Beacon Academy

The midnight hour found Professor Ozpin in his apartment atop the central spire of Beacon Academy. Adjoining his office by way of a hidden door, the apartment was known only to a select few of Beacon's staff. Among them, only his trusted assistant had a key. It provided Ozpin a much needed reprieve from the prying eyes of students and staff alike, for whose benefit the headmaster maintained an air of mystery and stoic indifference.

Stripped to his undergarments, Ozpin lounged in a leather chair, his feet lazily propped against his bed. Once again, the duties of his station had intruded on what little slumber he could manage. Eyeing the antique mechanical chronometer, Ozpin inked the last lines of his daily journal before rising to dress for an unexpected meeting.

Ozpin stepped into his office and was greeted by the earthy aroma of freshly brewed Mistralian coffee. Slouched in a seat beside Ozpin's desk was the only other man in Beacon who could stomach a roast so bitter. Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck was Beacon's resident historian and caffeine addict-and the man who had called this emergency meeting.

Before Ozpin could cross the room to his seat, the studded metal elevator doors at the far end of the office slid apart. Out stepped Glynda Goodwitch, Beacon's head disciplinarian and Ozpin's most trusted advisor. Startled by Oobleck's midnight summons, Glynda dropped all pretense of formality. With a flick of her riding crop and a pulse of her semblance, Glynda sent a chair flying across the room, bringing it to a clattering stop next to Oobleck. With another flick of the crop, Glynda seized two mugs of coffee from Ozpin's desk, drawing one to herself and sending the other to Ozpin's waiting hand.

To any outsider Glynda's casual use of her semblance would have seemed like a showy parlor trick, but Oobleck and Ozpin knew her well enough to see the purpose in her actions. Glynda's semblance required total mental focus to move objects with precision. Her display was a way to clear her mind for whatever message was important enough to draw her and Ozpin from their beds at such a quarter to midnight.

"Glynda, Ozpin, I regret waking you at such an hour. However, I fear that team RWBY is in terrible danger."

"Dr. Oobleck, you told me this morning that you approved their plan; further, that you found it thoroughly detailed and surprisingly well written. What has changed since then?"

Oobleck handed his scroll to Ozpin. "Everything. This is the final transmission from the Bullhead transporting RWBY."

Ozpin laid the scroll on his desk, and static-laden audio began to play through the desk's recessed speakers. "SDC 1337 to all local fighters. We have been engaged by Nevermores at grid two-seven by one-eight-six, bearing zero-one-one at angels one-zero. Request immediate support, priority Alpha." The pilot left the channel open. The horrid moan of shearing metal filled Ozpin's office as the recording played on.

"Mayday! Mayday! SDC 1337 has lost her starboard engine. Cannot maintain altitude. Instruments and navigation offline! If anyone can hear me, we have human passengers aboard! Scramble SAR! Dammit, where are those fighters?"

Faint voices cut through the static. Weiss shouted something indistinguishable from the static, and another voice, possibly Ruby's, said something about jumping.

The pilot's voice returned. The panic of his last message was filled with the icy calm of a soldier resigned to his death. "SDC 1337 to all channels. Passengers are away. Repeat, all passengers are clear of the ship. I'm going to get this crate as far away as I can and buy those kids some time. Catherine, sweetheart, if you hear this..."

Oobleck snatched his scroll from the desk, mercifully ending the recorded transmission. "After that, a Nevermore breached the cockpit. The cabin radio recorded till the end. The pilot is...not with us any longer."

The thought of her students helpless at the claws of a Nevermore drew a sharp gasp from Glynda. "You don't think RWBY..."

"No Glynda. Ms. Schnee attempted to connect to the CCT net roughly an hour after this transmission. Her signal was lost, but not before the handshake protocol pinged her Scroll. Her Aura was at 55% and rising, consistent with a combat landing. The data from the rest of the team was fragmented, but at least it confirms they are all still alive."

"Only fifty-five? How many times have I told that girl to flair her Glyphs to soften her landing?"

"Glynda, we can discuss team RWBY's...deficiencies...if they survive this mission. Doctor, why are you telling us this now?"

"This crash was no accident. That recording was made by the antenna here at Beacon. It should have been intercepted by the northern defense grid. I checked the logs, and the grid recorded no Grimm activity. When I indexed the defense grid by flight number, I found that SDC1337 fails to appear on any records. We have no record of the flight arriving at Beacon, no record of it departing, and no duplicate flight plan. The only logical explanation is that someone tampered with the network to hide the crash. Ozpin, if someone can maliciously break our defense network like this...the danger to Vale would be incalculable."

"I think I know who has the capability...and the motivation. Doctor Oobleck, I have a research assignment for you. Find out what a group like the Black Talon would want with RWBY's target."

