Final chapter of Remnant Invicta. I always wanted the story to be quite short, which makes sense given the death toll the characters faced.

Chapter 24

Arc's Crater.

That was what they called it, named after the soldier who had activated the Beacon and called down Terminus. Recordings of the moment played for years, and hundreds of books, plays and movies were made about the moment.

The movies were a hit especially with younger audiences who would never have to experience the true nightmare that had been a reality for so many of them. They played their video games, and enjoyed their free time, and ditched out of school to hang out with friends. They didn't know anything of how the generation before them had lived and died, and they never would.

Ozpin would not have it any other way.

Aged now, resigned to a wheelchair, he looked over the monument in the centre of the city of Phoenix – Vale's latest expansion, and named after Phoenix Squad itself. It was close to the crater, using minerals and materials opened up by the devastating blast to build many of its homes. It was a patriotic city which brandished its association to Phoenix Squad with all the pride they could muster.

And Ozpin wondered what Phoenix Squad would have thought of it.

They'd have been confused, he supposed. Bemused. They weren't the infallible heroes the history books liked to paint them as. They'd been frightened teens doing their best to enjoy what little time they had left and giving their lives for a cause greater than any of them. Not a single one of them had lived to see the world they'd created, and yet he couldn't imagine that they would be unhappy with it.

In the moment, they had one another,

It was at quiet times like this that the retired general liked to sit in his wheelchair by the central monument – a slab of rock torn from the walls of Beacon itself in the great rebuilding. It was practically a holy relic, but Ozpin knew better. It was a section of wall that Cadets Arc and Rose had vandalised. He could still remember walking slowly among the wreckage of that dorm, and seeing the graffiti, and how he had felt as empty as the dorm wing itself.

But the section of wall had been cut out and preserved, immortalising their simple graffiti, a last memento of a pair of people who knew they were going to die, and who wanted their friends to be in some way remembered.

Phoenix Squad was here.

Lived fast, died young.

"Too young," whispered Ozpin, lowering his eyes. "Too damn young."

A flash of light shone as a young woman took a selfie against it, sporting a black shirt with white jagged writing holding the same saying. It had become a slogan of sorts, not that anyone now knew what it really meant. "Live Fast, Die Young" had become an allegory for ignoring the rules and having fun, and Ozpin supposed that was a good thing. Better that than the cruel meaning of it his students had been forced to live and die with.

They didn't know the real meaning, but Ozpin found himself smiling at the teenagers taking photos against it, and who posed with their fingers pointing at it, and with funny expressions on their faces.

To them, Grimm were a history lesson.

None had roamed Remnant for the last twenty years.

Soon, people would not even remember what they looked like, and they would be consigned to history. Ozpin's own name would become a subject of school lessons, and the only remembrance he or any of them would have would be a moment's silence once a year. And, in time, people would even forget why they were silent. They would cease to take it seriously, and they'd be lost behind far greater accomplishments.

As it should be.

"General Ozpin, sir." A woman in a pale green suit came jogging up to him, breathing heavily. "Sir, you shouldn't be out here."

"Out of breath, Cammy? You're not even thirty yet, and you can't keep up with a man in his final years? That's not a good sign."

"Sir, you should be at the care home."

"I did not wage war against the Grimm to die in a home."

The carer grunted and shot him an annoyed glower. Ozpin supposed he was a bit of a terror at the care home, but then even as the end of his life approached, he was not one to sit back and let it happen.

An ignoble end, he supposed. Some would call him lucky for having survived it all, but he did not think so. Lucky would have been to die so someone younger and more deserving could have lived. Lucky would have been to have had mobility in his legs so he could have entered the hive alongside his brave cadets.

"It's fine if you want to go outside, sir, but you ran away during movie time and we thought we'd lost you." She eyed the wheelchair. "Or, not ran but…"

"I hate those movies, Cammy. You know that. They were nothing like those actors portray them. It's always brave, unfaltering and overly romantic. Flowery." Ozpin crossed his arms in his lap and frowned angrily. "They were nothing like that. They were teenagers like any other. They snuck out to drink and do drugs, and they considered every day their last. They were promised four years of training and received less than one. And they succeeded anyway, not because they were chiselled-jawed supermodels capable of batting Grimm aside, but because they were desperate young men and women prepared to sell their lives dearly."

"I know, sir. You've told us this a thousand times."

Ozpin grunted. He was an old man now, and he'd be damned if he didn't use his old man privileges to drill the truth into people's heads. They would be forgotten otherwise, and people would only remember the idealised versions of them.

