Chapter 18
"Before we get started, I suppose you'll need some proof that I am who I say I am," Ozymandias suggested after everyone had settled down within his office.
"I mean, the fact that you mentioned Jasmine shows that you know us, or know about us at the very least, but...well, no offense, but that could've just been from history books and whatnot, you know?" Jean reasoned.
Ozymandias only gave a light chuckle in response. "None taken. After all, I did do my best to keep the memory of your teams alive despite all the years that have passed. That said, however, I doubt many history books would dare to mention how the supposed 'Invincible Girl' was defeated by a young Silver-Eyed Warrior in a food fight."
Ruby gasped. "It is you. How?!"
The professor couldn't help but give a tired sigh here. "I told you once that I made more mistakes than any man, woman, and child on this planet...and I wasn't exaggerating. For thousands of years, I've walked the surface of Remnant, living, dying, and reincarnating into the body of a like-minded soul. The one you know as 'Professor Ozpin' was not my first form, and clearly wasn't my last. It's...an extraordinarily strenuous process on everyone involved."
"So who… what are you?" Jaune couldn't help but ask.
"I am the combination of countless men who've spent their lives trying to protect the people of Remnant," Ozymandias explained, "With every rebirth, my soul is eventually merged with another, and I am changed, but my memories stay with me. All of this is to ensure I complete a task that was assigned to me by the gods themselves...a task that unfortunately is impossible while you are here."
"Whoa, hold on" Rachael interrupted. "That's a rather pessimistic position to take."
"Perhaps I should elaborate," Ozymandias remarked, a reserved smile on his face. "It's not that I don't desire your help, it's that your help is not required in the here and now. After all, this is not the future you are fighting for, now is it?"
"...you want or rather need us to go back to the past...well, our present, don't you?" Ruby declared.
"I do," Ozymandias said with a nod. "When your group was flung through time, Salem went off the rails even more so than before. She's convinced that I have Spring Maiden hidden somewhere, but as you already know, the truth was far stranger. Anyways, I quickly learned that the Maidens are a centerpiece to what she perceives as her ultimate victory, so things got chaotic rather fast. In fact, long story short, you're currently standing in one of the last strongholds left on the planet."
"I'm assuming that you managed to come up with a way that we can stop her once we made it back to the past," Raven remarked with a raised eyebrow, decidedly holding back her shock at that last statement.
"Indeed I did." Ozymandias declared, handing the group a crystal. "Give this to the one you know as Ozpin: it's a modified version of the communication crystals the Doppelgangers use. It contains information that should prove useful to him. Oh, and while you're at it, be sure to have him explain what his history with Salem is. I already know that the final battle is approaching one way or another, so it's high time that 'I' stop hiding from the truth. I'd tell you myself, but I'm risking the timestream becoming damaged enough by sending an item back with you that will inevitably only exist because of a paradox. Besides, I think you'd all appreciate it more if Ozpin told you this himself."
"...fair enough, but how do we know he'll actually explain anything?" Jean couldn't help but ask.
"Simple: tell him 'the girl won't stay in her tower forever,'" he said, an unreadable expression on his face. "If I know him - and I'd like to think I do - he'll know what it means and act accordingly."
"Wait, if we do this, there's a chance you won't exist anymore," Ruby couldn't help but point out.
"Sure I will," the Professor remarked with a slight grin, "and I'll exist in a future worth getting to. Maybe not as the reincarnation of an Ancient Wizard, but as someone fully dedicated to serving his fellow man regardless. But even if I'm wrong and I end up disappearing all together, it's better than sitting by and watching as the last of humanity is slowly snuffed out before my eyes because of one woman's paranoia."
"Speaking of which," Penny said with a nod, "I better get back to making sure we can get back home...and soon. Something tells me that Professor Ozymanias wasn't the only one to notice our arrival."
