Everyone was here, Ozpin, Ironwood, Qrow, Penny, Ruby, Yang, Pyrrha, Blake, Weiss, Nora, Jaune, Ren and Tex.

Ozpin's office had a lot more chairs in it than usual, enough to sit everyone. (Although technically Pyrrha was in a wheelchair until her new leg arrived.)

Honestly, it was making Wash nervous. They all wanted the inside scoop on the situation, a situation that not event they fully understood.

Furthermore Ozpin had been sitting incredibly still for the past several minutes with his eyes closed, which set Wash's nerves on edge.

"So when's this starting at?" Sarge asked.

"As soon as the last person gets here." Wash replied

"And when exactly is that?" Church asked irritatedly.

"Do I look like a fortune teller to you?" Wash shot back.

"No, you look like Agent Washingtub!" Caboose said cheerfully, causing Ruby to snicker in her seat.

Then the doors of Ozpin's office flew open and Taiyang entered, very much out of breath.

"Sorry I'm late everyone, overslept." Taiyang yelled out as he walked over and took a seat.

"Don't worry about it, now we can begin." Ironwood said.

"Trust a blue to be late." Sarge grumbled.

"Ozpin?" Ironwood said. "Ozpin?"

"One minute." The headmaster requested.

"What are you doing?"

Ozpin didn't answer and instead remained silent, then Wash felt strange. All his hairs stood on edge, he had goose bumps on his arms and a cold feeling shivered down his spine.

A quick glance at Church and Sarge showed that they also felt it while Caboose was a cheerful as ever.

Then Ozpin opened his eyes and looked directly at Wash.

"Wait, can you see me?" Washington asked.

"Yes." Ozpin nodded. "It was just a matter of knowing where to look."

Ozpin then snapped his fingers and the strange sensation went away and Wash's body relaxed as everyone in the room looked at the blues and red.

Wait, everyone was looking at them?

"You guys are seeing this too right?" Yang asked aloud, disbelief evident on her face and voice.

"They weren't there a moment ago." Blake said.

Then Church yelled out. "Holy shit I have a body again."

Wash turned to see that Church was in a body of cobalt armour again, flexing his fingers and arms in amazement, no longer a transparent white 'ghost'.

"What did you do?" Wash asked Ozpin, causing a round of gasps to go around the room as the others heard for the first time how Wash and Ozpin sounded the exact same.

"I decided to give you all more.. solid physical forms, I felt it would be better if you could tell your stories yourself." Ozpin said.

"But how?" Wash pressed.

Ozpin paused for a moment and, in the most sarcastic voice he'd ever heard, Ozpin said, "Magic."

Washington's eyes narrowed at what was clearly a false answer, but decided to not push it for now.

"Wow mister Caboose, you are a lot bluer than I thought you would be." Penny said in amazement.

Caboose nodded. "Thank you, it is my most very favourite colour."

"Does anyone else think it's weird that the blue guy sound exactly like me?" Taiyang bought up.

"Hell no, if anything you sound like me!" Church claimed.

"You know that's not how any of that works, right?" Wash asked.

Church rounded on Wash. "I don't recall asking for your opinion Washington."

"Its not an opinion if it's a fact." Wash snarked back.

Sarge chuckled at the blues conflict. "And this is why blue team is clearly inferior to red team, on our side of the fence we don't argue constantly."

"Grif and Simmons, Grif and Simmons." Church coughed not-so-subtly.

"Alright, lets not get off topic." Wash put his hand up. "We have proper human bodies now, which is good, but I believe we still need to explain everything."

Blake nodded. "That would be good, I honestly have no idea what is going on."

There were words of agreement from around the room.

Things calmed down and everyone took their seats again, although because there was no seats for Church, Wash, Sarge and Caboose they had to stand.

Seeing everyone ready to hear the story, Wash decided on where to begin. "Well, everything can be traced to a military project called Freelancer."

"What, your not going to start at blood gulch?" Tex interrupted.

Wash shook his head. "No, it makes more sense to start at freelancer." Wash cleared his throat. "Project freelancer is a military project from our universe-"

"So you come from another universe?" Ironwood interrupted.

