Rumours (Part 1)
"Sir, thank you for responding to my request."
"It's no trouble at all, …" Ozpin trailed off as he struggled to recollect the student's name, covering up his slip up by wisely taking a sip of the room temperature coffee on his desk.
Ugh.
Nevermind. Maybe it wasn't that wise of him.
What was his name again? Lü Bu? The Hu? Jungkook? Asa Akira?
Wait, no, that last one was the name of some woman Qrow had been bragging about for the past week or so, and the one before that was from one of those Mistralian boy pop groups or whatever that Glynda obsessed over so vehemently ever since Professor Peach introduced her to them.
Ozpin only remembered that because he hated everything about that horrifying incident. Was this really what kids were listening to these days?
At least they had good music when he was a kid. Ozpin only enjoyed the classics like Hurrian Hymn no. 6. He swore, music started to go downhill as soon as the Mistralian lyricists showed up.
What a waste of talent-
"My name is Lie Ren, sir."
"Ah, yes! Sorry, I had just gotten distracted with my workload today, Mr. Ren. It's been a very busy day" He pinched the sides of the bridge of his nose together.
"No, it's fine, sir." Ren dismissed as he took a seat in the worn, wooden ladderback chair Ozpin gestured him to. "I understand that I don't leave the same kind of impression as the rest of my teammates."
Truth be told, he liked it that way.
"Now, how can I help you, Mr. Ren?"
The light from the sunset bathed the room in a transcendent orange through the window behind Ozpin Osbourne.
Ren steeled himself.
"I'd like to talk to you about my team leader."
"What about Mr. Arc? Has something come up?"
"Well, something happened in our last mission with team RWBY and Doctor Oobleck. I understand you have already read his report, but I implore you to hear me out if it's not too much of a problem."
Ren took a deep breath.
"After we reached the vault, Doctor Oobleck told us to turn around before something…. otherworldly appeared behind him. I'm sure you're familiar with it already."
"It called itself DO THE EVOLUTION, correct?"
Lie Ren stoically nodded.
"When it attacked, it was unlike any Grimm or Huntsman I had ever seen before. It looked like a horror movie monster more so than anything else, but it acted like a human in how it spoke and listened in on our strategies."
Ren could feel his frustration rise as he recounted their bitter defeat.
"Thankfully, Jaune managed to pin it down and kill it, which-I admit-it made me uneasy, seeing my team leader kill without hesitation like that, but I do recognize why it was necessary." Ren's fist angrily tugged at his uniform pants. "But that's also not what I wanted to discuss with you."
The instant Lie Ren mentioned how Jaune Arc had killed DO THE EVOLUTION, he swore he could have seen Ozpin's eyes sparkle mysteriously.
"Out of curiosity, Mr. Ren, what was this… thing like? Could you perhaps describe it in more detail?"
The back of the chair started to feel like it was digging into his back as Ren writhed in discomfort.
"It was like an anomaly. Something alien… Unlike the Grimm, which share some degree of aspects regarding their anatomy among all species, it didn't really have any body parts that made sense." Ren scooted his chair up to better look the Headmaster in the eye. "For example, it looked completely mechanical with wire arms and a metallic torso, but when Jaune hurt it, it screamed in pain and begged him to stop. What's more, it bled."
He frowned. It couldn't have been mechanical. If that had been the case, then Pyrrha would have been able to take it out with her semblance. He doubted a tournament fighter like her would ever miss a detail like that.
"For some reason, it was able to phase itself through almost all our attacks, and, at the time, I thought it was invincible, especially since it could incapacitate our own aura by just touching us gently whenever we moved."
"Was this a semblance?" Asked Ozpin, who raised one eyebrow.
It couldn't have been. If it was a semblance, then its aura would have healed its wounds or would have better defended itself when Jaune was on top of it.
"No, it wasn't-" replaying the event in his head, Ren was struck by an epiphany and widened his eyes. "I don't think it was using aura."
Ozpin's other eyebrow went up.
"I know I'm just asking the same questions, but how was it different? Could you describe what it felt like instead, if not aura?"
His brow furrowed. In the heat of the fight, the surreal-almost indescribable-aspects of exactly who or what his enemy was hadn't mattered to him. Ren had simply been too preoccupied with the sensation of his ribs being crushed by Ruby's head at the time.
