Prologue: A Mistral Police Dept. Questioning Room

"You aren't a cop." A rasping voice called out to the man standing in the doorway.

"Of course I'm not." With a smile, he stepped further into the room and sat down across from the girl. Getting his first good look at her. The footage he had been working off of was of questionable quality, and Ozpin sincerely hoped this wasn't a case of mistaken identity.

The girl had a wild mane of short black hair and blue eyes. She was rail thin, and her clothes seemed to have gone far too long without a thorough washing. An all too common occurrence among less fortunate communities in the City of Mistral.

"Who are you then? Lawyer?" She didn't look up from the table when she spoke. Her voice dripping with false courage and rebellion.

"Not a police officer, not a lawyer. I'm the headmaster of Beacon Academy." After giving his non-answer the man laid out a series of objects on the table between them with unexpected speed. After everything was neatly arranged, he put both his palms up and looked her straight in the eye. "In full transparency, I'm giving you these things because I want you to trust me. I want to help you."

The first object the girl picked up was a key, after a moment of fiddling it slipped into each of her handcuffs and released her wrists with two satisfying clicks.

As the girl rubbed away the marks on her wrists, her gaze settled on the second object set in front of her. A silver thermos. She grasped the handle and unscrewed the cap, revealing what appeared to be hot chocolate.

With a huff, she set down the thermos, forgoing coco in favor of examining the last two objects on the table.

The girl first picked up an ornate looking dagger, about as long as her forearm with a wickedly curved edge.

"It's fake," The man began, "The steel isn't folded, also-"

The girl interrupted him with a voice that was quiet. "It isn't impregnated with dust, and it can't absorb aura to be made stronger." The girl deftly slipped it into a sheath that was already clipped to her belt. Once the dagger was put away, the girl sat back, keeping one hand at her side below the table.

Ozpin didn't have to wait long for the girl to acknowledge the fourth object on the table.

Simple and rugged, about as long as her arm and rendered almost completely useless by a leather strap tightly bound around the cross guard so that it couldn't be drawn. A sturdy cutting edge, and the type of blade Ozpin knew to be commonly used by the slave gladiators of Mistral.

The girl picked her sword up gingerly, slowly running a finger along the leather that held it in place. Paying careful attention to the knot, tugging lightly on the loose ends to make sure it was tight.

On the surface, everything about the girl was unremarkable. her hair was plain. She was lanky, but not more so than an average teen.

The sword they were both eyeing was equally forgettable. Not long, not short, not wide, not thin.

But that leather strap...

The man concealed the activation of his glasses behind the act of pushing them up his nose. He watched as aura and something more pulsed and writhed around that leather strap, similar in shape to the knot itself.

He could have gazed at its beauty for a long long time, but luckily the girl spoke up, "Alright, what do you want from me? What's your angle for swooping in and handing me all my stuff back?" She wrinkled her nose and glanced at the thermos on the table, "Plus some hot coco."

The man smiled a bit and produced a tablet from his briefcase and handed it to the girl. "The combat course in Beacon is quite selective, so selective that the school runs background checks and investigations into each and every student that we accept. I was surprised to find an assault had occurred on one of the more affluent prospective students. So someone was naturally dispatched to investigate."

While explaining, he pulled up a video of the girl trying to steal a truck of some kind off the side of the road. A group of two other young women intervened, and a brief fight broke out between them. The outnumbered girl hesitated to leave the truck behind, but was ultimately forced to run.

The girl winced at the image of herself getting knocked out of the truck and across the parking lot by the oldest woman of the attacking pair.

"I don't see how getting my face kicked in by one of your students makes me worth a visit." She shifted in her seat, looking anywhere but directly at him.

"An associate of mine recognized you." She stiffened in her seat. "Some of his more... Unpleasant jobs have made him quite familiar with the Mistralian pit fighting industry."

Ozpin stopped and replayed the footage from the beginning, "So when I sent him to learn more about the fight one of Beacon's student-to-be had gotten themselves in... he and I both found ourselves rather confused."

He motioned at and paused during certain points of the video as he made his speech, "Never once did you fight back. You dodged and ran around the truck, you jumped back in and tried to start it again, only to be pushed back out. Not a single time did you reach for your sword, not even for that useless dagger."

The girl's voice interrupted his thoughts, shaking with an emotion he couldn't quite place, "Are you here to put me back in the ring?" As she looked up at him from behind her hair, Ozpin realized it was anger. "You're wasting your time, I've fought enough for two lifetimes."

Ozpin took a sip of coffee and told her the truth.

"Oh Taylor, I don't want to make you a Gladiator again. I'm here to offer you a scholarship."