//------------------------------//
// The Day After: Ironwood (Rewritten) 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


The Day After: Ironwood


 

“They were here,” Ironwood growled, slamming his fist onto the table in a  bid to get through to the old man who sat behind his desk looking more exasperated by Ironwood’s behaviour than he seemed at all concerned about the disaster that had very nearly unfolded last night. “Ozpin, they were right here!”
“We’re very much aware of that, James,” Glynda hissed, possibly to distract Ironwood from the fact that Ozpin had just put his head in his hands as though Ironwood was giving him a headache.
Ironwood was starting to think that they both deserved a lot more than a headache from having someone shout in their ear. 
“I’ve known Twilight Sparkle since she was a little girl, and last night I nearly had to tell her parents that she was never coming home,” Ironwood snapped, venting his anger into Glynda’s face. She might not have deserved it, it might be that he was overreacting to her remark, but there was a part of him that needed to vent at somebody, even if she wasn’t a particularly deserving target of his wrath. When he thought of what could have happened last night if Twilight hadn’t had the presence of mind to call Rainbow Dash for help: Twilight dead, the CCT potentially compromised, the identity of the mole lost. They had stood on the knife’s edge last night and it was only thanks to Twilight Sparkle that they had fallen onto the right side. The enemy had come close last night, too close; did they even realise just how close they had come to landing a crippling blow? “I have eleven men dead; good men, soldiers of Atlas; I have another seven in the infirmary and some of them might not make it unless their luck turns. So don’t talk to me as though I’m making a mountain out of nothing! Salem put four agents right in the heart of Beacon under our very noses and we never saw it coming. Haven students! What’s Leo even doing out there that he let this happen?”
“Running Haven  Academy, one would hope,” Ozpin sighed. He lifted his head out of his hands. “Although I do concede that it is troubling that Salem was able to insert Miss Fall and her team so easily, and that they were able to gain Leo’s complete trust as they did.”
Ironwood clenched his jaw. “What does he have to say for himself?”
“I don’t know,” Ozpin admitted. “Leo hasn’t reported in for some time.”
“Then perhaps it’s time you asked him why that is,” Ironwood said. He took a deep breath, and made a conscious effort to master his emotions. If Ozpin dismissed him and anything he had to say because he thought that Ironwood was acting too emotionally, too irrationally, then that wouldn’t help their cause one bit. If being calm was what was needed to convince Ozpin then he would try to be calm. Anything to make the old man see. 
“I have served you faithfully for many years,” Ironwood said, leaning on the desk so that his face was closer to Ozpin’s. “I’ve risked my career, even my life, because I believed in you and in what we were doing for the good of the world.” He sighed. “I still believe in what we’re doing.” He let that, and the implicit words he had not spoken, hang in the air for a while. “But we can’t just sit on the rocks in Beacon or Atlas and watch as the tide rises around us until the world is under water! And if Leo has betrayed us then don’t we need to know about it sooner than late?”
Ozpin stared at him for a moment. Ironwood didn’t know whether it was because the two of them were so close to one another or because he was more cognisant now of Ozpin’s faults, but he would swear that he had never seen him look so old before.
He looked away, as a deep sigh of regret escaped him. “Raven… now Leo, too? Am I so poor at choosing those in whom to place my trust?”
“I hope not,” Glynda said. “You trusted us, after all.”
Ozpin’s lips quirked upwards in a smile. “Thank you, Glynda.” He pulled his scroll out of his pocket. “I accept that there is some force in what you say, James. Perhaps we should find out what Leo has to say about all of this.”
“Would you like us to go, professor?” Glinda asked.
For himself, Ironwood had no intention of going anywhere until he heard Leo’s explanation – and it had better be a damn good one – so he was glad when Ozpin shook his head and made it superfluous to need to argue the point. “No, you can both stay. You might as well hear this.”
He opened his scroll and placed it face up upon the transparent surface of his desk. With one hand, Ozpin played with some of the buttons, and a holographic interface burst out from the scroll into the air above the desk. At first it was a hologram of nothing, just the three-dimensional equivalent of static, but after a few moments – moments in which Ironwood and Glinda walked around the desk so that they were standing behind Ozpin and all facing the same direction - it resolved itself into an image of Leonardo Lionheart rendered in blue-green, looking out at them. 
“Ozpin!” he cried. “This, uh, this is a pleasant surprise. James, Glynda, it’s really been too long since we’ve last spoken.”
“It certainly has,” Ironwood growled.
“It’s good to see you too, Leo, and to hear your voice,” Ozpin declared affably, as though there weren’t serious questions to be asked over some of Leo’s recent decision-making.