"If I had to explain it broadly..." Ren internally fought with himself over how to best put the experience into spoken words. "I'd say it felt both wild and uncontrollable, yet confined and enslaved."
Though Ozpin had gotten a grasp on what the pink-streaked young man meant with his vague language, the Headmaster found himself deeply interested, leaning forwards in his chair and onto the elbows pressing against his desk. Lie Ren and, by extension, the rest of team JNPR had caught his attention, especially when Ozpin considered one detail that the boy in front of him overlooked.
How did Jaune Arc manage to pin down a creature that could phase through any attacks from the rest of the expedition group?
Ozpin made a mental note for later.
Unlike the static nature of aura, magic possessed a weight to it when used. Not physically, but a mentally taxing weight that would increase inversely with the amount of magic used over time. Although one's magic supply may gradually return over the course of a day or so, the added weight of the soul never went away. No matter how much time passed or how much weight accumulated. Unfortunately.
Whatever his student described was certainly not that.
"What do you mean by that, Mr. Ren?"
Nodding to himself, Ren settled on a way to best clarify the meaning to his imprecise diction. "Instead of static, it felt more… dynamic than aura, but not without some rigidity to it. It was like someone took a water tank and managed to create an intense, perpetual whirlpool inside of it. Like a raging animal that had been caged up and forced to follow a script, if that makes sense."
Ozpin placed a hand on his right knee and squeezed. Intrigued, he subconsciously leaned forwards towards his student, as if to better absorb the information.
Hmmmm….. That definitely wasn't anything he had ever heard before.
"... And how does this relate to your leader, Mr. Ren?"
Ren took a deep breath.
"That's the problem, sir. After he… killed DO THE EVOLUTION, his aura…" Ren struggled to put his thoughts into words. "His aura disappeared."
Oh. Now that was truly interesting, wasn't it?
As Ozpin's gaze grew, for a split second, Ren felt like he had become prey for the Headmaster. As if that curious glint in his stare would devour him, along with anything else in the wake of it.
When Ozpin pressed a slender finger against the microphone button in his office, the unused announcement system fired up after what seemed like decades of unuse, as made apparent by the crackles and pops that burst forth from the speakers across the school.
"Would the members of team JNPR please come to the Headmaster's office? I repeat, would the members of team JNPR please come to the Headmaster's office?"
When he met eyes with Ren, the blood in Jaune's veins simultaneously boiled and froze as he entered the Headmaster's office alongside his partner and Nora.
Jaune knew what this was going to be about, and he really couldn't get rationally angry at Ren for keeping his own safety in mind by doing this. It showed that he cared about his friend at the very least.
Jaune's fist tightened irrationally, and Pyrrha's breath quickened with the realization of what was likely coming next. Ren had told Ozpin of Jaune's medical condition-an action that Pyrrha herself couldn't find the will to do, meaning Pyrrha was going to lose him and return to her suffocating isolation. Her friends would fall out and separate themselves from her, and Pyrrha would find herself unable to put herself out there without the courage Jaune had unknowingly supplied her
Not that she couldn't socialize without him. He just encouraged her to be genuine by his own honesty.
Pyrrha Nikos' heart burned.
On the opposite side of Jaune, Nora was far too oblivious to really catch a grasp on the events in front of her and attempted to find chairs for her other team members, spotting two in the far corner of the room and darting over to place underneath the butts of her intrepid leader Jaune Arc and her awkward best friend-not including Ren, of course, he was her super best friend and butt-buddy-Pyrrha Nikos.
Nora herself sat in midair next to Renny in an imaginary chair, much to Pyrrha's apparent confusion.
What?
Every day was leg day for Nora Valkyrie.
Jaune cleared his voice. "Sir, if this is about the aura thingy, I-"
"Do you consider me a good person, Mr. Arc?"
Briefly surprised by the sudden question, Jaune's hand came to his chin and scratched at his recently shaven skin. Of course Ozpin was a good person. He ran a school that focused on taking down the Grimm and saving the lives of innocents. It wasn't like he was-
"Because I certainly don't."
Jaune fell deeper into confusion with Pyrrha and Ren falling close behind.
