier. "I hope you'll get used to it seeing as how you'll be staying here for the next four years. With any luck," he added, quietly.

Initiation.

Obviously, they weren't about to fail it but Ozpin was keeping to the time honoured tradition of not telling students about it, hence the whispers. Qrow wasn't worried. While Raven and Summer looked about in awe, Qrow smiled, for once looking natural for his age in letting his wonder and joy show.

"How many people live here?" Raven wondered.

"As of the last census, a little over one million."

That was a staggering figure to a girl who had grown up in a tribe of some hundred or so people, but, to Qrow, it was low. Vale would grow in the future, as populations tended to, and more people would flock to it for safety. The city had always been densely populated but it was going to get a lot worse.

Which wasn't his problem to fix, really. There was a reason Taiyang and Raven had decided to move out to Patch instead of rent an overpriced apartment a tenth the size in the city. The downside had been the risk of Grimm, which wasn't such a problem for huntsmen like them. The choice was understandably a lot harder for civilian families who had to choose between poor living conditions with safety, or good conditions with the risk of death. And then there were those who didn't get that choice because they couldn't find work well-paying enough to stay in the city at all.

But those thoughts were dark and miserable and he wasn't in the mood to feel that way so he shook them off. "We're staying at a hotel, right? Are you sure it wouldn't be cheaper for you to get us our own place?"

"I'm sure," said Ozpin, with a firm tone. "Though price was never the limiting factor there, so much as the nightmares my mind is filled with imagining leaving you three to look after an apartment alone."

"We're self-sufficient," Raven argued.

"Your sufficiency isn't the complicating factor. It's your predilection for chaos."

"Our what...?"

"It means we're too violent," Qrow explained.

Raven huffed. "Course we are! We're huntsmen. That's the point!"

"Not all problems can be solved with violence – and don't think I can't tell you're rolling your eyes, Miss Branwen." Raven winced. "Either way, you'll be staying in two hotel rooms. You can decide to stay with your brother or with Summer, I don't mind which, but the hotel staff will ensure you are fed and cared for."

"I'll take Summer."

"And my own sister abandons me," Qrow said. "Could this day get any more tragic?"

"The hotel staff have been instructed not to serve you alcohol."

"I meant it as a rhetorical question..."

Ozpin ushered them into a taxi and took them to the hotel, a fairly standard place – fair prices, fair service, average reviews. It screamed of being "adequate" which was fair given he was paying for them to stay here for several weeks before the term began. The receptionist saw them arranged with their rooms but gave a stern warning about weapons and training that Raven did not appreciate.

"We're huntsmen!"

"Hotel policy, young miss. All weapons have to be locked away and cannot be used in the hotel."

"What if there's an emergency!?"

"Miss, you cannot kill a fire and, if you are under attack, I believe you would be able to defend yourself without a weapon." The woman's cool response had Raven growling. "This isn't just in the hotel, you realise. The rules extend to the city as a whole."

"WHAT!?"

"In a limited fashion," Ozpin interjected. "You just need a license to carry. I'll arrange one. However, even then, you can't just draw your weapon or spar with your brother. I've arranged for you all to have membership at a gym not too far away that caters to huntsmen – it has an arena you can spar with one another in."

"But... But..."

"Vale is a city with civilians, Miss Branwen. They will not be comfortable seeing you waving a sword around. That they let students carry them at all is a move I – I mean, Beacon – has spent years to cultivate. We can't have it be ruined now."

He meant he'd spent years on it, maybe even decades. Vale hadn't been exactly pro-weaponry in the future either, but they put up with it. A lot of people got around it by having their mechashift weaponry have collapsible forms that concealed them. Ruby and Yang, for instance, could both hide their weapons as they carried them. Yang's looked like bracelets while Ruby's folded back into a non-descript red object that didn't look like much of anything, but at least didn't scream "gun" and "scythe" at first glance.

Even Ozpin's weapon was designed to blur the boundaries between deadly weapon and casual accessory, the same with Glynda's, Oobleck's and many, many others. It wasn't just for convenience but to help keep people calm. Oobleck loved his coffee, obviously, but the man wasn't so obsessed he'd have based a weapon around a thermos for that reason alone.

"This is bullshit!" Raven declared. "Bullshit!"

"We heard you the first time, Miss Branwen. I shall pass on your concerns to the Council of Vale. In the meanwhile, you can store your weapon in a sealed locker and retrieve it by speaking to someone at reception."

