The Second Step: Chapter 14
Jaeger Chronicles: Part 2
A/N: It's not every week that I wait so long to update. I had a fair bit going on in my life. Sorry everybody. So please, enjoy this crazy chapter.
An arm and a leg.
It's quite ironic when you don't think about it. That Joshua, who can regenerate portions of his body, would actually end up losing them, while I, who would sacrifice everything for him, have remained whole an undamaged all these years.
It's almost unfair, that such a great man has lost so much, while a quiet hanger-on like myself still has so much to give.
I shake myself from the melancholy thoughts, returning to the task at hand. Deep within Joshua's Soulscape, surrounded by multistory bookshelves and standing beneath a universe of a night sky, I am trying to rebuild Joshua's shattered, or rather, pierced mind.
These limbs, the last remaining pieces of his puzzle, represent Joshua's single most painful and important memories. They had caused so much grief, both literal and metaphorical, for him that I am sorely tempted to simply modify them into more pleasant or at least less painful memories.
It's simple really. Just an image there, a sensation here, and the memory and emotions have become something else entirely. I could help him so much.
Should I do this though, the man that would emerge wouldn't be the Joshua that we need. I have a duty to keep this one alive and thinking.
Lying on the white marble ground, Joshua sleeps, oblivious to my internal turmoil. Had he not been missing two limbs, he would almost have been...peaceful.
He is still, his body damaged from some unknown assault. When I had been awoken in the real world by his collapse, I had wasted no time in dragging him inside my personal room and calling up his Aura from within my body. What I did, trying to purge the traces of hostile Aura from his body and help it along in it's healing, had been something we had done many times before. Even reconstructing his memories...this wasn't the first time.
My thoughts quick me back into the real world again, and I choose to reattach his leg first. The memory is painful, but I must endure, for all of our sakes.
I lay the leg, the first limb, into it's proper position, end use it with my Aura...
...and I remember Evanora.
The burn of his lungs, the strain of his muscles. The innate fear that saturated his mind. And the quiet horror that whispered to him that they were too late. All of these feelings jockeyed for prominence as Joshua Ozpin pushed himself to go* faster*.
Next to him, Glynda conjured another glyph for them to jump from. Further ahead, Roman used his shaung guo's grappling hooks to swing from building to building. Beneath them, the streets of Vale shot passed, slowly becoming more and more cluttered with garbage as they raced into the more rundown section of the massive city, slowly becoming more and more illuminated as the sun crept into the morning sky.
Far ahead, the wall loomed. The iron gray wall, massive and menacing, separated man from beast; civilization, from the Grimm. The wall towered sixty meters high, dwarfing the nearest buildings.
This wall was traversed in seconds flat as Joshua, Roman and Glynda vaulted over it.
The Shade waited for them on the over side: Grimm, in multitudes, in hordes, had swarmed the wall here, overwhelming the guards and now threatening the walls structural integrity.
Roman turned in air, searching for the telltale green cloak. He didn't need to look long, as a flash of gun fire drew his eye to a small knot of Ursa. In seconds he was in the center of the fray, tearing into the enormous bear Grimm, Evanora sparing him a cursory "hello" before she returned to slaying the beasts.
"I take it you wanted all the glory for yourself?" Glynda quipped as she landed and blasted a pair of Ursa away from her teammate.
Evanora laughed and parried the verbal jab. "No, I just wanted a bigger body count then you Glyn."
Glynda formed Dusted into glyphs, then launched a volley at an Ursa trying to outflank Roman. "See. Glory."
Evanora stabbed her machine pistol's knife into an Ursa's head and turned to Glynda. "No. Compensation. Not all women can have your figure, Glynda."
"Oh, if you wanted my- LOOK OUT!"
Glynda locked up, watching as a Grimm swung at Evanora's head. Evanora barely managed to turn and see the Ursa's paw, slowly closing in on her head...
And then promptly sent hurdling across the battlefield as Joshua kicked it away from his teammates sister. "Focus. This is a battle scenario."
