Secret Rooms and Magic
It had been three months since Raven and Qrow had disappeared from Beacon, and as he and Summer stared at the pinboard dominating an entire wall of their too-empty dorm room, Taiyang felt ready to pull his hair out.
"Nothing!" He yelled, throwing his hands into the air as he fell backwards onto his bed. "We have found nothing! No reason for them to have fled, no clues as to where they've gone or what they're doing now...we're completely out of ideas!"
"We'll find something," Summer muttered distractedly, and when Taiyang tilted his head up to look at his team leader, he was unsurprised to find her glaring furiously at the pinboard, fists clenched at her sides as she examined everything they'd pinned up, every little clue or idea they'd hoped would lead them to the Branwen twins. "We're not giving up on them that easily!"
Seeing his leader so upset, Taiyang sighed, getting to his feet and crossing the room in a few easy strides, placing a soothing hand on Summer's shoulder. "We'll find them," Taiyang echoed her sentiments, forcing all of his frustration at the situation aside as he gently pulled her around until she was looking at him rather than at the pinboard. "We'll find them, Sum, I promise. But we have to think rationally. So let's...let's take a step back and look at the evidence, shall we? Maybe we'll see something that we haven't seen before."
As he spoke, Taiyang shifted his grip on Summer's shoulder, carefully forcing his friend to sit down on her bed. He was worried about her - ever since the Branwen twins had left, she'd been running herself ragged trying to find them, getting less than four hours of sleep every night in her determination to discover why they'd left, and where they'd gone to. (He was doing the same, of course. But at least he was smart enough to stop after the first time he collapsed from lack of sleep, understanding that he had to take care of himself. Summer was not that smart. She'd collapsed, slept for 72 hours, and then continued just like she had before.)
"Come on, Sum." Taiyang crooned, brushing a few strands of hair out of his friend's face. "Lie down for a bit. Take a nap. And then, when you've woken up, we'll take apart all of our evidence and start from the beginning, okay? We're sure to find something."
His friend blinked at him, tears brimming in her beautiful silver eyes, and Taiyang felt what was left of his heart shatter into a million pieces. "It's been so long," Summer burst into tears, surging forward and wrapping her arms around Taiyang, burying her face in his shoulder as she sobbed. "And I keep - I keep waking up, thinking that they'll, they'll be right her, and this will all have been a n-nightmare but it isn't and now they're, they're gone and we might not ever see them again! And we, and we still don't know w-why they left!"
"I know," Taiyang breathed, tears of his own dripping down his cheeks as he rubbed Summer's back gently. He knew what she was feeling, the heartbreak which was tearing at her soul - he knew because he felt the same thing every day, when he woke up expecting to find Raven and Qrow bickering over who got to use the bathroom first, only to be greeted with empty beds instead. "I know, Sum."
They stayed like that for a long time, the two of them sobbing into each other's embrace as they thought about their missing team members. Summer dozed off at some point, exhausted from her grief and endless efforts to locate Qrow and Raven, and Taiyang manhandled her into a sleeping position, curling up alongside her when she refused to let go of him even in sleep. He remembered when he and Summer had done the same with Raven, the two of them forcing the grumpy girl to cuddle with them, and then falling asleep on top of her so that she couldn't move. Gods, Qrow had laughed for hours when he'd found them.
Brothers, he missed them.
He missed how Raven would protest any hint of affection, yet cuddle up to whoever was next to her while they watched movies. He missed the smirk Qrow always wore when he found something new to tease Taiyang with. He missed the smell of Raven's shampoo filling up the bathroom, the late nights that the he, Summer and the twins had spent wandering into every club in Vale...
He would have given anything to have them there with him.
"You're thinking about them, aren't you?" Summer's soft voice, worn out from all the tears she had shed, interrupted Taiyang's thoughts. Jumping slightly - he hadn't expected her to wake for at least another hour - the blonde brawler glanced down at his friend, seeing her gazing up at him with a sad, understanding expression. She looked better - not as tired, or as stressed, as she'd been previously.
"I was," Taiyang murmured. "You look better. How do you feel?"
"Like I want to tear down this stupid pinboard and start everything from the beginning," Summer sighed, sitting up and stretching before hopping off the bed, striding over to the wall and ripping everything off the pinboard. Taiyang couldn't help but feel vindicated - that stupid pinboard had been the source of so much frustration over the past three months. Even now, seeing all of the ideas that they'd had accumulate in a pile of shredded paper on the ground, Taiyang felt the earlier frustration rushing back, the belief that they would never find their teammates and would be alone forever.
But he pushed those thoughts aside. They would find Raven and Qrow, he was sure of it. And when they did, they would yell at the two for leaving them, and then glue themselves to the Branwen twins so that the four would never have to be separated again.
"Alright," Summer grinned once she had cleared the pinboards, snatching an empty notebook from her desk and a pen that Taiyang had thought he'd lost and speeding over to sit next to her teammate. "Lets start from the beginning. When did Raven and Qrow leave?"
It was half an hour after they began re-examining all of their knowledge about their team member's whereabouts that Summer came to an abrupt realization.
