Watching a little girl's world break into shambles all over her face wasn't something Riven had expected to deal with this evening; or anywhere in the near future, for that matter. The mental disconnect between what she considered a normal disciplinary measure and what, to the short little twerp in black and red might well look like someone dragging her friend off to the cleaners? It took her a few seconds to make that connection. Seconds in which the girl had raised what turned out to be a rifle with the weirdest bayonet on the butt that she'd ever seen in her direction. Without even so much a thought spared on it, Riven had immediately hoisted the downed blonde in the girl's line of fire.

Awkward.

"Let my sister go!"

Extremely awkward.

Yasuo would probably have some choice words for her right now. Where did she get off on having a drunkard as her conscience anyway? Aside from, apparently, his working a good deal better than hers. Oh, right. That was it. Now how to salvage this? She looked at the catatonic blonde, then at the tiny, pale shrimp of a black-haired girl.

"How are you two even related?" No. No. That was definitely the wrong thing to say.

"That doesn't matter right now! Let her go!" The twerp was starting to sound more angry than distraught.

Perhaps the reasonable approach would work best: "You have a rifle pointed at me. Eject your magazine, unchamber your round and I will leave her to your care."

Ah, that seemed to work. Tiny with a giant gun was hesitating. Time to rub it in: "Girl, she's getting kicked out of a bar. You want to take her off my hands, be my guest."

"O-Okay..But you better not hurt her!", the walking, talking sniper rifle demanded of her, while removing the immediate threat. Mag? Out. Bullet? Spinning on the sidewalk. Content with such, Riven carefully set the hooligan down and took a few steps back.

"She might be pissing" Did the violent little girl just pull a face because of a bad word? Riven had so many questions right now, "blood for a few days, but a competent healer should be able to fix that. Her vehicle is undamaged." Riven thumbed over to the bike by the road side.

The little girl's movements suddenly became a blur, with rose petals fluttering down to the ground in her wake. Even for the Noxian's well-trained eye, she was incredibly hard to track. It startled Riven enough that she almost put her boot through the midget, before realizing that the twerp had simply grabbed her sibling and done a runner. Not the worst way this evening could end, she supposed.

Still, she had business to get to, so she headed into the Club once more. The mood was much more subdued right now. Business was a bust tonight, it seemed, and someone had put a closed sign up while she was out. Junior was sitting on the edge of the dance floor, staring at the crater the reckless party crasher had made with his head in his hands.

"Worried about the cost?", she asked him and hunkered down by his side.

"This was so not in my budget…", he replied. "Can't even claim insurance on it either."

She had no idea what that was. So she asked. Sort of: "Why not?"

"Young adult, aura out the wazoo, Beacon's semester starting soon. Ozpin is just going to make it disappear to protect his students.", he sounded annoyed and defeated by this.

"Sounds like a powerful man. But letting his charges run loose like that is...unwise.", she remarked, then fished out her scroll. "We do have unfinished business." Riven showed him the girl she was looking for.

Junior took a few moments to stare at the picture, then at Riven, then once more at the picture. "You're shittin' me."

"Is there a problem?", she countered.

He frowned, then stared at the picture for a while, before glancing aside at Riven with a suspicious squint. "You're not the only one looking for her. Just how much is the Fang mixing business and personal?"

"Well, her parents' request is pretty personal. But it's my business. Beyond that, don't much know. I bumped into your men before I met the local Fang." Honesty sometimes was the best way to mislead someone; And the only way Riven was really good at it, in her estimate. Leaving things out or letting someone deceive themselves was the way of the grunt, after all.

Junior took a few moments to think things, through, then a deep breath and stood up. He beckoned her to follow and led her to the back rooms, where he sat down in a small office and began an arcane ritual involving a strange machine. His intense focus on its glowing screen was somewhat eerie, as was the odd, chaotic design of the keys he was pressing and the jumbled bunch of letters and numbers upon them. Was the local alphabet that out of order? Riven had no idea. She could read the letters, at least. That was something! And quite odd, now that she thought about it. Ah well, something for smarter people to figure out.

Eventually, the gangster stopped typing and leaned back. "So, the girl you're looking for left the White Fang two weeks ago. Their leader dropped by in person to ask me to keep an eye out for her."

Riven blinked. "Adam, yes?"

"Yeah, him. I got bad vibes and was gonna stay out of it. But, since you did me a solid, I guess I can tell you what my guys told me.", he steepled his fingers. "So, during another job, we accessed the Beacon admission records."

Oh, this was going to be good. Riven pinched the bridge of her nose and cussed silently.

"Bingo.", Junior sounded more tired than amused still. "Your girl is slated to go through Beacon's initiation in about a week's time. The real interesting thing is, Ozpin knows she's a ter-...a revolutionary and has her marked down for 'rehabilitation'."

"How accessible is Beacon?", she prompted.

"Unless your student or staff, forget it.", he said with a wry expression.

"You have access to the admission records. Can you get me a student pass?", was her first question.

"No offence, lady, but, you look a bit too old for that."

"I'm twenty-six."

"And you look it."

That stung. But, it made her chuckle as well. "Not sure. I need to think on this. We might be able to get you into the janitorial staff. Or maybe into the Vital Tournament, if you can wait a semester. I know people in Mistral who can make that happen and if you're as good as you seem to be, would absolutely love rigging the thing for their country."

Now that was an attractive offer if she'd ever heard one. She pulled up her scroll number and held it out to Junior, so he could jot it down in his. "Call me when you know which it is. I should be heading out."