As if to prove the android correct, in a distant cave, an elderly looking Doppelganger with a snake marking on his shoulder was overlooking a computer screen when a set of very familiar serial numbers flashed across the screen, hinting at a presence in the vicinity of Beacon. "Finally," he rasped, snapping his fingers, summoning a whole militia of Grimm of various types to his side. "After one thousand, six hundred, and forty-eight years, the power of the Savior will. Be. MINE!"
"Is that so?"
The elderly Barmak couldn't help but give a bitter chuckle as he turned around. "Come to grace me with your presence, Salem?"
"Nothing so fortunate for you," came the Black Queen's voice through a nearby Seer Grimm. "However, I wish to remind you that you are not the only one who seeks to gain something from the coming battle...nor am I as blind to your ambitions as you'd like to think. Regardless, I sense that the power of all the Maidens is finally within my reach. Deliver it to me, and your reward shall be great. Fail me, and I shall turn you to dust." She briefly smiled at the fearful look on the Doppelganger's face before nodding. "Now prepare for battle. After countless milenium, my revenge on the gods themselves is nearly within my grasp."
"Then I shall endeavor not to fail you," Barmak said with a bow as the projection faded into nothingness. With a malicious chuckle, he straightened himself and turned towards his army. "Indeed, you shall have the power of the Seasonal Maidens within your grasp...long enough for me to snatch it all away with the power of the Savior! We shall see just who turns whom to dust, now won't we? I'm coming for you, my child!"
Holly woke up with a cold sweat, her cries alerting her mother to her distress. "What is it, sweetie? Did you have a nightmare?" Yang couldn't help but ask. Noticing how her daughter briefly looked at Blake with an unreadable expression, the blonde brawler nodded. "Over a thousand years into the future and Barmak, Mirror, whatever he's called still won't leave you alone, eh? Well, don't worry: I won't let him lay a finger on you."
Holly seemed to calm down upon hearing that, though the way she tugged at Yang's shirt told her that night terrors weren't the only reason she had woken up. Yang couldn't help but let out a chuckle. "Come on: let's get that appetite taken care of, shall we?"
From around the corner, Blake simply smiled as she watched Holly proceed to suckle some milk from her mother's breasts, gaining a look of determination as she did. "If Barmak thinks he can take my daughter away from me, he's got another thing coming. I can't wait to tear him to pieces when next I see him."
As it turned out, Blake and Yang weren't the only ones who were feeling upset in regards to Barmak. Case in point, Ruby sharpened the blade on Crescent Rose, Weiss stocked up on Dust, and Jean wrote out a strongly worded letter to both Paulette and Barmak. Team JNPR was preparing for the coming conflict as well.
"Hey." Nora asked.
"Yeah?" Ren replied.
"Do you ever wonder why we're here?"
"You mean, like, metaphysically?" Ren asked for clarification. "Because we're here in the future because of a magic hourglass."
"Less yapping, more preparing!" Jaune cut in. "We should go ahead and practice some drills! Ren! Nora! Flour power!"
"Flour what?" Ren looked at Nora, hoping she'd know what Jaune was talking about. "Jaune, I thought we all agreed we weren't going to try and copy Ruby's team strategies."
"We said we'd talk about it!" Jaune defended. "Come on, guys! There's no 'I" in 'team!'"
"Yeah? Well, there's no 'u' in team, either." Ren retorted, crossing his arms. "So, if I'm not on the team, and you're not on the team, then there's no team! The team sucks!" Ren sighed as Jaune hung his head in defeat. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just… this whole situation has been very draining. I mean, I thought I was tired all the time before. But since we're in the future, I've got a lot of sleep to catch up on."
"Hey, can you guys keep it down?" Jean poked her head around the corner. "Holly's finally falling asleep. Turns out her Grimm half needs just a little more than breast milk to satisfy her."
"What do you mean?" Pyrrha asked.