“Indeed. We’re almost all here,” Leo said jovially. “I’m a little surprised Qrow isn’t there too.” He looked over his shoulder, as though he half-expected Qrow Branwen to start tapping on the window of his office in Mistral asking to be let in.
“At the moment Qrow is still on a mission,” Ozpin said. “He’s out of contact, even more than you.”
Leo’s eyes bulged. “I haven’t reported to you because I have nothing to report!” he squawked indignantly. “We’re both busy men, I didn’t think that you’d want me to call you up every week just to tell you that all is well and quiet in Mistral.”
“Nothing to report?” Ironwood demanded, clenching his robotic hand into a fist as he leaned over Ozpin’s shoulder. “What about Cinder Fall, do you have anything to report there?”
“Cinder Fall,” Leo murmured.
“Cinder Fall attacked the CCT here in Beacon last night,” Ozpin said. “A number of Atlesian soldiers were killed or wounded. Later, Miss Fall’s team-mates fled before they could be questioned which, I’m sure you will agree, strongly suggests that they were involved in some way. In addition, there is some evidence linking Miss Fall to the recent upsurge in White Fang activities here in Vale.”
“My gods,” Leo said. “Was any damage done?”
“My men are dead, weren’t you listening?” Ironwood snapped, barely resisting the urge to punch Leo through the hologram. “And a young girl of great importance to Atlas – and to me – nearly joined them. And all because-“
“James, please,” Ozpin said, holding up one hand for calm. 
Ironwood clenched his jaw and backed off with great reluctance. He turned his back, and walked towards the emerald-tinted windows of Ozpin’s office. 
The old man didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand why this had Ironwood so frustrated. Ozpin was an intelligent man, a great man, but he sat up here in this tower like a grey-haired spider and he spun his webs across Remnant, grooming his teams of huntsmen and huntresses and sending them out to fight and die in the battle against Salem and her forces. He didn’t have friends, and Ironwood was under no illusions that even those closest to him like Glynda and himself were truly in his confidence. He approached his war like a game of chess, moving his white knights and pawns across the board to keep the blacks at bay and guard the four white queens who held the key to the entire game. 
Ironwood wasn’t like that. He was Twilight’s godfather, her father had been his XO, he’d personally handpicked Rainbow Dash to lead Team RSPT because he’d gotten to know her well enough to put his trust in her; these weren’t chess pieces to him, they were people, people who looked up to him, people who sought his approval, people who put their lives in his hands because they trusted him without reservation. 
Even if it was for the good of the world, it pained him that he wasn’t fully worthy of their trust, that he sullied it with lies and half-truths and omissions. 
And even if it was for the good of the world, he couldn’t just send them to their deaths without it weighing on his soul.
If the old man could, well… Ironwood wasn’t sure which of them was the lucky one.
“As I hope you can see, Leo,” Ozpin continued. “It appears that Miss Fall was our enemy from at least the moment that she entered Haven  Academy, and although we have no direct evidence linking her to our true foe, it seems unlikely that they could be completely unconnected. She may even be the woman who attacked Autumn and stole a part of her power.”
Leo laughed nervously. “Ozpin, with all due respect, some of that is pure conjecture.” His face fell. “But that’s not why you called me, is it? You… you think I’m involved in some way? After all that I have done-“
“Calm down, Leo,” Glynda said. “Nobody is accusing you of anything.”
“I think that James would like to, wouldn’t you James?”
Ironwood turned and walked back towards the hologram. “I’d certainly appreciate some answers.”
“Leo,” Ozpin said, calmly but firmly. “We’ve spoken to Mister Arc, Miss Nikos and Miss Rose.” They would have spoken to Miss Shimmer, too, but she had absented herself and nobody knew exactly where she was. “They both told exactly the same story: that you introduced Miss Fall to all four members of Team Sapphire, as one of your top students while at a party in Mistral during the spring vacation.”
“You’re taking the word of three first-year students against me? After everything-“
“This is not about taking anyone’s word over yours, this isn’t about apportioning blame, this is about getting to the truth,” Ozpin declared, sounding a little testy at this point. “Your relationship with Miss Fall-“
“Yes, I took an interest in Cinder Fall,” Leo declared. “Do you know why? It’s not because I’m a traitor or a servant of Salem! It’s because she was especially talented and I was desperate. If she really did attack the tower and kill James’ soldiers-“
“If?” Ironwood snapped.
“Then you must understand how good she is; how swift, how strong; probably a match for Pyrrha, or close to it. Ozpin, I don’t think you understand the kind of pressure that I’m under here. You gave me this position but since then you’ve continually poached the best and brightest of Sanctum’s graduates and left me and Haven to make do with the residue that you didn’t want.”
