Creeeea- thump. Creaaaaa- thump. Eeeeeeaaaa-thum-

-"Would you kindly cease your noise-making immediately," hissed Glynda Goodwitch, emerald eyes afire behind her glasses. She'd been putting up with the arrhythmic annoyance for the better part of five minutes, and her nerves had finally been rubbed raw.

On the other side of the room, Raven Branwen let out a self-satisfied smirk. Her nominal goal had been to balance her weight on just two legs of the uncushioned chair that furnished Ozpin's waiting room. Her real goal had been to see how long it took the tight-ass gatekeeper to snap.

Four minutes and twenty-one seconds, incidentally.

"Oh, does that bother you?" Raven asked, in a pantomime of surprise. "I didn't realize."

Raven could hear Goodwitch exhale through her nose, fuming like a dragon in its cave. It probably should have scared her more than it did. Goodwitch was supposedly some super-badass Huntress, if her staff bio was to be believed, though Raven had only ever seen her cleaning up Beacon’s messes. Usually the literal ones.

The elevator bay chimed before more opportunities for antagonizing arose. Raven got to her feet, the dress shoes of her uniform hitting the stone floor with noisy slaps. She was halfway to the bay doors before they parted, sliding open to reveal-

"-Colonel Ironwood," Raven remarked, allowing a few wisps of surprise to cross her face. Like Goodwitch, Ironwood was reputed to be some hot shit of a Huntsmen. Unlike Goodwitch, though, Raven had had a few opportunities to see that firsthand. He was a few years older than her, too distant for them to have much in the way of mutual acquaintances, but their paths had crossed once or twice. The Iron Man of Atlas wasn't the kind of guy you forgot.

"Miss Branwen," Ironwood replied, recalling her name without discernible difficulty. He was dressed in a crisp white uniform of the Royal Atlas Army, his hair cropped martially short. The jacket didn't quite fit, though, one sleeve stopping well-short of his wrist. Raven wagered he was having difficulty getting something tailored to that new arm of his. "Are you meeting with Headmaster Ozpin?"

"I am," Raven replied, with wry amusement. "For detention."

Ironwood actually halted at that, his brain freezing like a computer fed bad data. Raven grinned a little at his cognitive sputtering. Colonel Ironwood had supervised STRQ's last mission, a joint operation executed with recent graduates of Atlas Academy.

Obviously, the Colonel was having difficulty reconciling the Huntress he'd seen in the field with the schoolgirl being sent to detention.

"Well..." Ironwood finally said, uncharacteristically fumbling for words. "Try not to... break the rules..." He coughed.

Raven snorted a little, in the corner of her eye catching Goodwitch pinching the bridge of her nose. "Stay safe, tin man," she replied, re-purposing what had been Ironwood's radio call-sign in the field. She brushed by him on her way to the elevator, patting his arm as she did.

Something far harder than flesh bristled a little at her touch.

The elevator ascended of its own accord, raising Raven to the Headmaster's office. The first time she'd entered it she'd been slack-jawed, overawed by its inhuman architecture and its imperious overlook. She must have looked like such a yokel. But she'd grown acclimatized to it pretty quickly - repeated exposure had helped with that. Sometimes with the rest of STRQ, sometimes with her brother, and sometimes all alone. The nervousness she'd felt at being summoned had long since faded, replaced with something perilously close to familiarity. The sheen of its majesty was starting to dull.

The doors parted, and Raven exited, walking at a purposely unhurried pace. Across the room from her stood Professor Ozpin, hands resting on his cane, peering over a chessboard. "Ah, Miss Branwen. My apologies for keeping you waiting. Please." He made a beckoning gesture.

Raven crossed the office, passing beneath the titanic gears that spun unendingly overhead.

"Consider this board," Ozpin said, directing her attention to an arrangement of black and white pieces. "I am in a long-running correspondence game with the player for Black. Thankfully, I have no compunction against soliciting others for help." He glanced over the rims of his spectacles. "Any suggestions as to my next move, Miss Branwen?"

