Chapter 7: These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

"This wasn't about failure or success. It was always going to be horror. I shouldn't have suggested it, and you shouldn't have listened to it."

— 14 —

Ozpin's secretary had activated the alarm.

It wasn't a call. Ms. Smiles at the CCTS front desk had pressed the button for the silent alarm straight to his office. It had been a long week between trying to reestablish communications with his otherwise silent allies in Damecrown and interviewing the members of Team BASS save Jaune over what they saw and did out on their mission. He had no need to debrief Jaune, the center of his little investigation, who had probably coached his team on what and what not to say. Ozpin thus had been staying late, parsing through the interviews to figure out what they were lying about, correlating the disparities in an otherwise unified front in order to find the real truth. They were all universally talking around something, and he knew it.

When the silent alarm went off, he switched his computer monitor over to the front lobby cameras, and saw them. Seven men in the uniforms of the Royal Army entering with a gust of late night snow from the outside. All armed, through none with weapons in hand. They fell in line behind a slight man wearing the wide-brimmed frontier hat iconic to the Valean First Cavalry. When he turned his head to spit out a cigarette onto the floor and stamp it out, Ozpin saw the lieutenant rank bars on either side of his lapel; the name slanted on one side of his uniform read Sousan.

In a single motion, he tipped his hat to Ms. Smiles and removed it, but otherwise didn't seem to acknowledge her. When she tried to stand up and ask what they were here for, they went for the elevator, with one of them telling Smiles politely yet firmly to mind her own business. There was only one student in the lobby, who gave the soldiers a wide berth as they passed. Ozpin switched cameras to see them take the elevator. And when he checked which floor they were going to, he swore under his breath.

They were headed to the CCTS comms center, where members of both Vale and Atlas worked. They shouldn't have been able to select the floor without proper access. But someone must have allowed them in. At this late hour, it had to have been Lsgt Ozrick, the very man Ozpin suspected had intercepted Velvet's video of Salem and forwarded it to Kornilov, and thus to Vale's current Prime Minister. Only last week, LaChance had authorized the Army to violate the Pomœrium, marching uniformed soldiers into Vale for the first time in nearly a century in order to throw General Ironwood out of Vale. The Atlas nationals still in the CCTS tower were scrambling to evacuate after their general.

Which meant some of them might still be there.

And the Royal Army was coming to finish the job.

Ozpin grabbed his cane and went for his personal lift. He did not need another goddamn disaster on his hands. It had been one after another after another since he allowed Team CFVY to bring BASS along with them on their mission. If his hair wasn't already white, it'd've lost all color by now.

The ride down to the comm center was short. Alone with his thoughts and worst case scenarios, it felt like a lifetime.

Long enough for him to steady his nerves. To calm his breathing. To meditate away the heat beneath the flesh of his chest. Half of his power and influence was merely in his ability to look like he was in control. Reality had a funny way of bending over to accommodate false perception.

It helped greatly when he walked into an armed standoff in the middle of some of the most expensive IT infrastructure on the entire planet.

"It would be in the interest of your health to put those back, Hans," Lieutenant Sousan was saying, his voice tinged with a faint Eranstani accent. While his tone was kind, the fact that he was using the slur Hans didn't do any favors.

On one side of the room stood various members of the Atlas armed forces. It looked to be about everyone who worked in the tower from that country, both day and night shifts together. Only three of them had weapons, their body armor looking haphazardly strapped on in a rush. They had coalesced around Technical Sergeant Eschweiler, one arm cradling a handful of small objects.

Sousan stood there, most of his men arrayed around him with weapons drawn. The exception was that pudgy bastard, Ozrick, unarmed and standing by his desk. His eyes looked frantic, hands raised.

"With all due respect, sir," Eschweiler said, a faint quiver in his voice as he stared down the rifle barrels, "these keys are the property of Atlas. We can't let you have them."

"Hans, you're being relieved of duty," Sousan said, holding his hat to his chest. "This tower belongs to Vale and we're asserting eminent domain. Your services are no longer desired. Play this cool and I'm authorized to evacuate you on our bullhead to your general. Put the guns down and come along. I don't want this to get ugly anymore than you do."

"Not without these keys!"

The lieutenant rolled his eyes. "So make copies real quick. I'm willing to accommodate so this doesn't turn into a shootout."

"That's not how these work!"

