"Come on, you don't have time to sleep all morning." It was a rather rude awakening, but while he had wanted to complain about it, the culprit had already ducked her head out of his room and no doubt was halfway through the house by now. She was way too fast; sometimes he swore she could use Magic. Pulling himself up out of bed, his eyes glanced momentarily out the window. From his bedroom, he could see one of the ends of the field, a large podium stood just before the edge of the farm. His destination, so early in the morning.

Atop it was a large gun, supported by two struts that would let it angle up and down, sitting on a rotating platform. Coming out of the back of the gun, there was a hose connecting back into the podium; its fuel source. Only, despite having Dust, it wasn't accepting the Mana recently. While there were eight of the turrets around the farm, if one wasn't working, there was a massive gap in their armour. All kinds of Grimm could run right through.

Usually, his uncle would have been the one to go out and fix it, but currently the older man was sick. Very sick. Neither him nor his aunt was confident his uncle could even survive the walk to the gun, let alone fix it. When the next Dust drop off from Vale came, they were hoping to get the poor man healed. That was at least a week away, though, and they were both worried that he may not survive that long.

Getting up, the boy let out a sigh as he tried to keep his mind off of the fate of his family. Without his uncle around, he would have to remain on the farm for a very long time. The plan had been for him to go to the capital of Vale soon, but his aunt couldn't run the farm all by herself, especially not with having to repair and maintain the turrets. While he remembered some of what his uncle taught him, it probably still wasn't enough to fill in for him properly.

After getting dressed and heading downstairs, his aunt gave him a proper smile. She looked a lot like him, tanned skin, dark hair, Brown eyes; she was a lot taller than him, but he was still only fourteen. "Finally up?" She was always a bit snarky with him, but he found it funny more than anything.

"Yeah." Scouring the kitchen for a minute, the best he could come up with for a quick meal was some toast. "How is Uncle doing?" Grabbing some bread out while he spoke, he threw it on the metal plate built into the kitchen bench before pressing a button. Underneath, a crystal of Fire Dust began to surge and heat the metal.

"He's... He's still with us." That was the best they could hope for right now. "Are you ok?" Her concern was for more than just how he felt about his uncle. They both knew that if his uncle died, he would be trapped here for the rest of his life, the choice of what he wanted to do forever taken from him. But it was selfish to be scared about that, rather than the fate of his uncle. "Oscar-"

"I'm worried about him." That's all he would say about it. Grabbing the two slices off the plate, they were perfectly toasted, and he quickly took a bite out of one. Usually, he would have at least used butter, but fixing the turret - or trying to - was more important than a tasty meal. There was also the added benefit of escaping this conversation as soon as possible. "I'll try to be quick."

Leaving before his aunt could say anything else, Oscar Pine left the house in the middle of their family farm and took a hard right. Following the lines of the field, his sights were set squarely on the turret in the distance. He was just lucky the broken one wasn't one of the corner turrets, that would have taken much longer to reach.

Given time by the walk to think, Oscar tried to come up with a plan for his future. He didn't want to admit it... But this sickness would take his uncle, there was no stopping it, not without a healer. If he ran, he could reach the nearby village before the sun went down, but they were short on Lien at the moment. Getting a healer out here wouldn't be cheap, and Oscar didn't trust someone with Magic to come here out of the goodness of their heart, an opinion he had gotten from his aunt. That was if he even made it to the village, he was more likely to get eaten by a Grimm on the way.

So, his uncle would die... He had honestly survived longer than anyone thought he would, including himself. After breaking his leg a few years ago and having it set funny after a few months, he had walked with a limp ever since. Then, a week ago, it had finally come back with a vengeance; whatever was wrong with his leg was set on taking the rest of him with it.

With his uncle, Oscar would lose his chance at a choice in life. He had never gotten to study, never gotten to see The World outside this farm and the nearby village. What did he want to do with his life? It was a question he would never get to explore. Going to Vale would have given him that chance, but now that wasn't possible. "If we had more Lien, I could take a gateway back and forth..." The village did have a transporter, and even though it was cheap for what it was, that was still too high a price to use constantly.

The benefits to living in the Vale kingdom were plentiful, chiefest of which was the cheapest Dust prices in all of Remnant. Adding onto that was the best access to the rarer kinds, even better than that of Atlas. Usually, it would be an incredible lot, to own a farm in this kingdom. Dust was plentiful, food wasn't. But their farm wasn't big enough; they struggled with finding buyers more than they struggled with their crops. There were five main farms in the kingdom, all of which leagues bigger than this one. Made even worse by the fact that they sat between two of the big ones.

If his aunt sold the farm, they would make more than enough Lien to move to Vale. They could probably afford to live there without work for a while, and if they both got jobs, they might even be able to sustain it. But convincing her or himself to do that was an impossible task. Oscar never wanted to let this place go, not to someone that wasn't family. Both his parents were buried on this farm, as were generations of their family. Who knows what someone else would do with the memories that soaked the very soil of this place.

Finally reaching the podium, Oscar opened one of the panels on the bottom and tried his best to look around inside. Most of it he didn't understand, and what of it he did understand looked to be working perfectly. Was there a rip in the hose, maybe? After squeezing his way through the internals and checking the entire thing, he found nothing of the sort. Eventually, he climbed his way atop the podium, looking at the gun itself and trying to figure out why it wasn't working... To no avail, once again.

"I don't even know what I'm looking at..." Just before he could climb down, the turret suddenly whirred to life, the gun's head snapping up towards the sky as the base rotated it so fast it nearly smacked Oscar in the head. Barely avoiding the barrel as the gun spun around, Oscar's dodge backwards left him falling off the podium. He landed amidst some crops, head pounding and body sore.

"Ow..." He breathed out before pulling himself up. "Why did the turret turn...?" After a moment, he put two and two together when the gun started to make strange sounds. It was like metal snapping against another piece over and over, a constant rhythm; it was trying to fire. Eyes wide, Oscar looked up to where the gun was pointing, it was following a distant speck... A black figure flying through the sky towards their farm. "Grimm...!"

He began to ran back to the house, glancing back every now and again, only to find it was getting closer and closer. Now he could see its shape.

It was one of the Dragon Grimm.