Evanora and Glynda nodded, before unloading their bullets and Dust into the Grimm.
Joshua kicked and threw Aura blasts, Glynda unleashed Dust glyphs, Evanora filled each Grimm with Dust laced lead, and Roman tore through the remains, each one balancing the load and range of combat.
And suddenly, the fight with the Ursa ended. Roman, hooked his swords to his belt and took a moment to catch his breath. "Well...that was..."
"A thing?" Evanora offered.
"Yeah." Roman sat down, using the lull as a break. Joshua called up his Aura and took count of what semblances he had stored up.
He had plenty of vanilla Aura, so if he was struck or hurt, he could easily shrug off the lesser blows. He had some Accelerator semblance, a fairly large store of Formic semblance courtesy Glynda, some Camo semblance if he needed to hide himself or his team, and some Metaburner Aura, albeit, with a caveat.
While Joshua had absorbed his Accelerator Aura from his teacher Qrow, and his Formic Aura from Glynda, he hadn't personally known any people with Metaburner Aura, at least not enough to ask: "hey, can I borrow some of your soul?" So, he had to get creative and snatch up pieces of semblance from several people.
He had never done this before, and as such, this Aura felt... temperamental. Unruly and just a little strange. A mix was more potent certainly, but Joshua knew that when push came to shove, he'd need a moment to warm up this semblance.
Joshua was broken out of his musings when a howl echoed off the wall. Roman was also pulled out if his exhaustion by this, as were Glynda and Evanora. "Oh man. Why did it have to be wolves?"
Joshua rolled his eyes and checked the terrain. The ground was tore up and muddy, but marginally flat. From the sounds of it, the Beowulves were approaching from both flanks and their front. More over, all four members of team JGER had not of their Dust , Aura and ammo supplies. The plan popped into his head easily.
"Glynda, you and me will set up a reverse gravity glyph. Roman, you and Evanora will be aerial with me. We're going to launch the Beowulves into the air. Then, turkey shoot."
Roman smirked lightly and stood up, bringing his hook swords to bare. Evanora checked her blade pistol and chambered a round. Glynda just flicked her riding-crop/wand. Joshua turned back to the field, now filling with Beowulves.
"All right Team Jaeger. Let's go to town."
Glynda led the charge in, her Formic Aura firing Dust bolts in to the wave of living shadows. Joshua stuck close behind, molding the Formic semblance at his disposal into an enormous glyph. Further back, Roman and Evanora crouched into the mud, waiting their chance.
The Grimm yielded a path, allowing the two Formic wielders into their ranks and surrounding them. In the center of the mass of moving, living darkness, Glynda and Joshua stopped, and with a flash of movement, the woman filled the sixty foot diameter glyph with Dust and activated it.
And suddenly, they and the Grimm were flying.
Roman shot a line at one of the monsters and launched himself at it, Evanora latching her machine pistol to the crook of his sword. The brother-sister pair vanished into the flying, growling fray, the hum of swords paring the flesh of the Grimm, the flag of her guns illuminating the faces of monsters.
And for a moment, the four did what they did best: fought the monsters that were at their door, and struck them down.
Joshua hopped from glyph to glyph, using Aura strikes to down Beowulves, while Glynda unleashed blasts of Dust in exploding blows, standing stationary on a platform of Aura. Evanora and Roman leapt from flailing Beowulf to flailing Beowulf, shooting or cutting each one. Roman used his grappling hooks to seize a Beowulf in air and launch himself even higher, taking a moment to see what was happening.
Around and below him, teams of Huntresses and Huntmens began to trickle on to the battlefield, engaging the Grimm with fresh ammunition and readied Aura. The very few combatant that had engaged the Grimm early welcomed the new arrivals, while others remained focused on slaying the living shadows.