Sousan glanced at Ozrick. With a slight stutter before starting, the sergeant said, "They're symmetrical cryptographic keys, sir. Atlas uses them to encrypt communications to airships in the region. The symmetry means they all operate on the same wavelength, you know? If we got our hands on just one, we'd have keys to the kingdom, their entire cryptographic network. At least on the relevant hardware. They're not like brass keys; you can't just make a copy at your local hardware store."

"Ozrick!" Eschweiler snapped. He almost sounded betrayed.

All the Valean did was avert his eyes. The man's posture slumped slightly.

Sousan blinked. "You let Atlas run secret communications in our tower?"

"It was like that before I got stationed here, sir! The tower is technically international. Or, I guess, at least it was? We've got our own cryptographic infrastructure running out of this place too. There's stuff only they can touch, and stuff only we can touch."

The lieutenant thought it over for a moment. His expression darkened. "Hans, our two nations are not allies. I don't think you had the right to do that. The way I see it, you've been running illegal networks from within our tower. Those keys belong to machines on Valean soil. If you take those with you, it will be espionage."

Eschweiler scoffed, and the armed men around him tightened their grips on their weapons. "Beowolfshit!"

"I'm just here to make sure you get the message and have an easy way out of the country," Sousan said, tilting his head. "It's a courtesy after your general ran away with his tail between his legs. If my perfectly reasonable interpretation is wrong, I'm sure proper diplomatic channels will have them returned to you. Until then, they stay in their machine, and everything keeps running as normal. Do I make myself understood?"

"And give you dogs gods know how long to freely prod our cyphers?" He gave an unhinged laugh. The sweat was soaking through his uniform. "As if!"

One of the royal riflemen gave Sousan a questioning glance. Ozrick was shivering.

Ozpin banged his cane on the ground as he stepped into view. Three rifles instantly pointed his way, and he stared them all down. "There are three things even the wisest of men fear," he said softly, letting the acoustics of the room carry his voice. He walked almost casually forward, unconcerned with crossfire. "A storm at sea, the moon made whole, and the anger of a calm man. It's a very old saying, but one I have found true time and time again. There's a certain wisdom in old things that refuse to die, wouldn't you say, lieutenant?"

He stopped before Sousan, who was nearly a full head shorter. With a slight smile, he simply stood there. This close, he could easily read the 1st Cavalry unit patch on the lieutenant's arm. On the other arm, beneath the twin axes of Vale, was a deployment patch showing the Simurgh, the many-winged bird woman of Eranstani mythology. Jaune Arc, for whatever reason, had a stylized version of her as a tattoo. It meant that this officer had been deployed before and seen combat. To say nothing of the unit's involvement with Montluçon.

Ozpin could tell a killer by his eyes. He would know. After all, he looked at one every morning in the mirror.

Sousan took a step back, sizing the headmaster up. No one seemed to know what to do. Until the lieutenant cleared his throat and said, "Headmaster Ozpin, apologies for not coming to you first, but this is an issue of national security. I have the paperwork with me."

"Do you now?" he asked evenly.

The man didn't budge. "My orders come from as high as they get. Stand down, headmaster. This shouldn't concern you until we're done here. I cannot guarantee your safety unless you stand down and step aside this instant."

Ozpin focused on his breathing, letting Aura flow through his every vein and capillary. In a sudden motion, he grabbed Sousan by the collar with one hand and picked him up.

"Shoot me if you will, but command me nothing," he hissed, bits of spittle flying out. The officer gasped, his men aiming at Ozpin. "This is a neutral place. You will not start a shooting war in my academy. What you will do is turn around, pick up the cigarette you left in my lobby, and then politely arrive in my office to discuss your orders like civilized men do."

He released his hand and dropped the officer. To Eschweiler, he said, "Neither shall you leave. This place was built by Atlas for all free peoples. It belongs to all and none. While you are here in my service, you are under my protection. Until such time as I can guarantee your safe passage away, you will continue to maintain our systems. Do I make myself clear to all of you?"

Sousan had dropped his hand, and was now rubbing his throat. "You have no authority in this matter," he coughed out. "Either stand down, or we'll be forced to make you!"

Ozpin stared for a very long moment. Until his façade cracked, and all he could do was roll his eyes. "Oh, please," he said tiredly. He couldn't even bother to pretend like the threat had any weight.