Raven stared at the board for a few seconds, before shrugging. "I don't know how to play chess," she stated, turning her back and walking away from the game.

Ozpin's cane tapped loudly against the floor. "I find that difficult to believe."

"You wouldn't be the first." Raven made her way to the chair positioned before Ozpin's desk, depositing herself into it. With a sigh audible from across the room, the Headmaster returned to his throne.

"Would you care to explain why you're here, Miss Branwen?" Ozpin asked, in that ever-patient tone of voice that made Raven's skin crawl.

Raven bit her lip. "Because I walked out of Port's class." Stormed out would probably have been more accurate, admittedly, given the context.

"Yes. Although I'm more concerned with answering why this had to be escalated to the Headmaster." Ozpin's fingers flitted across a keyboard, pushing Raven's record onto a handful of screens. "You skipped assignments... walked out of lectures... broken curfew... smoked on the grounds..." He tapped the down key a few times. "I don't feel the need to belabor the point."

Raven reclined in her chair, legs spread languorously, complete indifference on her face. "So?"

"So, Miss Branwen," Ozpin killed the screens with a keystroke, "at the very least we would suspend most students for that kind of conduct."

Raven perked up a little at that, shifting in her seat so she was leaning forward. Her brow furrowed, her lips pursed. There was something rather dark in her eyes. "But we're not really most students, are we, Oz?"

She’d slipped into the plural without thinking, referring to the collective "we" that was STRQ. Ozpin had no quick-witted rebuttal to that, so Raven pressed her advantage. "Because most students don't get sent on "off the record" missions three times a month. Because most students aren't risking their lives before they can drink. Because most students," her voice rose a little, "aren't fighting in this private war of yours, Ozpin."

The two sat in silence for a long second, the gears continuing their cycles overhead.

"You are correct, Miss Branwen," Ozpin finally replied, his voice perfectly neutral. "However, I would have expected you to be making the most of what the Beacon curriculum offers all students."

Raven exhaled through her nose, leaning back in her chair, arms crossed. Ozpin scratched his forehead.

"Why did you decide to become a Huntress, Miss Branwen?"

She remained motionless, but Raven's stomach clenched a little. "To destroy the Grimm," she lied, with rehearsed conviction. "They killed my parents, so I want to get really good at killing them." That was close enough to the truth that Raven didn't have much trouble telling it.

"Of course," Ozpin replied, having heard some variant of that explanation a few dozen times since her Initiation. He summoned Raven's transcript with a tap. "I can't say that your record reflects any real zest for learning how to be a Huntress." Almost every credit to Raven’s transcript had a C or a D adjacent to it, classes she'd limped across the pass-fail line with generous help from her teammates and one instance of bald-faced cheating.

"I aced the Advanced Grimm Combat practicum," Raven noted, pointing to one of the few glistening As on her record. "In my first semester. I'm not sure what else I can learn."

Ozpin sighed, disappointed. “I’m sure your parents would have wanted you to become more than a weapon, Miss Branwen.”

Raven blew out a breath. “You don’t really know the kind of people they were.”

Ozpin made a small gesture with his hand. “No, Miss Branwen, I suppose I don’t. Because despite a certain curiosity, I have endeavored to respect the privacy you and your brother obviously value.”

The Huntress darkened. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” began Ozpin, leaning forward, “that I know that you were raised by a tribe of nomads who exist beyond the reach of the Kingdoms. A tribe which has engaged in certain, ah, shall we say, ‘extrajudicial activities’ in order to sustain itself.”

“They’re exiles,” Raven shot back, letting slip more than she ever should have. “Doing what it takes to survive.”

Ozpin flashed his palms. “I’m not here to pass judgement, Miss Branwen. Truthfully, they’re of little concern to me.” Raven didn’t entirely believe him, though her postured relaxed by degrees. “But I can’t say that other authorities are so… disinterested.”

Raven’s glower somehow darkened. “The tribe’s been hunted before. It never works.”