Roman arched through the air, turning and looking down on his team. Evanora leapt from Beowulf to Beowulf, her bladed pistols blazing and spraying lethal, Dust-laced lead. Joshua flipped over and over, relying solely on powerful Aura strikes, disintegrating anything that approached him. In the center stood Glynda, conducting the falling, flying battle like a heavenly virtuoso, arrayed, ney illuminated, in the baleful, bloodied light of the setting sun and the sapphire glow of her glyphs.
Roman dropped back into the fray.
Joshua turned and reoriented himself in the air, calling up his Formic Aura to give himself a moment to breath. Several Beowulves had begun to swarm beneath them, probably necessitating another launching glyph. Joshua reached out and molded his Aura...
"JOSHUA LOOK OUT!"
Joshua Ozpin barely registered Glynda's scream, his instincts already bring him to his feet. This was a move too slow though, as with lightning speed, a Beowulf leapt into the air and shattered the Formic platform, sinking it's teeth into Joshua's leg.
For a moment, time seemed to slow. Joshua became acutely aware of his surroundings: the scream issuing from Glynda's throat, the surprised form of Roman, trying to turn and see what had happened, Evanora turning her guns to kill the beast, and the slowly building agony of the Beowulf mauling his leg, ripping muscles and blood vessels, crushing bones and rending his skin into a pulp.
Joshua called up his Metaburner Aura, and sent it screaming down his leg. "Wrong human."
The regenerating flames erupted from his wounds, surging down into the Beowulf's throat and cooking it from the inside out. The teeth in his leg flew out like volcanic ejecta, the muscles and bones knitting back together. The skin burning back into existence, the leg healing and killing the Grimm at the same time.
Joshua directed the flames downward, more erupting from his hands and other leg, forming a rudimentary jet pack. The Beowulf fell off him, dead long before it hit the ground. Joshua flashed a smile at his team, who took the Metaburner Aura powers in stride, the same way they always did when Joshua used his Leecher Aura.
Evanora landed on the muddy surface, reloading and unleashing a storm of bullets onto the flying and falling Grimm. The air seemed to...
"Argh!"
I dropped the limb, pain rolling in waves across my head. The memory had always been strong, and associated with much, almost too much, pain.
I steeled myself again, observing the limb once more. The leg had bound itself to his body, but only slightly. I would need to spend more time connecting it to him to fully bond it back.
I lay my hands on his body, and remember...
Evanora landed on the muddy surface, reloading and unleashing a storm of bullets onto the flying and falling Grimm. The air seemed to resonate with her intent, sending Grimm into the paths of her guns, delivering her hail of fire to it's targets. It was amazing, almost unnatural as she fought.
Her actions belayed her realization of something more sinister though. Buried within the swarm of Beowulves, a Deathstalker, a giant scorpion Grimm, prowled towards the fight. Moving through the smaller beasts, the Grimm readied it's stinger.
Glynda saw it first. Screams for Evanora to move feel on deaf ears though. The thickness of the Grimm in the air increased suddenly, as Joshua and Roman realized that the Beowulves were running away from something.
Joshua watched as Roman untangled himself from the monsters, watched as Evanora fired into the swirling, flying horde of monsters, watched as the Deathstalker reared it's stinger high...
And screamed.
Evanora dropped her guns. Her hands flying to the enormous stinger embedded in her back and through to her chest, her Aura already trying to isolate the wound and route her blood away from it, trying to pump blood even though almost all of her internal organs had ruptured. The only reason she wasn't in pain was because the strike had crushed and broken her spine.
The Deathstalker was unprepared for the sudden combined assault of Aura blasts, Dust bolts, and sword slashes. Joshua ducked low and pulled Evanora off of the enormous stinger. A split second later, Glynda eviscerated it.
Roman was at his side the second he set down on Glynda's platform with Evanora. "Evanora...oh gods."
Evanora laid there, trying to articulate something to say, but when someone ended up with a giant hole in their chest, they tended to have difficulty breathing. For a moment, she just looked up at her teammates, who looked down at their dying friend.
Finally, Joshua decided to try something. "Don't move. This may hurt a little." Pressing his hand to Evanora's forehead, Joshua used his Leecher ability to do something he hadn't done in a while: restore Aura.