"Whoah, old man!" said a boyish voice. A young man with black hair, flanked by two of his friends, ambled over. They were sixteen at most. "Did you say you knew Jaune Arc?"

Ozpin smiled grimly. "Of course I did. I was their Commanding Officer, and I was there at the final battle where he activated the Beacon and signalled Project Terminus. I spoke with him before he went out, and Cadet Rose, and I knew their team intimately. After all, I'm one of those who taught them."

Cammy sighed but let him talk, knowing there would be no stopping him once he'd found anyone who would listen. A small crowd had already begun to gather, mostly teenagers and younger children with their parents.

"He's General Ozpin!" gasped one. "Um. Thank you for your sacrifice, sir."

Ozpin waved his hand dismissively. "I sacrificed far less than I would have wished. If you must thank anyone, thank them."

"What were they like?"

"Nothing like your movies paint them," he said. "They were like you."

The teenager looked gobsmacked. "M—Me?"

"Yes, child. You. They were young men and women who wanted nothing more than to slack off, listen to music and spend time with one another." Ozpin's eyes twinkled. "Many a time was there that they would show up to training drunk, on drugs, or a combination of the two. Cadet Xiao Long in particular was infamous for the number of punishments she earned from her teachers."

The kids laughed. "No shit? Seriously?"

"Oh yes. They were the best soldiers you could ask for when they needed to be, but at all other times they were quite possibly the worst cadets you could have ever seen. Rules to them were more of a suggestion than anything. They lived every day at sixty miles an hour, and they took their punishments like champions."

"But they're heroes," said an older woman, a mother.

"Those young men and women were heroes because the world demanded it. Humanity demanded it. They did what they knew they had to do, and they did it without complaint. Every one of them went to their deaths knowing they would die, and not a single one of them backed down. No huntsman did."

And there were so many more names that did not get the recognition they deserved. Summer Rose. Raven and Qrow Branwen. Taiyang Xiao Long. Blake Belladonna. Velvet Scarlatina.

Ozpin remembered them all, both names and faces, and his own lesser-respected contribution to the books surrounding the great war was a thick tome detailing the less-interesting exploits of all the other students at Beacon.

It never sold well, of course, because few people cared what those "side-characters" got up to, but they had been real people who gave their lives to buy them time, and Ozpin would be damned if they went forgotten.

"My mom says if I want to grow up like Jaune Arc, I need to go to school and study hard," said a young boy.

Ozpin guffawed loudly. "My boy, no one should want to grow up like Cadet Arc, for he was never given a chance to grow up. But, if he were in your shoes, then he would be sneaking off with his friends to smoke behind the bike sheds."

There was laughter and nervous giggling from the teens, and a few high-fives, but one of the mothers shook her head and covered her son's ears. "Sir," she protested. "You should be setting a better example for our children!"

"Lady," replied Ozpin. "I watched everyone I knew and loved die to buy you all the time you have now. We all did. Children like Phoenix Squadron gave their lives so you could be here, so I'll thank you to spare them – and me – the responsibility of educating your child for you."

The mother huffed, picked up her child and stormed away, while the younger generation laughed, cheered and jeered her. Cammy clicked her lips in disapproval, but he didn't owe anything to her either. Not anymore. The people he owed the most were dead and gone, and Ozpin counted the days until he met them again.

/-/

Back at the care home with those too old and infirm to move, many of whom were losing their minds to advanced age, Ozpin sat back in his wheelchair and let out a sigh. Growing old wasn't fun no matter what they said, and it wasn't something he'd ever thought he would need to contend with.

"Ozpin," called a voice. "You have visitors."

"Hm?" He glanced up from his book. "Who might—" A blonde meteorite struck him. "Oof!"

"Grandpa!"

"Joan," he said, smiling and hefting the girl up onto his knee. A rare smile crossed his face as he looked down on the small girl, with her bright blonde hair and her silver eyes.

It was the child that Jaune Arc and Ruby Rose might have had, but for the fact that they'd never been given the chance to explore their feelings. Vat-grown, in a sense, because even after the end of the Grimm threat, the world's population had been too low to really bounce back without it.

And every student of Beacon had donated genetic material in their time.

Giving birth to Joan Ruby Arc.

Among many others, but she was the only one he knew of to cross Cadet Arc and Rose's material. There were others, with heritage to any member of Phoenix Squad essentially offering some sort of celebrity status. At least on the playgrounds and in school where children could boast about such things.