"Yes, but please don't interrupt, I'll stop periodically to answer questions." Wash said. "Anyway, the project was headed by a man known to everyone as 'the Director.' The goal of the project was to test soldiers and their connections with A.I in order to create super soldiers. But resources were tight and they could only secure one A.I unit, known only as 'The Alpha' and as you could probably guess it wasn't enough."

Two hands shot up and Wash paused to answer the questions. "Yes, Nora you go first."

"What does the 'A' stand for?"

"Artificial, and put that hand down, the 'I' stands for intelligence. Next question, yes Qrow?"

"How is it you sound just like Ozpin here?" Qrow asked as he scratched his chin.

"We don't know." Wash said shortly. "Anyway, To get around this problem they... split it. Turning it into a lot of different fragments such as Sigma, Omega and-"

"Me." Tex interrupted. "I was split from the Alpha but the problem was that I couldn't remember anything. So they paired me up with Omega and I was made an agent of Freelancer, going on missions and dealing with red and blue sim troopers."

Two more hands went up.

"Yes Weiss?"

"What exactly are 'Sim troopers'?" Weiss asked.

"I'll field this one." Sarge chipped in. "You see there are two teams fighting an endless war, one the noble, heroic and amazingly competent red team. And the other is the terrible, no good, incompetent, team killing, lazy, arrogant, insufferable, incredibly stupid,-"

"He really hates blue team huh?" Yang muttered to Ruby who chuckled.

"Yep."

"-arrogant, didn't I already say arrogant? Well they are arrogant squared!, Annoying, scheming, plotting, horrible, terrible, suck up, damn dirty blue team!"

Wash gave a sigh that came from his very bones. "I'm not even going to touch on everything that's wrong with that, what's your question Ozpin?"

"What exactly do you mean by 'splitting' the Alpha?"

"Well an A.I mind is just like a human mind when it's broken; it fragments. It fractures itself to protect itself. It was essentially reverse engineering a multiple personality disorder. They presented Alpha with scenario after scenario of stress and danger. When it started to fragment, they harvested those fragments."

"The Freelancer A.I.s. So they tortured it." Ironwood said solemnly.

Wash nodded an affirmative.

"It was around this time one of our own." Tex continued on. "an agent named C.T, she'd found out about the Alpha and defected, she was ultimately killed for it but not before she could let me know about the truth."

"And around this time I was implanted with the Epsilon A.I." Wash sighed. "Epsilon was the Alpha's memories, and I was unlucky enough to have it assigned to me and the second it entered my mind, Epsilon tried to commit suicide in my head and pretty much destroyed my psyche."

There were gasps and whispering erupted from around the room.

"Was it sort of like when Ruby had that breakdown?" Yang asked.

"Yes, in fact that was the indirect cause of it. But after Epsilon was implanted, I was pretty much down for the count."

Tex took over the story. "After Wash was down and out, me and a couple of other Freelancers decided to try and break the Alpha out there, but we failed and scattered afterwards. But around a year after the crash, I intercepted some communications that led me to the shittiest canyon I'd ever seen."

"That is putting it lightly." Church snorted. "Blood Gulch straight up sucked."

"I dunno, I have some pretty fond memories of that canyon." Sarge reminisced. "Like that time Grif was run over by the tank, or when Donut killed that Freelancer."

"Gee Sarge, it's good to know that my terrible demise was one of your fondest memories." Tex said sarcastically.

"You ended up fine." Sarge waved his hand dismissively.

"Anyway, lots of stuff happened in Blood gulch-" Tex said before Church interrupted.

"Caboose killed me!"

"We went forward in time!"

"Tucker did it!"

Tex raised her hand to signal a stop in talking. "Anyway, A lot of stuff happened, most of it was just standing around and talking. By the end of it, I was blown up and crashed in a ship half way across the planet."

"Yeah, after you decided to join O'Malley in trying to take over the universe." Church said bitterly.

Tex crossed her arms. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Wait a minute." Qrow interrupted. "Take over the universe?"

"O'Malley was a fragment of the Alpha, his rage to be precise and from what I gathered from the reports he and Tex were going to try and rule over an alien species by corrupting their religion." Washington explained.

"Did it work?" Ozpin asked curiously.