"With pleasure. Headmaster, Glynda, I will see both of you when I have some answers. History is the key!"

Forever Fall

Hundreds of miles from the comfort of their dormitory at Beacon, Weiss and Ruby were finishing their shift as guards of their team's small camp. Seated by a gently roaring fire, they passed the last hour with Weiss's deck of cards. Their improvised table was a thin slab of maple Ruby had found amid her firewood pile. In place of chips, Weiss and Ruby scrounged acorns from the forest floor. Mindful of their teammate's sleep, the pair kept their conversations quiet.

At 2:15 a.m., Ruby's scroll began to hum. That was the signal to go wake Yang and Blake. Ruby was following the age-old Huntsman trick of sleeping her team in shifts. Normally, only one team member would be left awake as a guard, rotated out through the night so that everyone could get four hours of sleep. Unfortunately, the loss of their camping gear meant half the team had to stay on guard at any given time.

Ruby kneeled by the closed flap of the team's lone tent. Meant to sleep one person, Huntsman's tents were minimalist in design. Fitting two people inside one was claustrophobic and done only out of necessity. Ruby couldn't imagine how her sister and Blake were sleeping comfortably. "Psst! Wake up! It's time to switch out."

"Ok sis. We'll be out in five." Yang was still half asleep, and was surprised to feel something warm at her side and a weight on her chest. As her eyes snapped open, Yang saw that Blake's arms were wrapped around her, and that Blake's head was now resting on her shoulder. The sleeping Faunus's face was serene, and Yang almost felt guilty waking her. She knew her partner often suffered night terrors, and she didn't want to startle her. With the utmost care Yang freed her left arm from Blake's sleeping embrace and began to gently rub her shoulder. "Morning kitten. How'd you sleep?"

Yang felt Blake briefly tense-up, then relax as she took in her situation. "Like gold." Blake dragged that last syllable out like a sigh.. It's cozy here. I think I could get used to this. "Oh! I am so sorry!" In a sudden burst of clarity, Blake realized the warm, soft mattress beneath her was actually her combat partner. "I didn't mean to..."

Yang laughed. "Don't you dare apologize. It's more comfortable than having your elbow in my back all night. Besides, you're so toasty, and this quilt's so thin. How would it look if we died of hypothermia on our first solo mission?"

Blake blushed in embarrassment, but she couldn't deny it was the best sleep she'd had in ages. No nightmares. No waking up at bumps in the night. I felt so warm, and so safe! I could certainly get used to this. "Is that even possible with your semblance?

"Huh? I never really thought about it. It snows like, what, maybe twice a year on Patch?"

Locked in each other's embrace, silent, warm, and content, the pair made no effort to rise from the tent. Five minutes became ten, and the distinct sound of Weiss's heeled boots could be heard pacing outside the tent.

"Come on you two! At this rate, the sun's going to be up before you climb out of my tent!" Weiss was trying her best to sound stern, but her words were slurred with exhaustion and she just sounded sleepy.

Blake and Yang finally rose from the tent into the still night air. Blake, free of the confining tent, began to stretch. Yang slipped her gauntlets back on, Blake clipped Gambol Shroud to her back, and they both took seats on the fallen log Ruby had carved roughly into the shape of a bench.

"Finally!" Weiss disappeared into her tent, mumbling something that sounded like goodnight.

"When do you wanna get up, sis?"

"Six. I want us on the trail when the sun comes up. Goodnight!" Ruby followed Weiss. Both girls bore smaller frames than Blake and Yang. At a mere 5'3" and 5'4'' respectively, Ruby and Weiss had a bit more space in the lightweight tent. It was a squeeze for sure, but they both were able to lay on their backs. Weiss was too tired to even protest Ruby's sleeping plan, and in minutes the partners were fast asleep beneath the quilted warmth of an unzipped sleeping bag.

Beacon Academy

Leaving Ozpin's office, Doctor Oobleck made a beeline for Beacon's library. At this late hour, the library was closed to students and faculty, but Oobleck had round-the-clock access with a swipe of his scroll. This all-hours pass was a gift from Ozpin. Upon discovering his friend, a minor insomniac, roaming Beacon's halls late one night, coffee in one hand and a volume on the Great War in the other, Ozpin gave Oobleck private use of a study in the rear of the library. Oobleck had added a cot and a small coffee pot to the study, which now saw far more use than Oobleck's official faculty apartment.

Oobleck's study was well-organized chaos. A half dozen blackboards featured the notes from ongoing projects of the notorious multi-tasker. Many were covered in broken phrases and shorthand only Oobleck would understand, like What if Thermia 319? Dust: TDlR. Preparing for Ozpin's assignment, Oobleck wiped a blackboard clean, powered up his desktop terminal, and brewed a fresh pot of coffee.