Raven snarled as she unbuckled it. "If you lose it..."

"We have never lost a weapon, ma'am."

"Don't start now!"

Summer handed hers over with a little reluctance but less fanfare. To her, she just liked having it as a reminder of her success, but it wasn't as big a deal as it was for Raven. Qrow just shrugged and spread his arms to show he didn't have one. "I'll hand mine over when I craft it, but I've nothing for now other than my fists, my wits and my charm."

"Fists and wits, then," said Raven.

"Please see that you do, sir. Your rooms are 201 and 202, located on the second floor. Breakfast is served from 7am to 10am, lunch from 11am to 2pm and dinner from 5pm to 8pm. The food is included in your stay but we ask that any plates and cutlery be kept in the restaurant area. We have been instructed to call Mr Ozpin if there are any instances of damage or ill-behaviour."

Qrow rolled his eyes. They needn't have said that but it was meant as a subtle threat of sorts, the hotel probably wasn't thrilled to be asked to look after several powerful and unsupervised teenagers like this. Or maybe they'd had bad experiences in the past.

"Please be aware of guests on either side of your rooms and try not to cause too much noise."

"Yeah, don't mind us. Just future huntresses ready to lay our lives down to protect you," Raven snapped. "Not like we deserve any respect or anything."

The woman rolled her eyes. "Vale thanks you for your service."

"You fucking—"

"Come along, Miss Branwen." Ozpin tugged on her collar and dragged her away from the main desk. "And try not to cause a scene. Huntsmen are respected here, but you're not seen as that yet and won't be until you graduate from Beacon."

"I'm still risking my life for these shitters!"

"You'll find that people living outside the city will respect that more. Here in Vale, people are far away from danger and have grown complacent. Huntsmen become curiosities as much as heroes. It's a regrettable state of affairs but better this than people living in fear of Grimm."

Not much different from the future, there. Qrow sighed and followed them into the elevator and up, then to their rooms. They were spacious enough, but smaller than their dorm in Signal. Then again, they wouldn't need a kitchen to cook in with food served up on demand.

All in all, it was an upgrade.

Especially since they didn't need to clean it – and because he'd get a whole room to himself.

"I'll be available via call if you need me," Ozpin told them, "but I trust you all to be able to enjoy Vale and stay out of trouble without me hovering over your shoulders. Remember that Beacon will begin in a month's time and you shouldn't let your skills slacken. But, at the same time, remember that your entry can be revoked if you do anything to deserve it. Be on your best behaviour."

"I will be," said Summer.

Ozpin gazed at him and Raven. The lecture had obviously been meant for them more than her.

"Yeah, yeah, fine." Raven rolled her eyes.

"I'm not about to cause any incidents either," said Qrow. He couldn't afford to lose his place in Beacon already. "Relax, old man. We'll be fine."

"Hmmm. I shall hope so." Ozpin sighed and picked up his cane, not at all needing it in this younger body. "I'll leave you be, then. Enjoy yourselves. It's the holidays for everyone in school so you might make some new friends."

Qrow doubted that. If they couldn't fight, Raven wouldn't want anything to do with them.

/-/

A big problem of being left in Vale was having too many options. Ozpin had basically thrown them in the city and said "do as you like" and Qrow's brain had crashed from there being too much. So, while Raven and Summer went out to explore, he opted to stay in the hotel and just lounge on the comfortable bed watching TV.

Was it productive? No.

Did that matter? No.

There was no pressing demand for his time or action, and he didn't feel like exploring a city he knew in and out. Mostly, anyway. It'd just be boring and that'd drag the mood down between Raven and Summer. He texted Taiyang a bit instead, then Willow, letting her know he was in Vale and available whenever she got there. A few days away, by the sound of it. Taiyang would also be coming to Vale eventually, but only three days before Beacon started.

What can I do? Is there anything to do...?

He couldn't work on any of Salem's allies, he couldn't push Ozpin's cause, those things would require time and him getting into Ozpin's trust. They'd happen but weren't viable right now.

I can't just sit here for a whole month. I should do something. What, though? Explore Vale? I already know the city. Get drunk? Raven will rat me out in an instant. I don't want to go clubbing and pull girls that are as old as my niece, and I doubt any older women will be interested in my scrawny ass.

Before, he'd always had the freedom to just train with Raven. Nothing like a good spar to work out the frustrations, tire the body, and distract from deep thoughts. That was out the window unless they went to this gym.