"Tai..." she murmured, tapping a pen against her lips as she thought. "Ozpin was the last person to see them, right?"
"Yep. They got called up to his office, came back to the dorm and disappeared." Tai sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. He'd never regretted going to Vale over a weekend more - perhaps if they had been at Beacon, he and Summer could have gone with the twins, heard what had caused them to flee so suddenly. Perhaps they could have stopped them.
It would always be his biggest regret, that they hadn't been there when the twins had left.
"Then why don't we ask him?" Summer insisted, eyes narrowed as she stared at Tai, a suspicious look flashing over her face, the expression so out of place on her usually cheerful visage Taiyang almost did a double take. "Because he insisted that he knew nothing about why they'd fled," Summer answered her own question. "Except he did! So he's hiding something!"
"You really think Ozpin did something to them?" Taiyang frowned. Somehow, the thought didn't actually seem that outrageous - Tai could definitely imagine that the headmaster would do something that would drive the Branwens out of Beacon. Honestly, that worried him more. The headmaster would be much more difficult to question, especially since he'd already denied having any involvement with the Branwen twins' escape. "How the hell do we get more information then? Ozpin's not going to tell us anything."
Summer hummed thoughtfully, silver eyes focusing on something that no one else could see as she considered the problem. And then, she blinked, and a slow smirk began to spread across her face. "Maybe we don't have to ask him."
"What do you mean?" Taiyang glanced at her suspiciously, too used to her mischievous ways to naively agree to do whatever she said. Upon seeing the smirk which graced her face, the blonde sighed, running a hand through his forehead as he resigned himself to his fate of accompanying his team leader on whatever mission she was planning. "Oh brothers."
//
"This is a terrible idea!" Taiyang yelped, pressing himself to the wall of the headmaster's tower as he stared determinedly at his team leader, refusing to so much as glance down. A gust of wind swept past him, tugging at his clothes, and he shut his eyes tightly, clinging to the wall with all of his strength. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this!"
"Oh, shush," Summer rolled her eyes, standing on her tiptoes to peer into the headmaster's office, silver eyes examining the room carefully for any sign that Ozpin was there. She didn't think he was - the fire she and Taiyang had planted in the cafeteria should have been enough to distract both Ozpin and Glynda for a while, especially with the fire dust crystals they'd used to start the fire - but it was better to be careful. They couldn't mess this up. "Okay, he's not here. Let's go!"
Placing a hand on her teammate's shoulder, Summer took a deep breath, body glowing red as she allowed her semblance to flow through her veins. Her hand tightened on her teammate's shoulder, and then she and Taiyang were nothingness, dissolving into red and golden rose petals for a few moments before she gently directed them through the tower and drew her semblance back into herself. The moment they rematerialized, Summer released her grip on Taiyang, snickering slightly when he choked on air, patting himself down as though to make sure every inch of him was okay.
"I hate it when you make me do that," Taiyang gasped, glaring at Summer when he heard her chuckles. Uncowed by his glare, Summer simply grinned, patting him on the back before bouncing further into the office.
"Come on, Tai!" She called over her shoulder. "Let's explore and then get out of here!"
Taiyang grumbled quietly to himself, but followed his leader without any protest, and together, the two members of Team STRQ began to search the headmaster's office, looking for anything that would help them find their missing teammates.
They searched for an hour. And then, just as they were about to give up, Taiyang found something.
"What's this?" The blonde wondered out loud, approaching a bookshelf which had been tucked into the corner of the office, concealed within the shadows and hidden from anyone who wasn't actively searching the office. Pulling out his scroll and turning on the torch, Taiyang leaned closer to the bookshelf, grimacing as he saw the titles. "The Comprehensive History of Remnant? War and Strategy? Who reads stuff like this?"
Shaking his head at his headmaster's choice of books, Taiyang scanned the rest of the bookshelf, until he saw one particular title and his eyes lit up. "Fairytales of Remnant? Oh man, that's hilarious. I can't believe Ozpin actually reads these. I wonder what fairytales are in here? Only Vale ones, or ones from all over Remnant?"
Taiyang reached out, intending on pulling the book off the shelf so he could flip through it. However, as soon as he attempted to take it out, there was a click, and Taiyang was falling.
"Tai!" Summer screamed, sprinting across the room and falling to her knees next to the trapdoor which had opened beneath where her teammate had just been standing. For a moment, panic overwhelmed her - she had already lost two teammates, she couldn't bear to lose Taiyang as well. Then, upon seeing her teammate (her friend, her family) lying on the ground a few metres below her, rumpled but alive, Summer let out a choked breath, her panic fading slightly when she saw he was alright.
"Don't do that to me!" Summer commanded, trailing rose petals behind her as she used her semblance to get down to Taiyang, throwing her arms around the blonde brawler who had just gotten to his feet. "I thought you were dead! Or hurt!"
"Sorry, Sum," Taiyang murmured, feeling bad for causing her to have panicked. "But hey, I think I found Ozpin's hidey hole."
