Ozpin the Eugenicist
Glynda stalked towards Ozpin's office, the report of her heels loud and sharp on the polished marble floor. Angry mutterings echoed down the halls of Beacon, constant and frothing.
Again! That was the fourth time today! What the hell is going on?! She took a deep breath to steel her nerves. Ozpin gave her strict warnings never to enter his office past eleven p.m. Why? She'd never learned, not after a decade of teaching at Beacon. What she did learn is that the man had enough secrets to drown a Goliath. It didn't matter though, not tonight.
With a flick of her wand, Ozpin's wrought clockwork door burst open, revealing... Ozpin and Oobleck in lab coats? A huge corkboard containing hundreds of student ID photos?
"Glynda, I left you very specific-" he started. Glynda waved away his complaints with a wave of her hand.
"I know. But Ozpin, you must hear me out." Strange furnishings aside, he had to hear the news.
"What is it?" He asked, suddenly curious.
"I found another pair of students..." Her face flushed red.
"Students...?"
"I found yet another pair of students engaged in sexually explicit activities! It was the fourth time today! What on Remnant is wrong with them, Ozpin?" He sat back in his chair and sighed.
"Bartholomew, note the effectiveness of sample mark twenty three."
"Right away, sir! Simply exemplary!"
"Mark twenty-WHAT?"
"Yes, it appears that the dosage has reached significant enough concentrations to effect a result in the subjects." Ozpin said. His brow furrowed, deep in thought, while Glynda was reeling from his words.
"What...what the hell are you two up to?" Ozpin sighed, taking a sip from his ever-present mug.
"Glynda, I'm afraid I've been pursuing... alternative directives during my tenure as Beacon's headmaster." Glynda pushed her glasses up to once again rest on the bridge of her nose. Her shock had almost let them slip and clatter to the floor.
"Ozpin, what are you saying?"
"It's not what I'm saying... so much as what I've been doing."
"We have been doing, thank you very much!" Oobleck shouted, looking up from his clipboard. A glare from Glynda silenced him.
"Grimm are growing fiercer... Have been for quite some time. Malcontent and evil brew outside the walls of civilization, but within them as well. These are dark times, Glynda. Times that require desperate and extreme measures." She looked the equipment spread about the office. There were hundreds of vials and petri dishes, dozens of reagent jars and pieces of lab equipment. But what was puzzling was the board... Each and every beacon academy student was represented, each trailing different colored ribbons of string. Most of the yarn was red, linking students that were... No. No, it couldn't be.
A red string connected the two students she'd just apprehended, Coco and Fox of team CFVY.
"You... ship the students?" Weird yes, creepy definitely, but how is that an 'extreme measure'? Ozpin scoffed, sipping at his mug.
"A crude and spurious notion."
"Superficial!" Oobleck added helpfully.
"No, Glynda... What we're doing, it is so much more. Romance helps, but the aphrodisiacs like sample twenty-three…"
"You drugged the students?!" Glynda cried, realizing.
"Experimented upon. Dark times, extreme measures and all that." Oobleck suggested.
"The drugs are merely a means to an end. Tell me Glynda, what is the purpose of Beacon Academy?"
"To..." Glynda took a deep breath. The calm sanity of the question had unbalanced her. "To train the next generation of hunters and huntresses. Not to have them f-"
"Yes, yes, the next generation. But what of the generation after that?"
"We'll train them too! It's what we've always done!"
"Tell me... Has that gotten us anywhere? Expanded our boundaries?" The question gave Glynda pause. Mountain Glen had been a disastrous pursuit... and it had been leagues more successful than the last attempt at expansion!
"Exactly." Ozpin said, reading the look on his adjutant's face. "As I said before, threats brew on every horizon, each greater than the last. Maybe the next generation of hunters and huntresses is the one where their training fails them."
"Impossible!" Glynda shouted. Ozpin only shrugged.