"Argh. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and work on my weapon." Qrow kicked his legs to draw him into a seated position. "At least that'd give me something to do."

It was an idea, a poor one, but an idea. He jumped on it. Harbinger came to mind but he questioned now, with the benefit of twenty years' worth of hindsight, whether it was the right choice to make. It was a good weapon and one he was used to, but it didn't have a lot of versatility.

"Hmm. Rebuild Harbinger or modify it, or maybe I can build it and invest in a second weapon? I'd have to train in it." Qrow huffed. "Then again, what else am I gonna do for four years? I'll be bored if I go through Beacon knowing everything. Might as well keep myself busy learning a new style."

It sounded like hard work, but that appealed to him in a sense. While Beacon was necessary for Team STRQ, and he'd always looked back on it fondly, he had to admit it was the people and memories rather than the lessons. Sitting through four years of lectures on stuff he already knew was going to drive him up the wall, and something new to dig his teeth into might help preserve the one bit of sanity he had left.

Now, the question was what type of weapon to take a crack at mastering. Something challenging, so not just a sword. Qrow hummed and laid back again, actually feeling some small amount of excitement build up at the idea. He'd been much too old to learn something new back then, but now he was young and fresh, and knowing how to fight with two different weapons and styles would make him a force to be reckoned with.

"Take inspiration from the girls? No, Ruby's relied on her Semblance and Yang is basically Taiyang with anger issues. Fencing would waste my body strength and there's no way I'm flexible enough to pull off the crap that partner of Yang's could."

Winter came to mind, but it was too similar to how he normally fought so he pushed it away. Cinder had used a bow, but that was such a needless complexity in a world of guns. Staff? It was an option. Not one he'd ever bothered with, but something to consider. A spear might be quite cool as well – and here he was, forty years and more, talking about being cool. Heh, Yang and Ruby would tease him for days.

Still, a spear would let him play with medium and short range and make him more versatile. He put it in the "maybe" pile along with a few other ideas like SMG-knives and throwing weapons in general. They weren't much good against Grimm, but Qrow knew his enemies wouldn't always be Grimm with Salem and her allies kicking around. A kick-based weapon like bladed boots went into the pile as well, though he'd have to get over the instinctive urge to say he was too old to do a split kick and start working on stretching the muscles in his much younger body.

By the time Raven and Summer came back, he had numerous sketches on his bed that the girls came in (without knocking, of course) to look over. Raven greedily checked a few, snorting and scrunching up the staff before throwing it away.

"Blunt weapons are for bitches."

"I thought that was axes."

"Axes are basically blunt weapons."

"How!?" cried Summer. "In what universe?"

"They're blunt everywhere except the edge."

Summer's eyes crossed as she tried to process that information. "You can apply that to any weapon!" she hissed. "You can apply that to bacon, for crying out loud! Everything is blunt if you `ignore the sharp bits`, Raven. That's how it works!"

"You know what I mean. If it hits with the blunt, it's not cool. Got to have a cutting edge. That's why axes are lame – they have less cutting edge."

"It's not the size that matters."

Raven snorted. "You'll make a small man happy with that comment one day."

Summer offered her middle finger.

Qrow ignored them. He was too in the zone to bother, though he'd also quietly given up on the staff idea. It wasn't a bad weapon, but he also had to consider the convenience of it, to break down and carry, and a staff would require balance on both sides. That meant if he wanted to put a gun in one end, he had to do both ends, and then he had to learn to dual-wield, which was a skill he regularly taught his students to stop wasting time on.

Sure, dual wielding handguns was fine, but only if you accepted that the only shots even remotely under control were the ones aimed with your dominant hand. The rest were just sprayed in the general direction, which might be fine in some situations with Grimm, but not others.

But the amount of students he caught trying to dual wield swords had him screaming back in the day. It just wasn't realistic, especially when you could attack the weapon in their weak hand and watch their arm buckle ten times out of ten. Even people who were genetically ambidextrous didn't bother with it. Most weapons benefited from the control afforded by an offhand, even if they were theoretically one-handed weapons. Being able to bush on the back of the blade, add a second hand, or just grapple and grab other objects, was more useful than the fashionable second sword.

"He's not listening, is he?" asked Summer.

"No. He's in a fuck."

Qrow blinked. "I'm what...?"

"You're fucking."

"I most certainly am not."