“It’s not so much the tribe that concerns me, Miss Branwen, but rather, you and your brother.” His face seemed to have turned to granite. “Inquiring minds are starting to ask about you two. Where you came from, which training schools you studied at before Beacon…”

Raven paled slightly, but remained motionless. Inwardly, she was cursing herself. Cursing Beacon. Cursing STRQ. She’d let herself get sucked into the world of Huntsmen. Competed in tournaments, posed for photos. No shit people were getting curious. And Branwen wasn’t exactly a traditionally Valeaen name, either...

Ozpin seemed to have taken her silence as permission to continue. “I have pushed back on requests to interrogate you and Mr. Branwen. Representatives from no fewer than three Kingdoms have expressed interest in doing so.”

Raven’s nails dug into her hand. “Is that a threat, sir?” She layered the honorific with contempt.

The Headmaster bristled slightly, straightening in his seat. “No. It is a reminder that, despite the rather extraordinary circumstances you and STRQ find yourselves in, I have attempted to treat you the same way I treat most students.” He circled back to his earlier phrasing, as if needling Raven for a response. “And while Huntsmen may find themselves minor celebrities, I do everything I can to provide them with what privacy I can. Some measure of sanctuary.”

The Huntress sighed. “So that’s your deal, is it?”

“It’s not a deal,” Ozpin corrected. “I’m simply telling you that, whenever authorities from Vale, Atlas, or Vacuo come asking, I’ve told them that you are a regular student, given no special treatment. And your earlier assumption was correct, Miss Branwen: I am not going to expel you, despite your transgressions.” Ozpin pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “But know that your flagrant disregard for the rules does not go unnoticed. You are, well, talked about.” He cleared his throat. “And the more you make a show of flaunting the rules, the more transparent my cover will appear.”

Raven let out a long, deep breath.

“There are more options than simply fight or flight - I would argue that camouflage can be just as effective.” His tone shifted slightly, adopting the lecturing cadence of a tenured professor. “Go to your classes, Miss Branwen. Use them as concealment, if nothing else. Don’t draw attention to yourself. I would have expected that to come fairly naturally to you.” He steepled his fingers. “In a few months, you’ll graduate, and be fully accredited to hunt Grimm to your heart’s content. Then you can... fly the coop, so to speak.”

He chuckled a little, though at what exactly, Raven wasn’t sure.

“Fine,” she finally stated, standing up. “I’ll play nice. But you-” she jabbed a finger “-keep those fuckers away from my family. All of it.”

“So much as it is within my power,” Ozpin agreed, bowing his head.

Raven exhaled, her shoulders slouching, relief peeking through her stoicism. She couldn’t help but blame herself. She’d gotten comfortable. Raven had lost track of the number of times she’d warned Qrow about just that, about how his guard was dropping a little lower with each passing month. They weren’t here to make friends, to win tournaments, to be feted with awards and accolades…

Summer had changed everything, sweeping all of STRQ into Ozpin’s feud. There’d been no avoiding some measure of scrutiny at that point. But she’d let Tai and Summer drag her along into the spotlight. They had entered STRQ into the tournaments, winning match after match until there was no chance they’d go unnoticed. If Raven had been smart, if she’d been thinking, she’d have never gone along with any of that. In her perfect history, Team STRQ would have graduated without distinction, its members scattered and forgotten as soon as they graduated. And she would have returned to her people with exactly what they needed.

But the triumphs were exhilarating. Intoxicating. Even Qrow had been all smiles when he’d gotten his hands on the Vytal Cup. And Raven…

...hadn’t said no to any of it. She felt responsible. She was responsible: drawing the spotlight to herself, and thus, to her people. And that guilt weighed her down like rocks in her gut.

“Then I think we’re done here,” Raven declared, turning her back on Ozpin.

“I take it we have an understanding?” Ozpin had risen as well, hands resting on his cane.

Above Ozpin’s head, those colossal gears continued to spin.

Raven hit the elevator button. “Yeah,” she called back, spinning to face Ozpin as she entered the car. “Afraid I have to fly, though… I have detention with Port tonight.”

The elevator doors closed on a grim little smile.