"Perhaps you are right. Maybe not the next generation. However, maybe their successors will be the ones that fall. But what if," his eyes glowed bright, "what if they did not fall, did not succumb to the darkness? What if they could soar? Push our walls to their limits, let our pent-up citizens flourish and prosper as never before, free from the fear of Grimm?"
"And drugging students is how you accomplish this?" Glynda roared, slamming her foot down. Ozpin always did this, divert and re-direct with fanciful, inspiring rhetoric!
"As I said, a means to an end. Tell me, what are your thoughts on Pyrrha Nikos?"
"An admirable student." Glynda answered immediately. "She's one of the most athletically adept students we've had in years. Were it not for her dalliances with the Arc boy, she'd be perfect." They'd been one of the couples she'd found today, caught red-handed on the roof of Beacon. They'd insisted they were only training. Ha! Maybe for a pornographic shoot.
"And what of Jaune? Tell me of him."
"Physically inept, but with aura reserves I've never seen the likes of before. One of my more... frustrating students."
"Now tell me, what if Ms. Nikos athletic prowess could be combined with Mr. Arc's aura stores? What manner of student would that produce?"
"We'll, they'd be frightening to behold, that's for sure!" She said with a snort. Then, her jaw fell open as the realization dawned on her.
"You're breeding students?! Ozpin, of all the sick and twisted perversions!" It all made sense. The corkboard, the aphrodisiacs, the vials and talk of generations... "What the hell is wrong with you?"
"I have a vision, that's what's wrong with me." He stood, gazing out over the city of Vale with a wistful look. His words were sad and spoke of a deep remorse. "I am doing what I must. Imagine it, Glynda!" He said, spinning. "Beacon's students represent the best and brightest of Vale's populace. They are its strongest, smartest, most agile inhabitants. Humans and Faunus alike!"
"Which reminds me, Professor, the results of the faunal night-vision insertion phage are due out of the incubator in an hour."
"Oh wonderful, thank you Bartholomew."
"What... What the hell is he talking about Ozpin?" Glynda demanded.
"Humans have always looked down on Faunus." He growled. "Sheer arrogance. It is clear faunus are superior, if one looks at it from an objective standpoint. Better eyesight, better hearing, tusks and horns that can be employed as weapons..." He sighed, picking up a ocher-colored vial. "But, admittedly, they are often more fragile than humans. Truly, would the world not be better off if such divisions... never existed?" He said, staring deep into Glynda's soul. She took a step back.
"You're insane. You're both insane!" Ozpin sighed.
"I admit faunal phenotypic expression utilizing in-vitro injections is a few decades from reality. But we're working on it. For now, we can only hope that the Faunus population of Beacon remains promiscuous and creates a wide, stable genetic pool from which to draw from."
"You talk about them like they're cattle!" Glynda said, not believing the words that came from Ozpins lips.
"Are we not all cattle?" Oobleck replied. "Are we not all livestock, waiting to be slaughtered by Grimm? Penned in our cages, waiting for death?" He grimaced. "The breach was proof enough of that."
"And talking about faunus like they're brood mares! They're people, Ozpin! With thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams!"
"Tell me, did the students you apprehended today seem particularly unhappy? Well, before you caught them?" Glynda frowned. "They are young. They are experiencing young love." He smiled a sad smile. "In their happiness they are serving the greater good, albeit blindly and unwittingly."
"Then what about the homosexuals?" Glynda asked. "There's more LGBT representation at beacon than a gay pride parade! Sure, the gays can get an egg donor, but what about the lesbians? I'm sorry boys, but not every couple at beacon fits neatly into your little plan like Pyrrha and Jaune!" Ozpin waved his hand, dismissing her point.
"A trifling concern. Nowadays, a sample of bone marrow is more than enough to produce viable gametes for same-sex reproduction in females."
"Although there are still issues with telomeric replication errors!" Oobleck interjected. "Buildup of senescent cells also poses a significant hurdle."
