𝕭𝖑𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖎𝖊𝖉 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖀𝖓𝖇𝖗𝖔𝖐𝖊𝖓

A Call Beyond

Ozpin raised his cane to counter the on-rush of this familiar young man.

Team RWBY, and literally everyone else, was about to intervene. "No need. I can deal with this young man." Ozpin spotted the feint, since there was a split-second delay where the young man, at first intending to swing down from overhead, pulled the weapon back and slashed sideways, which Ozpin easily parried.

The young man continued to swing, not letting up. Ozpin kept parrying. Then, Ozpin found an opening, and stabbed. The man left himself open, maybe on purpose, and Ozpin expected the man's aura to take the strike.

The cane went through his shoulder, ripping through flesh and bone, covering the front of Ozpin's suit with a bit of blood, and the man stopped his overhead swing after realizing he had been hit. He didn't seem too bothered about it.

The man nodded and folded his scythe, kneeling in defeat. "Are you calm now, young man?" Ozpin asks, cane still in his opponent's shoulder. The opponent nods, head hung low. "I will pull this out now."

The opponent nods, and Ozpin wrenches it out, earning a hiss of pain, almost inaudible, as Ozpin wipes the tip of his cane clean. The stranger rubs his bleeding shoulder and Ozpin asks, "Do you need to go to the medical bay?"

The stranger shakes his head. "I've had worse." He cracks his neck. "I'm calm now." 

"So, Ruby, I believe, you and your team owe me atleast a little discussion. Follow me. The rest of you..." Ozpin looks at the gathered crowd. "I'm sure you have more important things to do. Move along." The crowd dispersed immediately.

—

At the Headmaster's Office again, Dante had relaxed against the transformed scythe, with his shoulder bandaged (Ozpin did not want him bleeding all over the carpet). He had already been introduced by Ruby, who was then busy describing how the man had sniffed her in the forest, earning him a very angry look from the blonde-haired brawler named Yang, and making Blake even more suspicious of him than she already was.

"As a Hunter, I've honed my sense of 'smell'," He accompanied that last word with air quotations, explaining to the entire room, "But you can call it more as a, err, sixth sense, if you will. I can 'smell' the danger of an area. Emerald Forest reeked. I could also smell corruption. It is in my Hunter's oath to hunt and stamp out any and all forms of corruption."

Dante then stared at Ruby. "You were pure. Untouched."

"How did you know she was a virgin?" Blake commented. Yang got even angrier, which Dante could tell since her hair flared up like fire.

"I didn't. I don't smell that type of purity. That's out-of-line, even for me. I could smell that the plague had not infected her."

"You're a doctor? Also, what plague?" Weiss asked.

"Well, yes and no— Wait, what do you mean, 'what plague?' You don't know of the Scourge of the Beast? How it started from Yharnam then spread to the outer towns?"

From his questions sprouted even more questions.

"The Scourge of the Beasts?"

"Yharnam? Where even is Yharnam? What IS a Yharnam?"

Dante breathed a sigh of relief since it appears that even if this world was marked by beasts, it isn't the type of beasts he was used to fighting. That was both a good AND bad thing. But now...

"You want an explanation, don't you?"

"We all do, Mr. Dante." Ozpin answered for the other four, sipping on his whiskey. "Well, go on. Make it quick. These four still do have classes after all."