"Never got to find out, our ride exploded and I was stranded in another box canyon." Tex explained.

"A few months after this we were all assigned to different outposts, I was stationed as the only person at mine." Church said.

"I fixed tanks!" Caboose said enthusiastically.

"I elected to remain behind and keep an eye on blood gulch. Unlike Grif and Simmons who left." Sarge explained.

"Who?"

"Grif and Simmons are other members of red team." Wash explained. ""By this point in time I was back in the game and was using my status in freelancer to search for a way to bring the organisation down from the inside. This lead me to Blood Gulch and Sarge, who pointed me in the direction of..."

"Me!" Caboose cheered.

"...Caboose." Wash said sounding dead inside. "From there we linked up with Church and encountered the Meta."

"The guy that we fought in the warehouse?" Nora questioned. "Who exactly is he?"

"He used to be a freelancer, one of the best. Agent Maine we called him." Wash explained. "He's a mute and needed an A.I to speak for him after he got a throat injury, that A.I was Sigma who was the Alpha's creativity. But this was not an equal partnership and eventually Sigma eroded Maine's thought process until they were basically the same. they became the Meta, whose only goal was to collect the other A.I in order to become the full Alpha again."

"Wouldn't that be a good thing?" Yang questioned.

"Perhaps, but their methods were... bloody to say the least." Wash shook his head. "Regardless, after our encounter we linked up with red team and together we made our way to command in order to stop the Meta once and for all. We snuck in and grabbed Epsilon who had memories of everything Freelancer had done and would be able to bring the whole organisation down. I sent the reds and Caboose away with Epsilon while Church and I prepared to face the Meta. It was here I told Church the truth, he is the Alpha."

"And, you know just for the record, that is bullshit because I am not an A.I, I am a motherfucking ghost." Church interrupted.

"Anyway, once the Meta was there I set off an E.M.P which destroyed all the A.I including Church and Tex." Wash told them. "But unfortunately, Caboose neglected to give Epsilon to the authorities, so I was sent to prison for destruction of military property."

"Not my fault." Caboose claimed.

"Regardless, I was soon released to track down Epsilon with the help of a handicapped Meta. We tracked them to a place called Valhalla and-"

"We kicked his ass!" Sarge exclaimed.

"I wouldn't put it like that." Wash shifted uncomfortably.

"What happened?" Nora asked curiously.

"We drove a car through a wall right into and blew him up." Sarge chuckled. "He got Sarge'd."

Wash shook his head before continuing. "Eventually we tracked the reds and blues to a place called Sidewinder, there we fought a weaker version of Tex."

"What?"

"It was created by Epsilon and was defeated by the Meta who then turned on us, causing me to band with the reds and blues to beat him."

"But who did?" Ironwood asked.

"Me." Sarge claimed. "You see, nothing was working, Tucker had stabbed him but he just shrugged it off. The agent Wash here gave me something and I knew what I have to do. I walk up to him, shotgun at the ready and say 'Over here you son of a bitch!' and he walks over. I fire off a shot, but he keeps going and he grabs me by the throat." Sarge waved his hands around dramatically. "Then I attach the tow cable to the Meta's suit and Grif and Simmons push the Warthog off the cliff, sending the Meta with it, killing the dirtbag."

"You killed that thing by tying it up to a car and throwing him off a cliff?" Jaune asked, a hint of awe in his eyes. "That is the coolest thing I have ever heard."

Ironwood put up a hand. "But if you killed him, then how is it that he recently tore through Vale?"

"Most likely the same reason that we are here talking to you after we met our own unfortunate fates." Wash said dryly. "In any case, soon after this we were joined by another former freelancer known as Carolina. She had faked her death years latter and was now ready to bring the Director to justice."

This time Pyrrha raised her hand.

"This... Carolina, she... looks like me right?" Pyrrha asked quietly. "Felix mentioned."

Wash nodded. "Yes, your the spitting image of a younger Carolina, and you sound almost exactly like her."

"What was she like?"

"Confident, skilled, but also competitive and more than a little cocky." Wash said, but seeing Pyrrha's expression droop he went on. "But most of all, she was a good friend. And was one of the few people that has my complete trust."