The lieutenant reached for his sidearm. "I'm not repeating myself—"

With a motion faster than most eyes could even perceive it, Ozpin grabbed Sousan's hand. Ozpin leveled the officer's pistol at his own forehead. The movement made Sousan fire.

The single shot echoed throughout the entire room. Everyone froze. At first, nothing happened. No one could even properly process what had just happened. Until the sound of the broken, flattened bullet fell away from Ozpin's Aura and bounced on the metal grates of the floor.

"First come smiles," Ozpin said carefully. "Then the lies. Last is gunfire. And thus we've concluded the three stages of every negotiation. Throw that damn cigarette in the trash already. Unless you'd care to learn how many bullets it takes to get through the Aura of a Huntsman."

— 15 —

Ozpin saw no reason to stand from his desk as Sousan came up the lift, flanked on either side by a disarmed soldier. He gave Ozpin a hostile look before wiping it off for a kind of diplomatic blank. Ozpin enjoyed watching him cross the gap, walking across the wide floor while he just sat there and watched in silence.

Leaning forwards, Ozpin asked, "Didn't think it was worth it to come alone, lieutenant?"

Sousan stopped across from the desk, holding his wide-brimmed hat in his left hand. "Never speak to anyone in a position of authority alone, professor."

Ozpin made a show of looking to his left and right, and shrugged. "Then I'm glad my lonesome self isn't speaking to anyone like that."

The officer clicked his tongue. "Staff Sergeant Pétion?"

One of the men with Sousan, a large black man whose scales implied dragon somewhere in his lineage, stepped forwards. He handed his officer a manilla folder. Sousan opened it up briefly, pretended to read it, and then slid it across Ozpin's desk.

"What is this?" Ozpin asked.

"Read it," Sousan said simply.

Ozpin made no motion for it. "I didn't ask for instructions. I asked what it was."

The lieutenant compressed a noise in his throat, saying nothing.

Folding his hands on the desk, Ozpin said, "Sousan, you're Eranstani, right? I see the Simurgh on your arm. You've obviously been on the frontier for some time. Is this your first time back in civilization since you joined? Through the pomœrium, at least."

"I didn't 'join,' professor," Sousan said tersely.

Slowly, Ozpin nodded. And then, switching to the Eranstani he had learned lifetimes ago, he said, "A conscript yourself, then. How ironic that the men to whom we entrust the defense of our freedom are so often those denied the chance to enjoy it."

Sousan's eyes widened fractionally. The men around Sousan gave him a questioning look. He looked like he was trying to process what he'd heard before he replied in Eranstani himself.

"You speak like you're reading from holy texts; no one talks like that anymore," Sousan said in a dialect that somehow sounded slurred to Ozpin's ear.

"You'll have to forgive me; I'm out of practice," Ozpin said with a simple shrug. "There was a time when Eranstani was the lingua franca for Vacuo and much of middle Sanus. Before Vale and its language subsumed it and your entire people. Much like the last Tsarina of Graad, the great king of kings was made to bend the knee to his betters. The great Simurgh of Eranstan betrayed her people, selling her sons like you to those who held her chains for the privilege to simply exist."

Sousan scowled. "What are you getting at, old man?"

Ozpin spread his hands. "That you of all people, lieutenant Sousan, should know when to roll over for your betters. We are civilized men here in Vale. And we Huntsmen are its most barbarous watchmen. So when I tell you to explain what's in your paperwork, you do not get to make demands back of me; you simply obey."

The man tensed, lowering his head to protect his neck. As if he actually thought he had a chance if he tried to fight. Although his men clearly didn't understand what was being said, they instinctively knew something dangerous was afoot.

"You—"

A quick motion of Ozpin's hand. Sousan flinched, taking a step back. Ozpin simply smiled as he reached for his late night cup of coffee and enjoyed a long pull.

"I'm glad you understand the situation, lieutenant. Now tell me what it's in this paperwork and why I should care even the slightest for what it contains."

Sousan slowly rallied himself, settling his nerves. Eventually, his posture returned to a sort of military professionalism. But his eyes betrayed an inner fire that was painfully enjoyable to witness. "We've abrogated le loi du Pomœrium in the interests of national security. While Beacon is not technically within it, we've been authorized to strengthen our garrison here to take over for the Atlesians no longer welcome within our borders. These orders come from the Prime Minister, who is your technical employer as well. I'm to oversee the foreigners' removal and the transition team. You are to assist us."