"What?" Reluctantly, Summer released her teammate, freeing him from her embrace as she glanced around the room they had found themselves in. Her eyes widened, taking in the stacks of books and objects which had been scattered around the room. "Brothers!" She squealed, speeding over to the nearest stack of books, lifting the top one and flipping through it quickly. "These are books on magic! And some of these objects haven't been seen for centuries!"
"Huh." Taiyang wandered over to a nearby table, picking up a bulky metal object that was lying on top of it. "Hey, I remember seeing this in history class! This was the first scroll ever made! Brothers, this thing is old. What the hell is Ozpin doing with it?"
"A better question," Summer murmured, holding up the book that she'd been flipping through, "is why does Ozpin have a book on magical spells?"
Taiyang shrugged, putting down the ancient scroll and perusing the rest of the items filling the cluttered table. "Maybe he's a magician."
"That would be very disappointing," Summer said, not disregarding the idea, not matter how crazy it sounded, "because there's a spell in here to change semblances. If Ozpin really is a wizard, he can turn a passive semblance into an active one."
Taiyang's eyes widened. Having grown up in a more rural village in Vale, Taiyang knew all of the old stories, the tales that spoke of magic and wizards. Although he didn't believe that all of the stories were real, there were too many legends involving magic for Taiyang to write it off as an impossibility. And with this belief that magic existed, coupled with the knowledge of how semblances worked, Taiyang could draw only one piece of information from what Summer had told him.
"He could have helped Qrow all along," Taiyang breathed, understanding exactly what Summer what getting at, the reason she looked so heartbroken. They both knew how Qrow's semblance worked, they both knew how hard he tried to control it, despite it being passive, despite it being always influencing his surroundings no matter what he did. They had both seen how difficult their teammate's life was because of it. They had both seen how Qrow blamed himself for the bad luck following him around.
And now, they learned that Beacon's headmaster could have helped Qrow all along.
Taiyang didn't think he'd ever been more angry in his life. He had to force himself not to find Ozpin and hit him as hard as possible in that smug face, that face that hid so many secrets from everyone. He had to force himself not to murder the headmaster.
"We should go," Taiyang said tightly, after he took a few moments to force himself not to find Ozpin right there and then. "Ozpin will be coming back soon. And we haven't learned anything new about where the twins could have gone. Let's get out of here. Or I might just kill that asshole."
"I'd help you," Summer said darkly, but eventually sighed and acquiesced to Taiyang's suggestion. "You're right. We should go before we get caught." Then a smirk lit up her face. "But why don't we help dear old Ozpin declutter this room before we leave?"
//
Back in the dormitory, Summer having used her semblance to get them both out of the office without being detected, Summer and Taiyang began to search through the items that they had stolen from the headmaster's office. Summer took charge of the books, flipping through them to see what they contained and if they could be helpful in any way, while Taiyang inspected the other objects, all of which were very old and belonged in a museum.
"This is ridiculous," Taiyang scowled, throwing aside yet another priceless artifact that would be absolutely useless in finding the Branwen twins. "All of this is at least fifty years old! Most of it can't even be found on the blackmarket! And yet Ozpin fills up a room with them?"
Summer didn't answer, which was just as well. Taiyang was feeling so irritated that he might have snapped at her if she'd said anything, and he didn't want to take out his anger on her. He was just feeling so frustrated! The gamble with searching Ozpin's office hadn't paid off, and they were back to square one, with no idea on where the twins could be, and no way of finding out.
"This is all so stupid," Taiyang groaned, getting up to bang his head against the wall, hoping it may help him curb his frustration. "Stupid Ozpin, stupid Branwens, stupid world!"
With each word, he banged his head against the wall. It did not help him get rid of his frustration at the whole situation. In fact, now he was more frustrated than ever, and with a raging headache to boot.
"I think this is written in old Mistralian," Summer remarked, squinting at the page in front of her and proving she hadn't been paying attention to Tai's breakdown at all. "G-Glau? No, wait, that's not right. Golau."
There was a crackling noise, like a fire flaring to life. Startled, Taiyang spun around, eyes widening as he took in the sight before him: Summer, mouth open in shock and silver eyes glowing, sitting on the bed with a ball of light floating in front of her.
"What the fuck," Summer panicked, staring at the ball of light which bobbed in the air in front of her. "What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-"
Taiyang didn't think he'd ever heard Summer swear before. It was a new experience. "Sum," he grinned, earlier frustration forgotten as he stared at his friend. "That was magic. I think you're a magician."
She stared back at him, eyes wide. He was glad that she didn't faint.
"Magic?" Summer breathed, glancing from her friend to the ball of light, which shone brighter the moment she glanced at it, as though happy to have her attention. "Magic?"
She took a breath. She let it out. And then she threw the book to the side, buried her face into the nearest pillow, and screamed.
"...at least there should be a spell to help us find Qrow and Raven?" Taiyang tried, blinking in shock as he watched his team leader freak out. He could feel himself slipping into panic, hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat until he couldn't help but let it escape his lips.
Summer continued to scream.