Slowly, almost painfully, the accumulated Metaburner Aura began to flow from the well of his soul and into Evanora. For a second, Joshua felt the memories of the souls, the thoughts, feelings, ethics. Behind it all, he could also feel a simpler, more honest soul. Evanora's soul.
Slowly, the wounds sealed. Evanora's chest mended, regenerating as the Metaburner Aura accelerated the healing process. And quietly, all four members of Team Jaeger breathed a sigh of relief as Evanora took a longing, gasping breath of air.
Evanora sat up. "Oh gods, that was terrible. Her hand went to her chest, assuring herself that it was intact. "Joshua...you saved my life. Thank you."
Joshua rolled his eyes. Weren't they passed the point when they had to thank each other for saving one another's lives?
Roman's gaze went for his miraculously healed sister to his slightly put out teammate, and articulated the best response he could. "Well...that's new."
Joshua shrugged. "I can give what I take. It helps."
Glynda glanced down at the milling Beowulves. Most had begun to move off to attack other teams, the rest merely staring up and growling at them. "It seems we are in a battlefield. As such, perhaps it is best if we fight."
The remaining three members of Team Jaeger nodded lightly, with Evanora merely commenting: "I need to change into a new shirt, so you two better not try peeping."
It was an inherently futile gesture, as Evanora didn't have anything underneath her shirt that wasn't available on any man, but Roman and Joshua still turned back to the fight and dutifully ignored her. It was the least they could do.
And just like that, the battle was over. The battle of the western wall, initiated when three mob smugglers had attracted a load of Ursai, had lasted from six in the morning to eight in the morning.
In short, it was a rather quick battle.
Of course, even short battles such as this left large hovels in the earth, trees upended and mud splattered everywhere. The only exception was, mercifully, the multitudes of Grimm corpses, which had merely evaporated into thin air.
The bodies of men though, should not evaporate. They should never ... they shouldn't ...
The memory strained, stretching and contorting as the trauma associated with it seemed to turn rabid, fighting against it's reintegration into Joshua's body. I summon my own soul and forcefully try to meld the memory to his soul.
I fail to do so. I struggle to return to the memory, fighting to have it stick. I try to delve into it, but only succeed in receiving an impression, a memory of a memory.
I've failed Joshua...
...vanish into thin air.
It was then that Joshua realized two things, standing there and helping Roman shift logs and boulders. The first was that he should never mix healing Aura's as they would conflict, and weaken, and in time deteriorate.
This was a revelation that occurred when Ozpin lost feeling to his leg. Peeling back the ruined pants leg, he and Roman got to watch as the recently healed limb dissolved into a mess of blood and bone in real time.
It was after witnessing this that they recalled that Ozpin had healed Evanora in a similar manner.
And then...
...and then they were running, Oz... Joshua ordering Roman to move on his own, struggling to hobble and limp along after his teammate and friend, even as Roman vanished into the distance.
Joshua didn't remember the death: he never seemed to see it. He didn't remember the pain of loss: he never seemed to feel it. All he recalled... was a distant... scream... of pain...
...and sorrow.
I resurface from the memory, gasping, sobs threatening to escape from my throat. Beneath me, Joshua shakes, his body barely lucid, his eyes dancing behind their lids.
I try to regain my professional veneer, try and reorder my thoughts. I try and fail to return to how I was outside this damnable world in Joshua's mind.
A woman...any being with a soul knows that you can only be so close to a person, so far beyond intimate with a person, so much a part of them, before you can't live without them. Before you are dependent on them. Before you cannot imagine a world without them, a life apart from them.
And if you knew that person could never return your love for them, a love so juvenile, so fleeting, but still love*, then when you reached that point, you would break.
I slowing inhaled, separating myself from the pain and for a moment, from Joshua Ozpin. I had lost so much for Joshua that, in the end, I could not afford to lose him.
I had to do this. For my brother's in arms. For my sister on the battlefield. For the teammates that had become my family, I had to save him.