With his study prepared, Oobleck began the quest for information. Oobleck was known to hunt information archives with the same deadly precision most Huntsman showed towards Grimm. Three distinct stacks began to grow on Oobleck's desk as he compiled every known resource that held reference to Verdant Reprise or the Black Talon. Despite access to Ozpin's classified field reports, Beacon's sealed archives, and the surviving notes of Georges Aegean himself, Oobleck was discovering surprisingly little information of substance.

Oobleck's first completed summary outlined the scant details of the Black Talon. The first organization to go by that name formed in the dark days of the Mantellian Catastrophe. Hundreds of years before the Great War, the Kingdom of Mantle was assaulted by the largest army of Grimm recorded in modern history. Well over a hundred thousand citizens of Mantle were slain before the Grimm could be driven back into the darkness from which they had risen. Modern historians agree that the fear and chaos following the death of Mantle's beloved Queen Gisela in P.M. 1631 drew the Grimm. At the time, many survivors blamed the assault on the small Faunus population along Mantle's southern coast. The Black Talon grew out of that superstition. Never more than a few hundred strong, the Black Talon actively hunted Faunus, murdering from the shadows in the name of purity. The government of Mantle largely ignored the radical group, so sporadic murders and public lynching of Faunus mar the history of Mantle until the Great War. The last known leader of the Black Talon was executed as a war criminal after ordering the Slaughter at Harper's Knoll in the second year of the war.

Following the Great War, and the subsequent forced deportation of Mantle's Faunus population to Menagerie, the Black Talon disappeared from the history books. In the wake of the Faunus Rights Rebellion (Oobleck himself preferred the Faunus's name for that conflict-The Second Crusade) a new Black Talon emerged. A political organization until fairly recently, the group radicalized in response to White Fang militancy. Until the break-in at Beacon's armory, their objective was unknown.

Ozpin's reports painted a chilling picture of their current aims. Under interrogation by General Ironwood himself, the would-be thieves revealed their goal was the capture of the Coccum Exterminatus. That weapon was the single greatest horror to grow out of the Great War.

In the final year of the Great War, the Second Collective was being beaten back on all fronts by an alliance struck between the Faunus and the Free Army of Remnant. Drained of resources, men, and morale by a decade of conflict, the Second Collective began to turn the tide of war with a series of terror weapons. Until then, battles had been fought far from civilian populations, as the emotions of war always drew the Grimm. Ignoring this unofficial agreement, the Second Collective began to release cruel dust-powered weapons on towns across Vacuo and Vale. This backfired, as the Kingdoms of Vale and Vacuo redoubled their efforts to topple the Collective. Within a week of the fire-bombing of Hawk's Mill in Vacuo, the Second Collective had fallen.

It was amid the ruins of the Collective Academy of Science on Vytal that the true depravity and ruthlessness of the Collective was revealed. The Collective's leaders had realized that the influx of Faunus to the Free Army was going to be their downfall. In response, they had undertaken a biological weapons program. Using Free Army prisoners as lab rats, the scientists of the Collective created a weapon capable of targeting the very DNA of Faunus. Documents taken from the rubble of the Commissar's Palace revealed the weapon was only days from deployment. The Third Battle of Vytal had unknowingly prevented the genocide of Remnant's 13 million Faunus.

The recorded history of the Exterminatus ended as abruptly as the Black Talon's did. Not a single mention of it existed in any record after the Third Battle of Vytal. Even the War Crimes tribunal failed to acknowledge that such a weapon had existed.

Try as he might, Oobleck failed to see a connection between the Exterminatus and Verdant Reprise. Verdant Reprise was comparatively tame. By modern weapon standards, the sword was little more than a toy. It featured no secondary firearm, and the blade's dust enhancement, while groundbreaking for the time, only made it roughly equivalent to modern steel. It held no ritual significance for the Black Talon, nor did it provide any combat advantage. Oobleck considered the possibility that the Talon merely wanted to destroy a symbol of Vale's storied past, though he dismissed the idea. If Ozpin's hunch was right, and the Talon had in fact sabotaged the defense grid to stop RWBY's mission, they must have had some greater reason for wanting the Reprise.

Determined to find some meaning to the attack on his students, Oobleck prepared another pot of coffee. It was going to be a long night.

Forever Fall

"This isn't how I thought this mission would be. Ozpin made it sound mysterious and dangerous. This is like one of my Uncle Qrow's camping trips!" As she talked, Yang threw another log on the fire. Sparks shot into the inky night, dancing on the breeze as they fell to earth.

Blake turned her hands toward the flames, enjoying the warmth of the crackling fire. "So your uncle took his nieces camping by skydiving into Grimm infested forests with no supplies?"