"Sure, lady. I'll be in touch.", he said, and got up to lead her back to the main club area. After some thanks from Rotherbwy for 'saving Ted's dumb ass from worse than a fist in the gob', Riven was almost out the door when a trio of stern-looking adults wandered right on in. She almost bumped right into the grey-haired, bespectacled one with the cane, while the blonde woman in the business suit to his right flexed a riding crop in her fingers at the sight of her. To his left, an even larger blonde man regarded her with a scowl.

"That's her, dad!"

Oh fuck.

"I can't help but notice the gentlemen here look remarkably like the people the police department carted off to jail this afternoon. Robbery, wasn't it?", the elderly gentlemen remarked, as if the twerp hadn't fingered her already. Of course, he was looking right at her with a stern furrow of his brow to match her awkward, deer in the headlights expression.

"Armed robbery.", the stern blonde remarked.

"Assault on a huntress in training.", the giant man growled.

Riven looked over to Junior, who did not look happy in the slightest. Neither did his men, for that matter, but despite having the numbers, they didn't move a muscle. The grey-haired old man with the bearing of a king? Well, that reaction was enough to tell her he was capital I important at least.

"Not my problem.", she promptly told the trio, then made to move past them, only for the man's cane to swish right in front of her chest to stop her from leaving.

"My friend Taiyang and you are going to have a sit down, young lady. I will be present and there will be absolutely no violence. We will settle this tonight and I can save myself the paperwork of yet another police report.", the old man said. To Riven, it sounded reasonable. To the big man, Taiyang, most of it seemed to. The part about 'no violence' evidently made him bristle.

Riven shrugged and stepped back, then sat herself down at a nearby table, where Junior soon joined her. The trio, which, with the twerp, was a quartet if one chose to count her, introduced themselves as Miss Goodwitch, Headmaster Ozpin and Taiyang Xiao-Long. The girl was shushed before she could give her name. Riven put that as one singular point in the good parenting bracket for Taiyang, so far.

"I was willing to leave the Red Axe gang alone. If Signal third years can take out your people, you're a threat the police can deal with. Hospitalizing a young huntress, however, does cross a line…", Ozpin began, resting both hands on his staff like a wizened old sage. His tone was all mafioso, however. Power and threat bundled into one.

Junior, looking somewhat out of his element, signaled one of his men to fetch everyone a drink. Whiskey for the adults and an orange juice for the twerp. "Look, headmaster, I realize this looks bad, but you have to understand. Your girl was using live ammo on people without aura-"

Their reactions to that were interesting. Frowns, anger, but not directed at her or Junior. Goodwitch, especially, looked extremely foreboding there.

"- and she could've killed somebody, if Riven here hadn't stepped in."

"Yes, Riven. Who are you exactly?", the old man now put his entire attention upon her. "You're no licensed huntress and you definitely have not been active in Vale before."

That put her in an awkward spot. The silence on her end definitely dragged things out beyond what a sip from her glass could contain. What to say? What to say? She had no idea! Pretending to be White Fang was right on out. Wait! This was a school teacher? Perhaps she could just...tell him the truth?

"I'm here on behalf of Ghira and Kali Belladonna to locate their daughter and convince her to reconnect with her parents." It was better than anything else she had, at least.

Jumior's reaction helped sell it, as the hostile trio's eyes drifted to him first, then back at her. Taiyang's bubbling rage seemed immediately doused for some reason as well.

"Which brings you to a known information broker", Goodwitch remarked while toying with her crop. Blood, what was wrong with that woman?

"Pretty much.", Riven shrugged. "After that, I'm probably going to head back to Menagerie, unless Kali has other ideas."

"How did you beat Yang?", the girl's father asked. He sounded thoughtful now and looked it, too.

"She's green. Never been in a real fight by the looks of it.", Riven shrugged, taking in their reactions. The nameless twerp looked livid, Goodwitch cold and neutral, Ozpin oddly amused and Taiyang resigned.

"So why go that hard on her?", Taiyang prompted.

"Because she needed the lesson.", the Noxian's response definitely pit the fellow back on to fury road by the looks of it.

"Am I given to understand you are not an active member of the White Fang?", Ozpin asked her, prompting her to nod.

"The Belladonnas are friends. Don't care much beyond that.", another honest answer, mostly. Kali was a friend. Ghira? Complicated. She probably owed him a piece of her mind if she ever decided to come clean about her origins.

Ozpin, meanwhile, handed Goodwitch his scroll. The woman left the building for some reason, while the old man smiled in an inscrutable manner: "Perhaps there is a way for us to put this entire matter aside."

Ah, here it came. The offer they couldn't refuse. She and Junior exchanged a glance, then braced themselves for what was to come.

"Miss Goodwitch is going to succeed me as headmistress soon. I am getting on in the years and she has been doing more and more of the administrative work. This means, I will be needing a new combat instructor for Beacon."

"What the hell, Ozpin?!", Taiyang bristled, then shut up when the old man raised a palm.

"You would be assisting her in her classes at first, then, when we are satisfied, take over for her entirely. This will allow you to foster a relationship with young Blake and steer her back towards her parents, without the risk of her enmity. You see, she just enrolled into Beacon and, once she passes initiation, would be your student."

Riven stared at the old man for a few moments. Was this what she really wanted? She wasn't part of this world, by far. Then again, she was stuck here until Ahri managed to locate her and there were worse things to do than teach kids how to stay alive.

"I want to fight her.", Taiyang interjected, egged on by the chip on his shoulder.

"I can do that.", she agreed. "But you get Junior's boys out of prison first."

The gangster seemed surprised, but grateful enough. And as if to crush the twerp's world view about good guys and bad guys, Ozpin shook her hand. And then she shook Taiyang's.

"Anytime, anywhere."