I retake the arm and slip it into place. This memory would be painful, perhaps beyond permanent bare. But I needed Joshua back.
I take his soul and I remember for him...
...the day we all died...
The Cilicia mountain range. A tall, majestic collection of valleys, gorges, cliffs and mountains. While not the tallest mountain range in the world, one could wander them for years, finding hidden grottos, secluded pine forests, grand waterfalls, and quiet pathways. This was a region of the world that had been left untouched by man and monster alike, the former for it's lack of easy to reach resources, the latter for it's lack of the former.
Yes, on any other day, the Cilicia mountains were a picturesque, silent world, well apart from the pains of Man and Faunus.
Not today though.
Today, towers of smoke emerged from the normally unconnected valleys. The tress were upturned, their roots splayed to the wind, their branches snapped and broken. The ground shook with explosions both near and far, the soil was upturned and upturned and upturned again as Faunus and Human stood against each other. The rivers ran red with blood.
In the center of all of this, wandered, meandered, and staggered the architect of this great travesty. Pain ran through his nerves, not a pain of wounds or sickness, but of what he saw. An agony of guilt thrummed through his arms, his legs, his heart. Nothing could sate this pain, nothing could erase what he saw. Pain was his world, horror, his companion.
Here and there, monuments to his eternal stupidity were erected. A soldier sobbed into their lover, whom only last night they had known. Two friends dragged each other across a field, hopeful for the first time in hours that seemed like lifetimes, before their lives were claimed by sniper fire. A youth that could barely call them self an elder bled out as he passed.
In the back of his mind, a whispered to him: 'this is what you wanted. This is why we helped the generals.'
He came to a halt, staring impassively at what today seemed to be almost normal sight. Two soldiers sat against trees, bleeding, dying, and talking. One waved to him, because he was human, and the waver was human, and the one who didn't wave was a Faunus, who merely scowled and tried to bleed out slower.
The memories always became fresh in his mind when he saw this sight, always reminded him of what he had done.
It had seemed trivial back then, in the beginning. The Faunus were disorganized, hilariously so. They had been united against their human slavers, more strongly bound together then any alliance or coalition of man, but without seemingly without guidance. Of the six cities that existed, the five human ones had rallied strongly in Menagerie, the backwater city, a dumping ground for heretics, disgruntled slaves, and creatures more animal then man. This had been what surprised everyone the most, that they had rallied in such a dilapidated city.
Against them rose the alliance of man: Vin, the city of mines and Dust, to supply the ammunition. Vale, the city of schools, to supply the generals and strategists. Vacuo, city of wealth, this up supply the food and water and loans. Atlas, city of fighters, to supply the soldiers and slayers and Huntsmen. Mistral, the city of the arts, to produce the propaganda, to supply the human world with living, able and eager conscripts.
It was supposed to be easy. "Back by winter," the enlisted soldiers said. The career Huntsmen and Huntresses had no such worries of when they would return. They had faced the greatest monsters that man had ever faced: surely a handful of animals that fashioned themselves man could not stop them.
This was a sentiment that lasted until the news that Vin, the greatest, oldest city on Vytal, had been annihilated. No survivors. No bodies. Rubble and debris for miles. Only a handful of it's citizens had been spared, because only that handful had been outside the city.
In one day, one fell swoop, the Faunus had gone from beasts that would be looked down upon to monsters, for whom even death was a mercy.
But even such an atrocity could not fully unite mankind. The generals of Vale looked down upon the generals of Mistral, seeing men unfit to fight. The nobles of Vacuo could not stand to be in the same room as the plebeian Marshall's of Atlas, who insisted on falling in line with their men and leading them personally. And the only general from Vin cried for the death of all Faunus, setting up suicide charges and tactics, trying to kill them all, and damn the casualties on his side. Perhaps this was why, after a year, that Atlas left the war, signing a quiet treaty with Menagerie and returning it's men and women to their homes.