"We'll be severely handicapped by the loss of the Atlesians," Ozpin said. "I doubt they'd care to train hostile replacements to ensure a smooth transition."

"I understand it's already been going slowly," Sousan said, turning his head slightly. "Lance Sergeant Ozrick claims a student who helped operations has been absent on mission and has since been relieved of duty."

Ozpin felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. "Yes, Mr. Arc. He was serving there as a punishment since served. It's why he was not invited to assist tonight. His services were no longer needed."

Sousan looked meaningfully at the paperwork and any orders doubtlessly within. "Ozrick disagrees, and I'm inclined to trust my men's judgement. Have him assist our transition team. We don't care if you offer to hire him or trump up another charge to punish him back into our services. Doesn't matter. It'll ensure CCTS operations continue with minimal hiccups."

Tapping fingers on the desk, Ozpin said, "Need I remind you whose students these are, whose academy this is?"

The lieutenant stared at the fingers, as if wary they'd suddenly stretch our several feet to pluck his eyes out. "If you'd rather an inexperienced team accidently down the entire kingdom's communications, I'm sure the public would be perfectly understanding."

"For a man who claims to trust his men so much, you have comically little faith in them." He almost wished he was speaking plainly, so the soldiers beside Sousan could understand the slight.

"I trust, but verify," Sousan said smoothly. "But this is too important a matter to risk an inability to verify."

"Yes, imagine what would happen in distant Eranstan if Damecrown could no longer rattle their chains."

The look behind Sousan's eyes sharpened. "All Sanus would go dark. Terror, fear, and panic would spread like pestilence. The railroads can only go so fast. The riled demons at the fringes would swarm in to plug the gaps. And is not your job as a Huntsman, the reason we built Beacon around the tower, to ensure the protection of civilization from the monsters? Or are you so stubborn you'd shirk your duty just to project strength to me?"

Ozpin put his hands together, leaning forwards fractionally. He stared Sousan down, weighing his thoughts and options. Until all he had left was the taste of blood in his mouth. And his shoulders felt twenty pounds heavier. "I have sway over the Atlesians here. I'll ensure the transition goes smoothly until they are properly relieved."

"And the helpful student?"

Ozpin resisted the urge to purse his lips. "I'll handle it as I see fit, lieutenant. There will be no trouble; I'll see to that personally. If you intend to stay on campus, my secretary can assign you rooms in the dorms we have set aside for any garrison. You are dismissed."

Sousan didn't move.

Switching back to a language everyone understood, he said, "You are dismissed, lieutenant Sousan."

He waited for the men to turn and leave. He watched them disappear into the elevator. And only after he saw them speaking to Ms. Smiles at the front desk did Ozpin allow himself a breath to relax. He put his face in his hands and just sat there in long silence. The surplus of caffeine today was giving him vague frissons of heart palpitations. He wished Glynda hadn't already gone home for the day just so he'd have someone to talk to.

Ozpin wasn't sure how long he was like that. But at some point his hands grew numb. He opened the folder on his desk, and then took out the automatically made transcripts of his post-mission interviews with Team BASS. Even when Ozpin was trying to subtly push Jaune out and to the side to deal with him at a more opportune time, the bastard somehow managed to become front and center to Ozpin's current problems.

Jaune had that feather with the magical aura. He had been front and center with some unknown blonde girl when he used it to summon Salem's apparition. It wasn't particularly hard to figure out; he had just activated an old device of a type he himself had once used in a previous life to speak to the woman he was then married with across continents. She had probably been expecting Ozpin. But one way or another, Jaune had caused the Grimm attack that had rattled the kingdom to its core, collapsed an entire government, and had led to this current geopolitical abomination.

His teammates had covered for him. Either that, or they didn't know. Ozpin wasn't sure what was scarier. Even Team CFVY seemed unsure. They only knew that they had seen something, and it troubled Fox especially. Digging into it just made them clam up. For both teams. To the point that he actually felt worried for their mental health enough to back off.