Comparatively, Nora was currently picking her nose with her right pinky.
"Why do you say that, sir?" Pyrrha asked, intrepidly egging the white-haired man in front of her. "You run an academy dedicated to the removal of the enemies of humanity and faunus alike."
"Yeah, what Pyrrha said!" excitedly agreed Nora, "How can someone like you ever-"
"I was fully aware of Mr. Arc's forged transcripts and his lack of aura when he enrolled at Beacon and even before I launched him to Emerald Forest."
A restless silence enveloped the room.
Eyes wide and jaw agape, Jaune Arc nervously looked to his side to find that his partner had begun to rotate her head towards him as well.
Red lights blared in Lie Ren's skull.
While he didn't care about his leader's forgery-neither Ren nor Nora had gone to combat school either, Ren felt the floor drop from under him.
This guy. If he was already aware of Jaune possibly dying thanks to his lack of aura, then that would mean…
"In fact, I had fully expected you to die then. Mostly because it'd make for an interesting initiation."
"Sir, what are you saying?" Jaune reasoned as he fidgeted in his seat uncomfortably. "You can't be serious, right sir?"
The expression of the Headmaster's face told Jaune otherwise, much to his teammates' concern. Even Nora had dropped her seemingly permanent, mischievous smile in favor of a more solemn frown.
"Mr. Arc, you were accepted and enrolled into Beacon simply because I found your exploits to be amusing, and I was curious to see how long you could stay afloat at this school regardless if you rose to the occasion or if you failed along the way." Ozpin decidedly took another sip of his coffee. "In a way, you're still here because…" Ozpin gestured for Jaune to finish his thoughts.
"... Because of chance, right?" His upper lip curled back slightly as he tightened his fist once more, causing the injuries in his cast to act up but simultaneously chaining up his anger. Anger at both Ozpin and the circumstances he found himself in.
"Precisely. Now tell me, knowing all this, do you still think I'm a good person?"
The tension in the air was palpably thick.
No.
"Well, you still are saving lives by killing Grimm, right?" Jaune admitted. "So in that case, the ends justify the means. So yes. You are ultimately a good person."
The smile adorning the Headmaster's face became sadistic and feral. Jaune Arc definitely was a peculiar subject, now wasn't he? A liar so talented that he fooled even himself.
Oh, now that was oh so very familiar to him.
He wanted to see this story play out to its logical conclusion. Whatever that may be. Ozpin took a sublime comfort in the unknown future.
"In that case, Mr. Arc, how about we play a game?"
Ren did not appreciate where this conversation was headed, and Pyrrha was put on edge. Nora, however, felt a swell of animalistic excitement rush through her.
"I'll give you-and your team-three days off from school to prove to me that you have some hidden potential. To prove to me that you're still interesting. That you can succeed here at Beacon without something like aura. Prove to me that you're meant to be here."
Pyrrha rose up in denial. "But sir! Isn't that impossible? Couldn't Jaune die if he's not addressed properly? What's stopping any one of us from leaking this info to the school?"
"Because I know you wouldn't want to ruin your friend's reputation, now would you, Ms. Nikos?" Ozpin's hand gestured to her leader. "If you couldn't privately come to me with this information, then how could you publicly leak it? You still care for him. In fact, the reason why you would want to tell me of this was for his own safety, right?" His hand then moved to Ren. "And I imagine it's the same case for you, too, right?"
Ren conceded. "True, sir, but-"
"Besides, I very much doubt you three truly want your leader to go."
Ozpin sighed. "People have a tendency to be dishonest with what they truly desire deep down in their hearts out of some feigned misinterpretation of selflessness." His coffee mug was raised back to his mouth as he poured the last of that addictive, soul-restoring mediocre drink down his throat. "In reality, the world is much more complicated than that."
Pyrrha suddenly felt very small.
"Give yourselves some credit and enjoy yourself. Ask yourselves, what do you really yearn for?" Pyrrha's line of sight drifted to Jaune's golden locks of hair.
"As for you, Mr. Arc, I'll let you stay on this one condition. I'm asking for you to become something more. To go beyond what it means to be human…" Ozpin trailed off. "You've already run into something extraordinary once before. Now, you just need to become extraordinary yourself. Do you accept this game?"