In the beginning, they had lost battle after battle. The Faunus fought to their every advantage, supplementing their numbers with speed, destroying supply lines for the Human armies, attacking their camps with silent bombings and poison gas. The humans lost every battle they fought, could not defeat what they could not catch.
After two years... he couldn't stand by any longer.
What he had done... had been simple. Take a general's Aura, and slip it into another. This quiet exchange of souls, facilitated by his Leecher semblance, had changed the generals. Getting close was trivial: he had been brilliant at Beacon, smarter and more exacting then anyone else. He had been invited to the general's quarters often enough to gain more the just a passing familiarity with everyone. Perhaps this had clouded his judgement.
Brilliance, morale, aggression and control came together. The battles became more efficient, the casualties dropping off. A skirmish won here, an ambush avoided there, and suddenly mankind believed itself invincible.
They attacked Menagerie and razed it to the earth. The fires could be seen for miles. Women and children fled to the mountains, human combatants racing after them. Of the survivors, not a single one counted themselves unlucky. If they had seen a human, they owed that human their life for sparing them. The generals brought the united armies of humanity into the Cilicia mountains, ready to use sheer distance as a buffer against the Faunus army, prepared to flush out the survivors of Menagerie, and pay them back for every single death in Vin.
They said that the Faunus were one thousand miles away. This was true. They said that the Faunus wouldn't learn about Menagerie for weeks. This was true. They said that the Faunus could not possibly move an army of their size across the continent of Vytal in time to stop them.
The army kept saying this for the three days after they had arrived in the Cilicia mountains. At dawn on the first day, the Faunus army gave lie to their words.
Arrogance was what had caused this battle. The Faunus were enraged, but between them and the Humans were countless civilians. Their people stood between Faunus and Man. They called for a truce, reasoning that since the human's were unprepared, they would never leave the safety of their camp simply to march two days out and attack an unwilling enemy.
No one was surprised by the answer: "All soldiers of able body are to move on Faunus positions!" The soldiers left the camp, leaving only Ozpin, the generals, a handful of the wounded, and anyone else incapable of fighting or too important to die.
Joshua staggered through the mud, his shoes sinking into the bog that a charge of soldiers had turned the earth into. He struggled to free his feet, but failed and fell, more mud adding itself to his face. After a moment, he managed to pull himself back to his feet, trying to remember why he had come out here again.
The swirl of voices in his head was the worst of it though. After years of contact with others and an extravagant amount of time with the generals, Joshua Ozpin had built up quite the reservoir of souls, something along the lines of fifty. These voices...they needed to be controlled, and the only way to do that was to control himself.
Ozpin needed to rest, to stop, and almost did, right there in that muddied field. But thankfully, a voice, deep within his head, reminded him of what he needed to do: find Roman.
Josh righted himself, brushing the cold and soaking mud from his officers jacket. He bid fair well to the bleeding soldiers, unwilling to waste time and Aura healing them.
Had he been on the battlefield, Joshua probably wouldn't have realized that Roman was hurt. Most people wouldn't see a distant explosion and immediately realize that their friend was dying, wouldn't assume that the rising fireball heralded their companion's pass across this world. But then, people rarely had a semblance that let them absorb Aura.
It had been hard to describe the feeling: it was like someone had walked over his grave. He had heard stories of children feeling their parents emotions, feeling the Aura that had been passed into them during conception. Tales of parents who realized when their children were lying, twins that knew instinctually where the other was, spouses that could practically read each other's minds, fathers finding sons and daughters years after being separated from them. All because of a shared soul.
These had seemed like stories to Ozpin, but here he was, having abandoned the safety of the camp for the first time in months, slogging through the mud, approaching what every nerve and tendon of his being knew to be Roman's resting place.
The ground started to slope downward, the mud suddenly rendering what should have been a slow and cautious descent to a slide through wet earth. Joshua struggled to slow himself, but the sudden loss of traction was naturally remaking havoc on his balance. Without control, Ozpin turned into little more then a rock rolling down a hill.