There were times it felt wrong to Ozpin to know that his students, all of them, had sired a whole generation without their knowledge or consent, but he doubted they would have complained. It was a different time back then, and "consent" had never really mattered. The arcology did what it needed to, and everyone adapted and accepted that.

"Grandpa!" complained Joan, poking his chest. "You're spacing out again."

"My apologies, my dear. What were you saying?"

"You promised to tell me more stories about mommy and daddy. The real stories," she pressed. "And not the stupid cartoons and movies."

Ozpin smiled. "Ah yes, I did. Didn't I? Very well, but I hope you remember that you're not to follow in any of their footsteps. Your mother, father and your uncles and aunties didn't give their lives so you could become a drug addict."

"I know." Joan rolled her eyes and pouted. "I'm not like Auntie Yang."

Yang Xiao Long. Dead in the defence of Vale, alongside Nora Valkyrie. Ozpin smiled sadly and drew the little girl against him. Sensing his dismay, she wrapped her arms around his neck and said, "It'll be okay, grandpa" without really understanding why he was upset.

Ozpin chuckled. "Thank you, child. I'm fortunate to have a grandchild as kind as you."

"Yep. You are." Her eyes twinkled like Cadet Rose's. "So, story time! Story!"

"Very well. Calm down." Ozpin laughed and wheeled the both of them over to his writing desk, then picked up his new manuscript. "I'll read you my new story today. One I've been writing for the past few months. I want it to be a proper retelling of their lives. One without the flair and the propaganda and the lies. One that will let people see who they really were, and how they really acted."

"Mom and dad?"

"And Auntie Yang and Nora, and Uncle Ren and Sun," he promised. "It covers your father's arrival at my school, and his struggles fitting in, but how Phoenix Squad welcomed him and made him one of their own." He adjusted his glasses upon his nose. "It won't be a happy story, Joan. It might not even be much of a satisfying one, because you know how it ends."

"Mommy and daddy save everyone."

The child said it with the innocent assurance of someone who would hear no other answer. She did not say they had died, or that they had given their lives, but that they had saved everyone.

"You're right. They did save everyone. Perhaps that is how I shall end the book once it's finished." Ozpin took a pen and scrawled it down. "And they did not live happily every after, nor did they live at all, but in that moment they had saved everyone."

"Don't tell me the ending before the beginning!" she squawked.

"My apologies. My apologies. My manuscript is still in the drafting stage. It needs some ironing out, and it needs a name as well. A title for the book." He adjusted the girl in his lap so that he could open the first page on her lap. Joan settled in. "I was thinking of calling it Remnant Invicta," he said. "What do you think?"

"Boring! You should call it Jaune and Ruby's Awesome Adventure."

Ozpin smiled and began.

"It was nine years ago when the great wall was breached. Jaune had been a boy at the time, only eight years of age, but even he had understood the wave of terror and grief that overtook the Vale Arcology…"

Joan sat enraptured in his lap, and listened for several hours, until exhaustion took her small body and she fell asleep against his chest. Ozpin smiled and closed his book, only halfway through the telling, and set it on his desk.

He would finish his story soon, and then his own story would end soon after, and it would be up to children like Joan to write their own, and to hopefully have a story less tragic. A story filled with funny moments, happy smiles and constant laughter. Their own had only ever been Remnant Invicta, a constant fight for survival, but that was over now. Remnant had won, and it was time for their story to end.

Perhaps the next would be a happier one.

The End.

I enjoyed this story, despite that I know a lot of people didn't like characters dying, etc. I wanted to write a story that stuck to its theme, and I think this one did a fair enough job of that.

Some people may say it didn't have a happy ending, but Jaune somehow surviving the final battle would have been the unhappiest ending possible in his mind. Jaune would have seen that as torture, and it would have forced him to live the rest of his life as the sole survivor once more. He didn't want that.

The next story to replace this one won't be for quite a while due to my week off next week for my work event, and then a week off on this update slot to plan it. I'm thinking of a Roman-centric story where he's the protagonist and wants to recapture his former glory by breaking free from Cinder, the White Fang, Beacon and everything, and become the gentleman thief once more instead of everyone's dog.

It will be quite a lot of weeks until it comes out due to how the dates work, but you'll have the other new fic on the other Tuesday slot coming out 3rd October.

Next Story: 24th October!(long, i know, but it's becaue my event and biweekly schedule meaning 1 week no update becomes 4 weeks until)

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