BASS wasn't even supposed to be there. Ozpin had his eye on Coco Adel as someone important. But he never would have dreamed of even hinting at the truth to her if she hadn't seen something she wasn't supposed to. She could easily be the kind of student who might one day replace him as headmaster. She was an asset in her own way, the same as Ruby Rose and her silver eyes. And yet, almost completely on their own, they had wound up close friends with Jaune. As if the boy knew exactly who Ozpin's most important investments were, and sought them out. What was supposed to be a useful lesson for Ruby had instead gone to Jaune, who had done all of this for reasons Ozpin couldn't fathom. It would almost be easier to imagine Jaune was somehow bumbling into these events, and that this pattern was completely random.

And now, Coco and Ruby seemed to be on his side. The Schnee heiress was his friend. The daughter of the former leader of the White Fang was too. Even Qrow seemed amicable to him, judging from something Ruby mentioned when he interviewed her after her mission.

To say nothing of Ruby's text. Ozpin could read everything a student sent on a Beacon-issued scroll; students consented to it there on page seven of the end-license agreement they all agreed to have read. He still couldn't wrap his mind around just how horrifying it was to read Ruby and Jaune flirt about apparently sleeping together.

Jaune Arc: Fuck you

Ruby Rose: ;) okay when?

Jaune Arc: use the leftover money to buy condoms

Ruby Rose: I'm getting strawberry flavored ones

Because really, how else was he supposed to interpret a text between a descendant of one of his past lives and one of the last Silver-Eyed Warriors left in the world that read like that? It would be less raunchy if they were sending each other nude photographs. Which Ozpin would also be forced to look at as he continued to monitor Ruby and Jaune.

Ozpin felt the world around him shrinking. The noose tightening. To the point where, for just a moment, he contemplated killing himself. Seriously thought it over. In the hopes that when he emerged behind a new pair of eyes, the playing field would have leveled itself out back to something he could manage.

But the thought vanished quickly, leaving him with a hot sense of shame.

It was all just… so much.

He couldn't account for this. Couldn't make sense of the way the world was going around him. When assassins had struck at Amber, his previously chosen Fall Maiden, there was almost something comforting about it. He had fretted and feared, but it was proof that business was as usual. Salem's newest agents were acting like they always did, time and time again. The faces changed much like his own, but the goals never did. Seek the Maidens, acquire the Relics, and use them for reasons he had almost stopped caring about since the first time she murdered him.

There was comfort in the routine. In the knowing. A certain ça ira to working towards and against the only thing he had known since the Number on his arm read 2.

Salem was almost predictable. He touched the tattoo under his arm. She and him had been like two celestial objects, drawn into each other's gravitational well until they would inevitably collide once and for all in a blaze of destruction; that had been the case for seventy-three faces.

But Jaune?

Even if Salem kept her emotions guarded, he knew her well enough to recognize it in her eyes from the video. She had been just as surprised to see him as he wasn't. The boy was just as unexpected to her as he was to Ozpin.

He stood and went to a radio. It was almost an antique. But the old things were familiar, comforting. And he felt an urge to tune into the classics.

Ozpin was halfway towards reaching into a cabinet for an old glass of bourbon, before remembering he'd traded it to Croaker in exchange for allowing Coco to leave the hospital early. It was better for her mental health that way; he knew how she operated, and how poorly she would handle being caged up. He allowed himself a small laugh and went for something on the bottom shelf.

Until the next song came on the radio.

And he heard that fucking song. As if, wherever she was, the woman he once loved was mocking him. Finding yet another way to play a new version of an ancient song on a station Ozpin enjoyed. To torment him with memories he could never fully forget. The language changed, the instruments changed, the genres changed, but over the millennia the tune and meaning remained the same.

Ozpin remembered those words in a language that no longer existed, a soft hum choked out between quiet sobs. Her voice, as she stroked his hair, feeling the sweat soaking through his clothes as he laid his head on her lap. Once upon a time, she hadn't known what music was. Didn't know what dancing was. Didn't know the first thing about being a human being.

That fucking song had been something he learned from his mother, a woman so long dead he couldn't even remember her face. He'd played the song for Salem on a lute, and realized he might truly love this girl when he saw how wide her gorgeous blue eyes were, how awestruck her smile grew, and how enraptured she was by an instrument months out of tune as he played with it by the campfire the night he'd rescued her from her lonesome tower.

Ozpin remembered Salem trying to sing it. She'd never been any good at it. She'd been adorably bad at so many things, but it never stopped her from trying and enjoying the learning, and it was why he had loved her. She'd been so earnest in her naïveté. And when the deathly fever shuffled him off this mortal coil for the first time, it had been all she knew how to do.