"Well, I think this is a temporary thing, but it turns out Doppelgangers need to consume fresh blood for sustenance." Jean explained. "Thankfully, her Auntie Ruby was willing to donate! It's amazing what that girl will do for a cookie."
"How'd Yang convince Ruby to donate blood?" Ren asked. "She hates needles."
"Oh, we didn't use a needle. The adorable little tyke just sank her teeth in Ruby's arm and started sucking."
Just then, Ruby stumbled into the room. "Yeah, it hurt at first, but now I kinda just feel dizzy. Uh, oh. Going down." With that, the hooded huntress collapsed to the ground. "Why is the floor so high?"
"Sowwy." Holly yawned, seeming to understand even through her drowsiness that she might have overdone it a bit.
"It's alright, darling," was Yang's response, gently rocking her to sleep. "Like you, your Auntie just needs a bit of rest and everything will be alright." With a gentle kiss on the forehead, she left her daughter to her dreams before turning towards the others. "If Barmak gets his claws on my daughter, none of you are seeing any kind of future after today, got it?"
"Y...yes, ma'am." Was the universal reply.
"Sooo, are we just going to ignore that Holly seems able to talk, even if it's only a few words, or…?" Taiyang couldn't help but ask even as the terror of the moment subsided.
"Meh. I'm just chalking it up to her being half-Grimm," Raven said with a shrug.
"Wait a minute, 'half-Grimm?!'" Blake declared, recalling something that Jasmine had said to her shortly before discovering that Yang had been raped. "'When the Great Destroyer comes, the Savior - born to bridge the gap between humans and Doppelgangers and end our eternal war - shall also rise.'"
Here, Jaune's own eyes widened. "You don't think-?"
"That Barmak - Mirror - whatever his name really is - raped Yang because he wanted the 'Savior's' power to 'end the war between humans and Doppelgangers' for himself? That's exactly what I'm thinking." Blake declared.
"...and he calls us shisnos." Coco remarked even as she shook her head in disgust.
"Agreed." Blake hissed. "Holly isn't some weapon he can aim however he likes; she's a living thing that deserves to be treated with love and respect. If I see her genetic donor again, I'm neutering him."
"While we're in the future, or when we get back to the past? Well, our present?" Summer couldn't help but ask, even as her facial expression declared she'd be doing the same.
"Yes."
"You know, Blake can be pretty scary when she wants to be." Yatsuhashi couldn't help but remark even as he almost felt a little sympathy for Barmak. Almost.
"'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,'" Ren quoted with a nod.
"And hoo-boy, did Barmak choose the wrong women to scorn." Taiyang said with a nod of his own even as he let out a bitter chuckle. He just knew that just about every female in the room was thinking the same thing: "Barmak must die."
Off in the distance, said rogue adviser felt a chill down his spine before shrugging and turning to his troops. "Alright everyone: this is it," Barmak declared, "Tonight, the sun finally sets on Beacon Academy!" He gave a dark chuckle even as he watched his followers charge on the school: it had taken over a thousand years, but he was finally going to achieve everything he'd set out to do. Nothing could go wrong.
"Firing main cannon!"
At least, that's what he thought. The small army of malevolent Doppelgangers soon found themselves under the fire of multiple Scorpion-class battle tanks. "Thanks for helping us, Ozymandias." Pyrrha remarked from the cockpit of one of them over her scroll.
Ozymandias could be heard giving a proud nod over the scroll. "Time travel or no time travel, no way am I going to let a coward like Barmak get his claws on any of my students without a fight."
"I suppose there's a reason that this is one of the last strongholds on the planet." Coco couldn't help but remark from another of the tanks.
"Indeed," the professor declared with a smile, before sighing. "Still, I'm not blind to how I won't be able to keep it standing forever. Salem is a crafty one: eventually, she will find a way past my carefully planned defenses."
"Don't lose hope, Professor," Ruby remarked even as she cut down one of the rogue Doppelgangers. "You said it yourself: this isn't the future we're fighting for. We don't have to win: we just need to keep them busy long enough for Penny to get us home."
