Ozpin was working late, repairing the barriers surrounding Beacon as he reflected on the intricate cogs of coincidence and irony that wound his fate in the world. Although he appeared to be deep asleep, he was replenishing the aura well that sustained the school's formidable defenses. His relaxation was interrupted by a rush of air emanating from the center of his office. Eyes still shut, he listened as six pairs of combat boots landed with a quiet clatter in the middle of his office. Ozpin felt, rather than heard, the intruders tense for a long moment. A graceful and feminine voice, decidedly upper-class, broke the silence.

"Caught you with your pants down, didn't we Oz?"

He opened his eyes and leaped forward over the desk, his cane transforming into a gilded sword faster than the eye could follow. A Specialist stared at her midriff in shock, cut in half before she could blink. Another tried to block as he drove his sword crosswise through her chest. Ozpin flicked his weapon to the side, parrying the downward slash of a powerfully built Atlesian Hunter-Captain, then speared the larger man's throat with an almost careless thrust. Turning to his real adversary, he raised an amused eyebrow at her expression.

"When was the last time I took off my pants?"

She ripped her gaze away from her slain comrades, face pale. "I know what you are, you bastard!"

"My dear...did you not expect casualties? It's unfortunate Evander felt the need to lie to you..." He slowly extracted his dripping sword from the Hunter-Captain's body with a low chuckle.

Her face was a rictus of rage. "You are not getting away this time!"

"Ah - you see, the last time your master attempted something like this, I believe that was my line." He calmly turned to face her. "I have an odd feeling that you may have overestimated your own power by an exponential amount."

She drew a black pistol engraved with countless glyphs, all glowing with the searing, distinctive whitish-blue of her semblance. Winter leveled the gun at Ozpin's eyes.

"My power is not in question here, old man."

A/N Welcome to my new story! This one has been in the works for a very long time, so please excuse any issues with Volume 3 it might have. Most of them should be working now, but no maidens ever, as this fic revolves around my concept of why people have the power they do.

Wow, I can't believe that I'm actually publishing this. However, I need to say a great deal of thanks to my helpful team of betas, and my extremely awesome editor /u/thebluehedgehog, for putting up with the ridiculousness that comes into my brain and tries to get written down every month or so. While I can't link his fanfiction page here because FF is odd like that, please do check him out (he's much better at this sort of thing then me). My betas are as follows.

Clamzilla, who might as well be a secondary editor with the amount of help he gave me.

Therisenthunderbird, who did a great deal of grammatical editing (the boring stuff)

Challos, who helped me breifly but gave me great advice.

A huge thank you to all of you, and I hope you enjoyed my introduction to the world of WtMGA! Next chapter on Friday!