And what does that have to do with anything? Ironwood thought. It wasn’t that Leo was entirely wrong – Ozpin did take the best students who might otherwise have gone to Atlas, Haven or Shade. He tried to, at least, but Ironwood liked to think that he’d gotten pretty good at defending his turf and keeping the students that he wanted at Atlas where he wanted them - he’d lost Weiss Schnee, which was disappointing, but he was inclined to blame that at least partly on her father; if Leo hadn’t learned to do the same that was no excuse for letting traitors and enemies into their midst.
“You’re exaggerating,” Glynda said. “Professor Ozpin only encourages a select few students that have the potential to be valuable assets to our cause to attend Beacon instead of any other huntsman academy.”
“Do you know how long it’s been since Haven last had a Vytal Festival champion?” Leo demanded. “Mistral invented the arena, and the kingdom’s tradition of heroic combat stretching back into days of myth and legend is a source of great pride. It grieves them to see that tradition faltering in the modern day, outdone by kingdoms with no such heritage, and I am the one they blame for it! People think I’m incompetent, and because I’m a faunus they think they have a right to tell me so my face. I have to listen to the likes of Lady Nikos sneer at my record while Mistral-born huntsmen win honours for Beacon and Vale, for you! Pyrrha was supposed to turn things around for us, with her at the forefront this year was going to be our year, but then you had to go and take her too! At this rate the council is going to vote to dismiss me and then what use will I be to you or our enterprise? I saw a talented fighter with the potential to put Haven back on the map and I grabbed that opportunity with both hands. Did I look closely into who she was or where she and the rest of her team came from? No. Should I have? Well, perhaps, but I had no other choice but to do as I did. You left me no other choice, Ozpin. Do you want me to remain in post to serve you here or not?”
So your defence is incompetence? Ironwood attempted to keep the contempt he felt off his face and out of his body language. Are you any more use in that case then if you were a traitor? All your justifications can’t obscure the fact that you let our enemies into the heart of our defences and only blind luck prevented them from doing incalculable damage. 
Do you actually have a reason why we should still trust you?
“No one wants to see you dismissed from your office,” Ozpin said, with surprising geniality in his tone. “I merely wanted to get my facts straight. Thank you for being so honest with me, Leo. I hope you understand that I need to give this matter a great deal of thought. Goodbye. Please try to keep in touch in future.”
Leo sighed. He looked as though he was sweating. “Goodbye, Ozpin. Glynda, James. Until next time.”
“Quite,” Ozpin said, before he hung up. 
“Do you trust him?” Ironwood demanded. “Do you believe everything that he said? Do you believe anything that he said?”
“I… have sometimes been overzealous in my desire to have the best talent in Remnant here at Beacon, where I could better evaluate them,” Ozpin confessed.
“That doesn’t excuse leaving Mistral completely undefended,” Ironwood said. “I left-”
“Not everyone has an oversized army,” Glynda pointed out.
“I admit that there remain some unanswered questions,” Ozpin said. “Questions that we may never be able to fully answer unless, by some happy accident, we are able to capture and interrogate Miss Fall. But I am not willing to condemn a man who pledged his loyalty and service to me without further proof than I currently possess.”
And what about my loyalty and service? Ironwood wanted to ask. He huffed. “So we do nothing?”
“What can we do at this point, James?” Ozpin asked. “Miss Fall is in the wind, possibly she has fled to join her allies of the White Fang but we don’t know where they are either. What can we do but wait, and be ready for her next move when it comes? What would you have me do?”
Ironwood was silent for a moment, because as much as he didn’t like it the old man had a point. He had a fleet and an army but no target against which to turn either of them. 
He resolved to have another crack at Torchwick; perhaps having his boss uncovered and forced into hiding would make him more willing to talk. 
It was about all they had to go on at this stage.
Ironwood clasped his hands behind his back. “We need to do something about Twilight.”
“Your student?” Glinda asked. “What do you mean?”
“Although the data from her trace looks like it was wiped, Twilight saw it,” Ironwood said. “Cinder routed her mail outing Blake Belladonna as part of the White Fang through Drachyra. You can understand why she thinks that’s important.”
The price of keeping secrets from the world: the members of Ozpin’s inner circle all knew that Salem had her fortress somewhere on the grimm-infested dragon continent, but as far as the rest of Remnant was concerned it was simply grimm-infested, and so to Twilight the fact that someone – the White Fang, a nebulous human terrorist organisation, somebody – might have operations there was something worthy of investigation; and Ironwood couldn’t simply tell her that, in his opinion, it wasn’t because, to be frank, if he hadn’t know what he knew he would absolutely think it worthy of investigation.