"I think she means a fugue," said Summer, with a snicker. Raven shrugged as if to say the words were similar enough, which they really weren't. "And look, you're back with us. Were you like this with our weapons as well?"

"He was," Raven commented.

"It's just me being lost in thought," said Qrow. "There's nothing special about it. I'm just bouncing weapon ideas around in my head." Might as well involve them. "I'm thinking of expanding beyond swordplay. I know I'm good at it, but we have four years in Beacon and I figure it's a good chance to learn something new."

"Why?" asked Raven. "Swords are better."

"I'll still train with a sword. I just want another. Two weapons are better than one, right?"

Raven considered that and then nodded. "As long as it's not a mace."

Even Qrow winced. "Ew. Maces are lame."

"Good brother."

"Not that I don't agree," drawled Summer, "because, yeah, lame, but I think some of these ideas are a little out there. Like, what is this ribbon, gun, sword thing...? How is that even supposed to work? Is the ribbon made of metal?"

"Nope."

"Then won't it get shredded by a Grimm?"

"Yeah, but the idea is to use the gun and swing the sword on the ribbon."

"Right." Summer's eyes crossed. "And to use the sword and swing the gun on a ribbon, too? That sounds like a good way to shoot yourself. And if this is used in a spar, aren't you as good as arming your opponent by swinging a weapon at them? One that can be used to cut through your own ribbon?"

Probably. To be fair, the Belladonna girl had been agile enough to make it work. Plus, you usually didn't have to worry about your foe stealing your weapon if the weapon you used made no freaking sense. Good luck someone stealing Gambol Shroud and using it effectively. Myrtenaster, on the other hand, could be used with a stab and the pull of a trigger.

"I'm just spit balling ideas."

"There are enough here to make an edgy twelve-year-old climax himself to death," said Raven. "Don't think I'll go easy on you if you suck with a new weapon."

"Ray, you wouldn't go easy on a six-year-old wielding a lollipop."

"I mean, if it steps in the ring..."

"Thank you for proving my point." Qrow gave up on the sketches and put his pen down. "Is there a reason you're interrupting me? Other than being bored."

"We're bored."

"I said other than that."

"Yeah, no, we're just bored." Raven shrugged. "I want to go check out this gym we can spar at, and that means you're coming so I can kick your ass."

"But I don't have a weapon."

Raven smirked. "I know. I did say I'd be kicking your ass."

/-/

The gym was a pretty decent place, well-equipped as one might expect of one able to survive in the big city. The downside was the fact that regular gym goers mixed with huntsmen, which despite using a lot of the same equipment were very different types of people. You had those looking to lose weight fast-walking on treadmills next to huntresses tearing them apart with their speed, and all-around making the humble gym-goer feel miserably self-conscious.

On the other hand, you had muscle-headed gym bros flexing and grunting to try and impress women and one another, while also mocking huntsmen like Qrow because they weren't "shredded". Which, of course, missed the whole point of their occupation. Being shredded wasn't ideal for a huntsman at all.

It didn't mean Qrow couldn't wipe the floor with literally any ten of them at once.

Thankfully, Raven and Summer were more than able to look after themselves, even if Summer kept looking his way like she expected him to fight her battles for her. Raven was much more gung-ho about insulting the huge men. Several of them looked angry enough to fight back, up until they got to see Raven kick Qrow's ass in the ring and wisely backed off.

And, yeah, he lost to Raven. It was no great surprise. Extra decades of experience or not, going unarmed against a sword wielder was bad news unless you were specifically trained in how to deal with it like Yang and Taiyang were. Qrow knew the moves on principal, but his young body sure as hell didn't, and Raven was smart enough to never let him close enough to grapple and drag her to the floor where the sword wouldn't matter.

"Hey," said a young man that looked three or four years younger, for once approaching him. "I don't suppose you could do me a favour and spot me, could you?"

"Huh? Sure thing." It was a surprise to hear a normal request in this testosterone-fuelled place, but then most of the gym bros were busy catcalling Raven and Summer in the small arena. The kid looked small, maybe thirteen or so, and while it was weird to see someone that young pumping weights, at least he was clever enough to ask for help. "The name's Qrow. Yours?"

"Hazel. Hazel Rainart."


Small Reminder: This story has Qrow going back after the fight with Tyrian, so he hasn't yet met Hazel as far as I remember, and doesn't know he's one of Salem's future lieutenents.


Next Chapter: 8th June

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