"Did you get the Director?" Ren asked.

"We did." Sarge confirmed.

"We beat Taxes!" Caboose enthused.

"After the Director was dealt with, we were all shipped back to Blood Gulch, but on the way our shipped crashed into a planet called Chorus." Wash said.

Tex shook her head. "You guys really do have the worst luck don't you? Even me and Church being destroyed in an E.M.P doesn't seem to make it any better."

"No kidding, but our luck was worse still, we'd crash landed right in the middle of a civil war." Sarge said dramatically.

"Chorus was divided between two factions, the Feds and the Rebels. led by Doyle and Kimball respectively. But something was clearly wrong and after being reunited with each other after being separated for a little while, we discovered the truth. The two mercenaries that worked with the armies, Locus for the Feds and Felix for the Rebels, they were working together with a third off world faction in order to elongate the civil war so that the entire population of the planet could be wiped out."

Everyone's eyes widened at that revelation.

"Who would do such a thing? Why would someone even consider it?" Blake demanded.

"The CEO of Hargrove industries, Malcom Hargrove." Washington answered. "But fortunately for us, we managed to warn both armies about this and they decided to join together to bring him down. But it wasn't easy, between the mercenaries and their advanced technology it was a tall order. But eventually we managed to get a signal to the UNSC, and exposed Hargrove to the galaxy."

"And in response, the son of a bitch came to the planet itself in his ship, we boarded it in order to destroy his forces and then..." Sarge trailed off.

"Then we died." Wash said quietly. "But the instant it happened we suddenly found ourselves in Patch as ghosts, only able to be seen by one person." He looked directly at said person.

"Me." Ruby said quietly.

There was silence as everyone took in all the information in and everyone thought about the same question, what now?

Ozpin spoke first.

"I'd like to thank you all for telling this story, it has been enlightening." Ozpin said with what Wash identified as sincerity. "Now, agent Washington you appear to be the leader of your group, correct?"

"Hell no!" Church objected. "If anyone is the leader it's me!"

"Oh please." Sarge snorted. "I'm a Colonel, I outrank all of you."

"I'm a captain!" Caboose exclaimed.

"Colonel outranks captain bluetard."

"If anyone is going to be the leader, it's going to be me." Tex said. "I'm easily the strongest and most badass here."

"Yes, I'm the leader." Wash told Ozpin dryly, much to the objections of the others.

Ozpin nodded. "Then I'd like for you to meet me later, to talk about the future of your friends here at Beacon. In an hour would suffice." Ozpin looked over the room. "Now if everyone excepting Taiyang, Qrow and Ironwood please leave? I need to discuss things with them, and I will call if I need any of you."

Wash nodded as everyone slowly got up and started to leave with the exception of Pyrrha who was wheeled out by Jaune.

But as he left, Wash knew that this wasn't over yet, not by a long shot.

Notes:

And that's the end of that chapter.

To tell the truth, I have struggled greatly with the writing of this chapter. There was massive writers block and nothing I wrote seemed to work on the page, but after a while I managed to get something that works. But boy, condensing 13 seasons of content into a single chapter is hard, so sorry if some things weren't mentioned.

And yeah, now the red and blues all have actual human bodies, except for Church who has a lovely new robot body, and it's all thanks to Ozpin using magic.
Now I don't know how you guys will react, but my reasons for this are threefold:
1, it give me a lot more flexibility with character interactions, now we could have say Sarge teach Nora how to build better bombs or Church telling Jaune pick up lines.
2, It means that they can now be more active participants in the story. e.g Ozpin and Wash having a chat about plot relevant stuff.
and finally, it standardises it so that now all the RvB gang have proper bodies.

Anyway, I'd like to thank everyone for reading and to give extra thanks to those that comment/review, you're all awesome.

The next two chapters will be released simultaneously and serve as joint epilogues for this particular story as yes, there will be a volume 3. But till then, I'll catch ya'll on the flip flop. (Volume 3 details will be covered next time)

Review replies:

ReaderWarrior: Oh yeah, there are definitely ideas that will blossom, especially in the sequel.

Annonamous Elephant: Thanks!

Anonymous Snake: I agree.