Ozpin closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “We cannot beard her in her den, James. She is too ancient, too powerful and her grimm there are too numerous. You could not force your way through to the gates of her dark fortress with all the strength of the Atlesian military nor could you defeat her when or if you got there.” He bowed his head, once more looking far older and wearier than was generally the case. Ironwood couldn’t be entirely sure what he was thinking about, but he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Ozpin’s thoughts were turning to Team STRQ and to the failure of their strike eighteen years ago.
That was the moment when we stopped trying to do anything but hold the line. That was the moment when we handed her the initiative, and we’ve never gotten it back.
“I know,” Ironwood said. “But Twilight Sparkle doesn’t. So what do I tell her?”
“Tell her you’ll take it to the Council,” Ozpin said.
“I have two seats on the council,” Ironwood reminded him. “And Twilight’s sister-in-law holds another. If I tell her that I’m going to take it to the Council then I’d better do it or she’ll find out that I haven’t, and if I do take it to the Council then… her family has influence, the Council may agree that this is something that we need to investigate. Especially if I back it, which I’d have a hard time not doing.”
“Because of your position, or simply because you like this girl?” Glynda asked.
“Because her trust is important to me,” Ironwood said.
Ozpin opened his eyes. “I hope that you have a suggestion of your own to make, James.”
“As it happens, I do,” Ironwood said. He hesitated for a moment, knowing that his suggestion would not be popular. “I want to bring her in.”
“You want what?” Glynda demanded.
“And not just Twilight, but Rainbow Dash as well,” Ironwood continued. “Perhaps Miss Nikos too, and Miss Shimmer if she can be found, although your students, your call.”
“How very generous of you,” Glynda muttered.
“If you want Pyrrha Nikos to be your guardian then we’re going to have to trust her at some point,” Ironwood said. “And none of us are going to be here forever, or even in our posts forever. At what point do we put our trust in the new generation to carry on this fight after us?”
“When they’re a little older than seventeen or eighteen,” Glynda said.
“None of us were that much older when Ozpin brought us in,” Ironwood replied. “If we were any older at all. Twilight has one of the brightest minds in the history of Atlas; Rainbow Dash is one of the bravest soldiers I’ve ever seen; frankly, these are the people we need to fight this war and the kind of people in whose hands I could feel comfortable placing the world when we’re all gone.” He took a step towards Ozpin. “We don’t have to tell them everything right now, but let me tell them something. Let me give them at least a peak behind the curtain and I swear to you, you won’t regret it.”
“We’ve thought that before,” Glynda murmured. “This is information to break the greatest of paragons.”
“No,” Ozpin sighed. “The greatest of paragons died faithful to the last.” He closed his eyes. “I am not so naïve as to think that… if I tell Miss Shimmer and Miss Nikos, they will not keep it from Miss Rose. Is this what Summer would have wanted?”
“Even if Summer were here, she wouldn’t get to make that choice,” Ironwood said. “Not on behalf of her daughter.”
“It is too soon,” Glynda insisted. “They are too young, still, too unseasoned. Team Stark were a year older-“
“She’s moving more quickly now,” Ironwood insisted. “We have to-“
“Give her more servants? Terrify more children into betraying us?” Glynda demanded.
“I know my people,” Ironwood declared. 
“I thought that I knew Raven!” Glynda snapped. “We all did!”
“Raven Branwen was a bandit from a line of murderers and thieves,” Ironwood was nearly shouting now. “The surprise isn’t that Raven quit, the astonishing thing is that Qrow didn’t… much as I hate to credit him with anything.” He paused for a moment. “Rainbow Dash isn’t Raven,” he said. “She doesn’t have somewhere to run, she has something to protect, and I could probably say the same of Miss Nikos-“
“But not of Miss Shimmer, I fear,” Ozpin said, his voice thin and weary. “Miss Shimmer has great potential, but… but, as Glynda reminds me, Raven had great potential, too.” He hesitated. “But… but perhaps James is right. Perhaps events are moving too swiftly for caution. She is on the move, and we must match her somehow, set our agents against hers.”
“You won’t regret this,” Ironwood said forcefully. “They’re made of the right stuff, Oz, I’ll stake my reputation on it.”
“That’s exactly what you’re doing,” Glynda reminded him.
“I know,” Ironwood said. “And I do it without fear.”
“Without fear?” Glynda repeated. “None at all.”
Ironwood frowned. “I fear for them,” he admitted. “I know what I’m getting them into, what I’m asking you to ask of them. But I have no fear, none at all, that they’ll let me down.” 
Ozpin looked at him, his thoughts concealed behind his inscrutable eyes, and said nothing.
Until, at length, he spoke.
“Very well,” he said. “Let us open their eyes… and pray that we are better judges of character than once we were.”