The stop, fortunately, was smooth and slow, lacking the sudden jolt that a more painful fall would result in. Once again, Johua contemplated stopping. Once again, he pulled himself from the clinging, sickeningly brown mud that seemed to reek with iron.
It took him a moment to realize that the iron wasn't mud, but blood. Blood, mixed into the wet, turned topsoil, and soaked into his clothes. Blood, warming his chest both within and without. Blood, reeking and sickening and all together still too alive*.
Blood, drained from the bodies that littered the clearing he stood in, scattered like seeds to the wind.
In a far end, his face plastered with the iron scented mud, was a patch of flaming red hair, still as the grave.
"No no no no NO!" Joshua shot to Roman's side, faster then a bullet. The bloodied Huntsmen stirred, but did not open his eyes. Joshua pressed his hand to Roman's forehead, his Aura chasing his will into Roman's body like a cat after a rat. Metaburner Aura subsumed his own soul, drifting through his body and then focusing on his chest.
Sparks danced across the wounds, sealing gashes and ejecting shrapnel from the bomb. Bones heated and knitted back together. Punctured and deflated organs refilled with blood and sealed themselves. The liver, which had been completely eradicated by a sliver of metal the size of Joshua's finger, reformed and expanded, becoming brand new. The surging heat of the regeneration burned through Roman's shirt, and over coat. Thankfully, his cloak was back at the base camp.
Hot air flooded his chest. Ronan's eyes snapped open at the realization of the pain he was in was now merely the discomfort of the cold and mud. "Ja...Hurk." His body seized in convulsions, Joshua taking the moment to pick up his teammate and flip him onto his shoulder. "Joshua, what...Hurk, what happened?"
"Bomb. I came to get you." Joshua forced down the Metaburner Aura and tried to draw up his store of Accelerator to move himself and Roman out of the area. It felt like dragging a boulder through mud, the lone soul he had drawn the Aura from putting up more fight then the multitudes of souls he typically drew his semblances from.
There was a noise of branches scraping against each other, a cry of warning, and "fire!"
Joshua froze. The feeling of warm blood trickling down his back engulfed his senses. His body went into over drive, trying to feel the wound.
'No.'
Joshua fell to his knees, his heart racing, blood roaring in his ears.
'No.'
Pain was beyond his senses. Fear, unfelt. But rage...
Roman slipped from his back, staring up at the back of his friend's head, trying to marshal his thoughts.
"Arrrrrggggghhhh!"
Everything change.
Ozpin could feel them. The thousands of soldiers, all out there, all fighting, all dying. He took their souls. His power became a storm of deadly Aura, engulfing the valley. Around him for miles, people, Faunus, Humans, watched in horror and astonishment as their bodies dissolved around them.
Out in the fields, Glynda Goodwitch felt the Aura subsume her, absorb her, and joined the thousands as they dissolved into Ozpin's body. Next to Ozpin, Roman felt his Aura flicker, and melt into his friend's.
For a moment, the battlefield was empty. A still painting was all that seemed to remain, the center harboring a single living being, that felt no pain, no fear. It was connected to everyone, joined in body, mind and soul with the life forces of fifty thousand living beings. No survivors. No bodies.
'Let us go.'
And then, like a crack rippling through a window, Ozpin opened his eyes. The world was still, the air clear of noise. To his left, lay Roman, stunned. To his right was Glynda weeping.
And in his core, in his soul, screamed thousands. Ozpin screamed right along with them.
The world snapped into clarity around them. The starlight had moved beyond the tableau of the night to becoming a sun of its own. The stars burned high above, the near infinities that they seemed to display a warped mirror against which the human drama of Glynda Goodwitch and Joshua Ozpin played out. On to the stage laid the man, his memories just now restored, his eyes wet from tears unshed. Above him, looming like a sword of Damocles, Glynda.
"Are you...?" Glynda wrapped her arms underneath the man and lifted him, pressing him to herself. From the unconscious wreck to this, there was scarcely an iota of change. Glynda said nothing, but pressed the man further into her chest.