"Even so. Glynda, imagine the joy on the faces of women who can now share a child together, all thanks to science! Imagine their gratitude when their old headmaster at Beacon grants them that ability." He paused, taking a long swallow of coffee. "Bartholomew, that reminds me, how are Ms. Belladonna and Ms. Xiao Long?"
"I believe Glynda can answer that question." He said, noting the color draining from her face.
"I found them together." She growled. "In a broom closet."
"Ah! So they have finally made their attraction to each other known. That is good. I am particularly intrigued to see the results of Blake's faunus heritage and Yang's wellspring of emotion-enhanced brand of aura. Put them on the list."
"There's a list?" Glynda hissed.
"But of course." Oobleck said. "We're scientists, not animals." Ozpin pushed a piece of paper forward, offering it to her. She snatched it up.
The ink on Blake/Yang was fresh, but the names... Glynda paled. She'd caught many of these students today, and many others were well known couples at beacon. Jaune/Pyrrha, Ren/Nora… 'precise aural control in the male specimen and hereditary bombastic energy reserves from the female, an interesting development' the note read.
"Hereditary bombastic energy reserves? How in the hell can you know something like that? I don't think that's how genetics work!"
"Of course not." Ozpin said. "We're hoping many of the subjects impart their experience and habits upon their offspring. But in Ms. Valkyrie's case, it is well documented. If you'll recall her mother..."
"Still paying off the damages, sir!" Oobleck said.
"What?" Glynda whispered in small voice. Everything she'd known about her friends and co-workers had been overturned in a matter of moments.
"I SAID, WE'RE STILL PAYING OFF THE DAMAGES!" Oobleck cried.
"I don't know you..." Glynda said, backing away from the pair. "I don't know either of you... You're monsters, both of you!" Ozpin sighed, staring into the depths o his coffee.
"Every night, we meet and plot. Every night, we fill our beakers and run our tests. Every night, we stare into our souls and the abyss stares back. Are we monsters, for puppeteering the lives of our students? When they clasp their hands and lips in joyous love, I think not. Then, we are saviors. Saving them from loneliness and doubt. Then… then we are not monsters." His gaze darkened. "But when they fall in battle, eyes spilling tears unending over the loss of their partners... When they plod back to their homes, with children waiting on a parent that will never return... When we spy and coerce, drug and medicate, all those times... You are right Glynda, we are monsters. But that is what we face outside our defenses. That is what hammer down our walls, spread panic and fear in the hearts of innocents. Those black furred beasts and the villains that plot within our cages, those are our true enemies. So yes. We've became monsters. Breeding students like prize pigs at a fair. Forcing relationships upon them. All in the name of a brighter future, a future not clouded by the shadows of hate and fear."
Ozpin sighed.
"I'm sorry you had to find out this way, Glynda. I truly want the best for our students. If I can give them a little bit of happiness, give their children the fighting edge that genetics can provide... then maybe monsters like us won't be needed anymore."
Glynda didn't know what to make of his speech. Her mind reeled and heaved, set adrift on a sea of incredulous horror.
"Ozpin..."
"Glynda. Please... forgive your old friend his sins." He stretched his hand out, open, inviting. "Join us." She could not believe her ears.
"No. Never."
"I was afraid you'd say that." A heavy steel bar slammed down on Ozpins door, a resounding crash of metal that trapped Glynda within. "To be fair, I was very specific about my door remaining shut past eleven p.m."
A/N: I want to get off Professor Ozpin's wild ride.
This was a really stupid one-shot I thought of and just had to write up. The 'Ozpin ships his students' jokes are always amusing, so I put a darker little spin on it. :) I think it's amusing, but then again, it's all up to you! What did you think? Let me know!
I'll see you guys soon for another chapter of A World of Bloody Evolution or The Shining Legion! (RWBYxWarhammer 40k fic and Roman Empire AU fic, for those just joining me)
Thanks for stopping by!
~RedrumSprinkles