"Except for the skydiving from a burning airship part, yeah, he did. I didn't know it then, but he was training us. When Ruby was nine, he helped her kill her first Grimm. It was only a little Creep, not much larger than a coyote. But you should have seen the smile on her face. She was so proud of herself. Even then, she was sure she wanted to be a huntress."

"Wait-your uncle took Ruby Grimm hunting at nine? Isn't that a little, uh, irresponsible? Dangerous?" Blake couldn't hide the concern in her voice. Even the White Fang tried to keep kids that young out of combat.

"Not at all. He softened it up with his scythe, then let Ruby finish it off. He's the combat instructor at Signal, Patch's combat school."

"And I take it he's a huntsman too?" Blake changed the topic. She didn't like the idea of letting a nine year old face Grimm, no matter what precautions were taken. But Yang didn't seem to have a problem with it, and Blake couldn't really be critical of someone she'd never met.

"Yeah. Dad and Uncle Qrow both are." Yang beamed with pride. She came from a family of Huntsman and Huntresses, both on her Branwen and Xaio Long sides. Yang finished adding logs to the fire and took a seat next to Blake. "You know my favorite part of camping trips?"

"S'mores?" Blake had never heard of the treats before coming to Beacon. But Ruby had introduced her to them during a training exercise, and Blake begged her to make them anytime the team made a fire.

"S'mores are good. But I like telling campfire stories."

"Really? I never took you for a story-teller, Yang." Blake sounded doubtful. Yang wasn't a fan of literature, and Blake had a hard time believing she'd memorized a story well enough to dramatically retell it.

A knowing smirk creased Yang's lips. "Do you want to hear my favorite?"

"I'd love to. What kind of story is it?" Blake leaned forward, intrigued

"It's a fairytale. I used to tell it to Ruby all the time we were younger."

"What's it called?" Yang had Blake's full attention now.

"The Blue Knight of Vale. I'm sure you've read it. It's a classic."

"Actually, I've never even heard of it." Blake frowned, sorry to disappoint her partner.

Instead of being disappointed, Yang was smiling. "Perfect! You'll love it." Yang settled in on the log next to her girlfriend. Turning to face her, she began. "Long ago, in days now passed to legend, Grimm roamed the land at will, snatching the unlucky or unprepared. Among the ancient Grimm, the most feared were the named Elders, slayers of the knights who defended humanity." So Yang's story began. For nearly an hour, she continued on, pausing now and then to kindle the fire. Blake was enthralled by the tale of the blue knight Letholdus and his Faunus wife Marguerite as they hunted the last Elder Grimm, Ame Rancunier, Father of the Ursai. Any who got in their way, be they Grimm or evil men, fell before the power of the Blue Knight and the Red Mage. Blake sat, listening attentively, enjoying every minute of the story. She was only disappointed that it ended so soon.

"Yang, did you, maybe, enhance that fairytale for my benefit?"

"What do you mean?"

"Was Marguerite really a Faunus?" Blake couldn't believe that a children's tale had a Faunus and Human married. Across much of Remnant, though legal, such a marriage was still scandalous. Blake couldn't imagine one happening hundreds of years ago.

"It depends on which version you read. In the older stories, she was always a Faunus. When we get back to Beacon, I'll dig out the copy Uncle Qrow gave me for my tenth birthday. It's about a thousand pages, and you'll love it. It's a leather-bound edition of an old, old version of the story. The ones you can get at a book shop cut out all the good stuff." Yang knew that once Blake got ahold of it, she wouldn't see her girlfriend outside for the next few days.

"Wait, a thousand pages? And you read it?"

"Yeah, I'm as surprised as you are. But I just love that story. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down!"

A little past four a.m., the clouds which had darkened the sky since sundown parted, yielding the sky to Remnant's broken moon. Radiant beams from the heavens shone down on the clearing where Blake and Yang were tending the fire. To Yang, the moon's silvery beams looked like a spotlight, and that gave her a great idea; a romantic idea. She drew her scroll and began to search her music collection. Too loud. Too depressing. That's not romantic either. Ooh! Perfect! Yang stowed her scroll and stood up. Her song was ready to play at the press of a button.

Yang turned to Blake and bowed, offering her hand. "Blake Belladonna, care for a dance?"

Blake was dumbstruck for a moment, too stunned by Yang's spontaneity to understand her intent. She stood up and managed a shaky "Yes", though it came as more of a question than an answer. Yang took her hand and pulled her in close, tapping her scroll with her other hand. Yang's chosen melody began to play from the scroll's tiny speakers.

"Baby it's time to make up your mind / I think that tonight is when our stars align..."

Tears formed in Blake's amber eyes, and Yang gently wiped them away. Arms entwined, they began to dance. For a few beautiful minutes, there was no mission, no Grimm, no fear, and no need for words; just two bodies, two Auras, moving as one beneath the moon's radiant glow.