Speaking of Penny, Ciel, Velvet, and Jean were currently helping her get the computer ready to send them back to the past. "Okay, I think we're ready to test it," the android declared as she set an apple down on a table they had set up.
Jean nodded. "As we'll ever be, at any rate. Alright, pull the lever, Ciel." No sooner had Ciel pulled one of the levers that had been set up on a nearby wall, however, a trapdoor opened underneath the medic. "WRONG LEVER!" She shouted as she fell into a pool of water beneath.
"D'accord: pourquoi auraient-ils même ce levier? (Okay: why would they even have that lever?") Ciel couldn't help but ask even as Jean came back up, flicking off a leech that had latched onto her as she did.
"Whoever put this here probably thought it'd be funny." Velvet said with a shrug before flipping the other lever.
Penny smiled as the apple seemed to disappear. "Yes!" she exclaimed before pulling out her scroll. "Good news, everyone: the Sacred Timepiece is up and running. When you find an opening, try and make your way up to the caves."
"Alright, Luna came through for us!" Rachael exclaimed.
"Luna?" Professor Ozymandias, who had overheard the conversation, couldn't help but raise an eyebrow before giving a brief smile. "Ah, that's right: Pamela always did prefer that name. Something about always having a fascination with the moon."
"Wait, Luna's real name is Pamela?" Penny, having heard the professor's declaration, couldn't help but ask. "I think I'll have a little talk with her when we get back." The android declared, a determined look on her face before regaining her grin. "Before we head back, I realize this isn't entirely accurate, but thanks for helping Pietro - for helping my father - give me the gift of life."
"You're quite welcome." The professor said with a subdued smile. "I just wish that you didn't have to suffer so much to gain it. Truth be told, I had a hunch all those years ago that Jacques didn't have the best of intentions getting involved with the P.E.N.N.Y. Project - with Project Guardsman - but by the time I discovered exactly what he was up to, he'd managed to blacklist me from my own project, so I couldn't have helped you even if I wanted to."
"You did help me though." Penny said with a grin. "You treated me like I mattered whenever we crossed paths. For what it's worth, I hold no animosity towards you whatsoever."
Ozymandias wiped a small tear from his eye, a slight grin on his face, even as Penny went back to work. "Believe me, it means more than you could possibly know."
Meanwhile, Yang was skimming through one of Beacon's yearbooks from the library with a determined look in her eyes. "I'll find you." She said to herself. "I know you're in here, I just have to keep looking."
"Don't worry, Yang." Weiss smiled as she put away her scroll. "Penny just informed me that the Time Machine is working again! Once we get back to the cave and go home, we'll find Barmak and make him pay for what he's done to you."
"Barmak? Who cares about Barmak?" Yang scoffed as she held up the yearbook. "I'm looking for a picture of Holly! I know she's gonna go to this school at some point in her life, and I wanna see how gorgeous she'll be in the future!"
"... let me get this straight…" A vein in Weiss' forehead started throbbing as she grit her teeth. "We're trapped in the future, we've been trying to get back home, there's an army of sentient Grimm trying to kill us, and your main concern is what your daughter looks like?!"
"Yeah." Yang replied, bluntly. "Now, come help me look. Would her name be under 'B,' or 'L,' or 'X?'"
"You're an idiot." Weiss facepalmed at the sheer stupidity of her teammate, prompting Holly to point and laugh at her.
"Ice qween!" The infant giggled.
"That's right, sweetie!" Yang cooed. "That's your Auntie Ice Queen!"
"AND STOP CALLING ME THAT!" The Schnee heiress stamped her foot before continuing to pack up her belongings. "Ugh, something tells me that even with time travel this is going to be a long trip."
"Man, for an ice queen, you have zero chill." Yang couldn't help but add, much to her daughter's delight.
To Be Continued