Jaune looked up from Ozpin's desk and took the next step of the only path he could follow.
"Yes, sir."
"Renny, I never took you to be a snitch." Nora chided playfully. "Now, Jauney has every right to shank you!"
"We're not in a prison, Nora."
"Oh yeah? How do I not know if you're just telling me that to lower my guard, Renny?" Nora's index finger prodded at Ren's right cheek.
"Nora, quit harping on him." Jaune interjected as the team walked back to their dorms. "Ren was just trying to look out for me. It's no big deal, really."
"Hmmmm… if you say so." Nora twisted around and poked at Ren harder. "But I'll have my eye on you, Mister Lie Ren! If that's even your real name!"
"Nora, you two have known each other for over ten years." Pyrrha frowned.
"Maybe that's just what he wants me to think!"
Dang it.
How was someone like him supposed to "become extraordinary" within the span of three days? What does that even mean?! That was way too vague!
How the heck was he supposed to find another lead on something like that DO THE EVOLUTION thing? It wasn't like an opportunity would suddenly present itself out of the blue.
Fate never made it easy for Jaune, now did it?
His gaze focused on the floor tiles ahead of him, Jaune failed to notice the figure in front of him, causing them to collide and fall down on the ground.
"Oh good, it's you, Jauney boy." Cardin Winchester brought himself up from the floor before stopping himself from lending a helping hand to Jaune. "I've been meaning to ask you about someone."
Taking out his scroll from his back pocket, Cardin ignored the hateful glares coming from the two females of the group.
Eh, Cardin wasn't interested in red heads to begin with. He always preferred black hair himself. Any chick with scarlet or orange hair just reminded him of his Ma.
Which was really fucking gross.
"So is this a relative of yours or something? Because he ended up doing some weird shit to me that I need to pay him back for." Cardin paused as he remembered the wrinkly sensation of flesh in his hands.
No, Cardin was NOT gay, no matter how much Ma told him it would be fine with her if he was!
On Cardin's screen, a blond haired man with the same shade of cerulean blue eyes as Jaune rode atop of his horse with a perplexed expression. The outfit he wore could only be described as a mix between a sailor and a cowboy costume with the addition of a hoodie.
"I don't know what he did, but whatever it was, it wasn't aura."
Jaune's spine writhed in pain for a split second.
Chance, huh?
"Have the others found the locations of the Corpse yet?" US President Amadeus asked his subordinate. "When Johnny Joestar took it, I was sure he was headed back to Japan to likely cure his wife, Rina Joestar, and had he approached me with the request, I'd have likely given it an approval."
"No, sir, not yet."
Amadeus sipped his afternoon tea before checking his watch.
5:30 p.m.
Despite the media claims of alcoholism, President Amadeus was very conservative with his drinking. Limiting it to one can a week at only one specific time on Monday.
"Hey, Mr. Oracle Odyssey, do you know how to drink a can of beer in ten seconds?"
The man with a diagonally striped purple vest twisted backwards in curiosity at the sudden subject change from the young, bespectacled government official.
"No, sir, but is it really appropriate for us to-"
Amadeus pressed a gloved finger to his lips.
"Hush. Ever since my stand sent him away to a distant world along with the Corpse, we basically guaranteed victory as long as we don't get hasty and do something stupid like how my predecessor once did." Amadeus stepped back. "Now watch this."
President Amadeus grabbed a can from the cooler beside the oval desk he was currently leaning on before he placed a slender hand on top of the beer can.
And ripped open the entire top before guzzling down the drink, crushing the can as he did to further speed up the process.
"Tada!~"
Oracle took a step back.
"Woah! Sir, that was very impressive!" He faked as he sweatdropped internally.
"I know, right?"
Amadeus' goofy expression and genuine smile switched to deadly serious on a dime.
"Now, I don't care how you and your team get the parts back. You can kill, rape, pillage, or whatever all you like." Oracle perversely smiled. "Just don't bring that back to this world, please. I don't care for the citizens or innocents of that place. My own country comes first."
Rounding his hands together to create what looked like a telescope, Amadeus looked through it at his subordinates.
"Now, go."
Five figures covered in shadows disappeared from Earth to venture into the unknown.