Finally, Joshua Ozpin over came the paralysis of his tongue. "Glynda...you know I hate that."
Glynda tightened her grip, her professionalism evaporating from the heat of relief. "I hate it when you endanger yourself like that."
"It was two people-"
"One of whom stabbed you in the brain. You didn't even know what you were getting into!"
"I had good intel."
"From where Joshua? From where?"
Ozpin made no comment. Glynda groaned, but after a moment a thin smile trickled on to her face and she tightened her grip even further. "Joshua, how do you expect me to protect you if you won't let me."
Joshua mumbled something.
"What was that Joshua?"
Joshua mumbled it again.
"What?"
Ozpin finally brought a hand up and pushed himself out of Glynda's chest. "Roman was there."
Glynda's smile died in a fire. Her own face started to contort in anger, before her professionalism reinstated itself and stopped her. "Joshua, Roman needs to die. He's too dangerous to be left alive. Look what he's done to you." 'Look what he's done to me' went unstated, but it hung in the air, poisoning her intent.
Ozpin disentangled himself from her arms and sat up, moving to level with her. "Glynda, I need to fight Roman. I need to try and save him."
"Joshua..." Glynda pressed her palm into her forehead. "Joshua, Roman is trying his damnedest to kill you. If you couldn't 'save' him earlier, then you can't save him now. He. Needs. To. Die. Or he will kill you first."
Ozpin exhaled an imaginary breath. "Save him, or die trying. Win, win."
Glynda stifled a little scream. "Joshua, we need you here. You can't just...abandon us."
Joshua pressed his hands into his face. "I need to save him. If I can't... I have nothing."
"You have Beacon. You have Vale." Glynda leaned on Ozpin's shoulder. "And you have me."
Ozpin closed his eyes. Above them, the cosmos turned, a simulacrum of the infinite clock of reality. Around them the enormous library groaned the thousands of paintings of the living, the trapped souls of Joshua. Finally, the world shuddered. "It's time we get out of here."
The stars and earth began to grow distant from each other. Glynda threw an arm across Ozpin's shoulders. Without hesitation, Joshua reciprocated for his friend. "I know that this is hard for you."
Glynda sighed. "I can do it. I'm doing it for you after all."
Joshua grunted. "If you didn't try so hard, you wouldn't suffer so much."
Glynda shrugged. "But then, you wouldn't be you."
"I know. Memory...is it really the hallmark of our identity?"
"It has made us who we are. And honestly, I'd rather not test that theory."
"It would be an interesting exercise. Our memories are supposed to deteriorate across the years."
"If you changed over time, would you respect yourself for whom you became?"
"Glynda, that is the money question."
"I don't want you to change."
"I shouldn't need to, but such is the curse of life."
"You shouldn't call it 'the curse of life'. It's sounds precocious."
"What one views as juvenile is merely what one believes to e beneath them."
"I could protest that."
The world was fading, but in the blur, as their personalities fully uncoupled and the wall that separated their depth from the world was reestablished. But in the shadows, Glynda felt a smile ghost Ozpin's lips.
"I would like to see you try."
The world recomposed itself into a room. A bed was to one side, a wardrobe on the other. Between them were a handful of basic amenities. A desk, a lamp and table...a carpet. "No offense Glynda, but wasn't there more furniture last time I was here?"
Glynda sighed, fixing Joshua's tie before he left. "It helps for me to have some space available. Apparently it's supposed to help me 'decompress' or something like that."
Ozpin chuckled lightly. "Well, at least that therapist I put you in contact with seems to be working."
Glynda rolled her eyes and finished the tie. "Will that be all Mister Ozpin?"
Ozpin smiled, and turned his feet to the door. "Thank you miss Goodwitch. I'll leave you to enjoy the rest of your day.
And once again, Glynda was totally alone.
A/N: Well, this took a bit too long. I'm cutting it all rather close, but it'll pay off in the long run. Enjoy everybody!