Stroking his hair, her tears falling onto him as he rested his head in her lap. As she sang the song softly, and he died in her arms.

He didn't realize he was channeling his Aura until his grip shattered the bottle of alcohol. It's splashed all across his jacket and pants. Ozpin stepped back in surprise, nearly slipping on broken glass. He bumped the table and the radio fell over. The old thing hit the puddle of alcohol hard. It let out a ferocious squawk as the liquid got inside, the volume going high enough to nearly blow the speakers.

Ozpin lunged to pick the antique up and cut his finger on broken glass. He hissed, trying to stop the sound. All it did was scream in fried electronics as he tried to lower the volume. Nothing worked. He punched it. And then hit it again, and harder, before just smashing it against the ground. It broke apart in a frenzy of old wood, copper, and whatever was left of the broken bottle of bourbon.

He stared at the mess for a very long moment. Alone in the silence, his pants stained with golden brown liquid, his shoes sticky, and his favorite antique radio destroyed.

It hit him all at once. "GOD DAMNIT!" he screamed, kicking at the broken pile of junk. Stomping at it until the glass was powder and shoes ruined.

Ozpin stumbled back to his desk and collapsed.

He couldn't deal with his students. He couldn't deal with the military or Ironwood. Couldn't do anything about a geopolitical crisis he had allowed to happen. And now he couldn't even enjoy a fucking song. He was losing control over everything, and he didn't know how to stop it, and nothing had ever been like this before, and he just didn't know what to do. It was just all so many tears in the rain, everything he had worked for for so long.

His hand shook as he reached for his cup of coffee. There wasn't much left, but maybe something could help. Of course, he found it cold and worthless. He put Aura into his hand and threw the cup as hard and far as he could in a random direction. It hit one of the walls, smashing into more debris he'd have to clean up, its black contents spewing across a wall-mounted calendar.

As the coffee ran down the wall, he stared at the mess. His own actions stained a physical representation of his own future, right there on the calendar, from the scheduled school dance, to upcoming missions. All of it soaked through and black.

Something dawned on him. He stood up and went to the soaked bit of paper and pulled the month away to February. That was the month between mission seasons. December was the semester break, January held the first batch of missions, then a month to recover and study, followed by intermittent missions again in March and April, until the year ended with the Vytal Festival.

It was weeks away on a weekend, but there it was. The school dance, a rather vapid waste of time that he nevertheless maintained so as to never forget that his students were still children. They enjoyed this kind of thing. It was good for spirits and morale and it made them happy. And occasionally it helped separate the wheat from the chaff; there was usually at least one pregnancy resulting from this that removed someone from next year's starting semester.

Ozpin stared at the calendar, and thought. Part of the reason he didn't know what to do with Jaune was because he couldn't figure a way to get rid of him discreetly. He had stayed out of administrative trouble and he couldn't remove him that way, to say nothing of how it would mean he would be free at the end of the day; merely sidelining him until he caused some future disaster outside of Ozpin's control would almost be a worst case scenario. Jaune hadn't died on a dangerous mission. And he was almost constantly surrounded by people like Ruby or Coco or the soldiers he worked with during his detention.

Ozpin wondered. Ask Team CFVY and BASS to help organize that stupid dance. Get them involved and put them out there, all in one guaranteed place, and have a surprise problem go off in the CCTS tower requiring his help.

The idea was stupid. Ridiculous. Almost cartoonish levels of silly. But with just the perfect amount of moving parts where he could almost feel like he was back in control of his academy.

With just a careful mastering of events behind the scene, he could fulfill Sousan's desire for the IT team and orchestrate a moment where Jaune would be alone. He would be completely separated from his teammates, his friends, and his allies, in a place where no one would suspect Ozpin. Where he could finally confront the boy safely.

Where, if he needed to kill Jaune once and for all, he could properly ensure no one could tie the sudden disappearance back to him.

And if they did suspect him, Ozpin was sure that by then, no one would have any doubt that he had done the right thing.

Ozpin would make sure of that.

If all else was lost, it might not even matter. Because when all else failed, when he did everything he could, he could rest comfortable in the routine, the habit. For these violent delights always had violent ends.

Ozpin could always put on a new face and make the Number on his arm read 74.