Bill Wurtz voice: "Hey," the authoress said, probably smoking crack, "What if I just…wrote everything out now? And made it conform to the story logic/V9 answers later?"
In other words, I've had everything that doesn't directly relate to the portal-void plot thread written out from chapter 10 to now since before V9 was even announced. Go me, I guess?
There was something viscerally satisfying about going out to slaughter Grimm.
So much had changed about Jaune's life –learning about Salem, about the gods and the Relics, losing Pyrrha, falling from the void, regaining everything– but this, at least, was consistent. From his clumsiest, most fumbling days at Beacon, to the long grief-stricken trek across Anima, to that disastrous train ride to Argus… even through all their training in Atlas, fighting Grimm had always been the same. Perversely enough (considering the subject), it gave Jaune a single point of unchanging calm.
Crocea Mors came down on a snapping Beowolf's neck, and Jaune viciously shunted his shield to the side, crashing it against another's skull-plate as it was shoved back several feet, huge clawed paws scrabbling in the dirt.
"On your left!" he heard Ruby cry, and shifted both his stance and his grip, firing a pulse of Gravity Dust from his shield to knock the Beowolf all the way back, the creature rearing up on its hind legs as its grotesque arms swiped at the air in an instinctive effort to find balance. It barely had time to wave them once, however, before Crocea Mors was slicing through its neck as Jaune spun in place, using his shield as a bludgeon to knock another charging Beowolf aside before plunging the point of his sword into its spine, just behind the skull.
Three carcasses dissolving into ashes and dust around him, Jaune straightened up, glancing over his shoulder to check on the others.
Blake's weapon was whirling around her in kusarigama form with a rapid series of gunshots as she tore her way through the rest of the Beowolf pack, and Ruby, safely tucked into a high oak tree near this abandoned village, was peering down at them and the forest through the scope of Crescent Rose. Yang, meanwhile, was by her motorcycle, which carried all of their food and camping supplies, ready to guard it with her life if any Grimm managed to get through Jaune and the others.
If.
"HIIIIIEEEEYAAAAH!" Nora howled, slamming Magnhild into one Beowolf with enough force to send it flying into another, knocking both of them back almost a dozen feet before they slammed into a wall and started to dissolve. Ren darted past her, leaping from one rooftree to another as he mowed down Grimm after Grimm with a constant chitter of gunfire from StormFlower.
And Pyrrha?
Jaune grinned and tightened his grip a little, flexing his wrist with a twirl of Crocea Mors as he turned towards the next clump of charging Beowolves. Barks and yelps of pain behind him told him how well his partner was doing, and as Jaune hacked and slashed and turned, he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, a flashing whirlwind of crimson and gold and implacable steel, cutting down Grimm with eerily seamless transitions of sword, shield, spear, and rifle.
It didn't take long at all for the seven of them to destroy every Grimm in the village, and when the growling and snarling from the forest finally died down, Jaune straightened all the way up from his wary crouch, moving to slowly sheathe Crocea Mors as he collapsed his shield. Nora twirled Magnhild around as it shrunk down, storing it on her back with a sweaty grin, and Yang laughed outright, cocking her hip to lean back against her motorcycle. Even Blake was smiling in satisfaction as she stashed her weapon.
However, it took several seconds more before Pyrrha lowered Miló, and Ruby and Ren, likewise, hung back on their celebrations, Ruby scanning the forest carefully with the scope of Crescent Rose before she finally lowered it with a sigh of relief, smiling and nodding to the rest of them. At last, Ren hopped down from the high wall he'd been perching on as Ruby did the same from her tree, collapsing their respective weapons.
"Well, this is certainly a workout." Nora groaned, putting one arm behind her elbow and stretching loudly, the joints in her back cracking and popping. "Oh, man, talk about extreme camping. This is way more intense than the Emerald Forest."
"More Grimm and wider spaces between settlements." Blake replied with authority. She was the most well-traveled out of everyone, after all. "Hunters on Anima are spread a bit thin, so this'll probably be typical the whole way through."
Nora bent her back and swayed with a loud groan, but Jaune saw that her eyes were glinting a little with a mixture of excitement and determination. He couldn't blame her. He was still trying his damnedest to improve his fighting style in order to deal with Cinder and all the rest of it in the future, and he was already (technically) a licensed Huntsman. The more Grimm that attacked them, the more chances he'd have to whet his skills, even if Grimm didn't pose nearly the same challenge as an intelligent foe. Fighting was fighting, and Jaune was in no condition to turn down the chance to practice live combat.
Rustling drew his attention sideways as Ruby unfolded their map, peering thoughtfully at the inked lines.
"It looks like we won't be able to hit a good campsite by sundown." she announced, and conscientiously bent the map sideways, allowing the rest of Team JNPR to lean in and glance at it. "See? I vote we bunk in one of these old houses and get a fire going."
"Seconded." Nora said, grinning and rubbing her hands. "Dibs on the marshmallows!"
Ren rolled his eyes slightly from beside her, and his magenta eyes flicked over to Jaune, then slid away.
"I'll get the firewood." Ren said, somewhat abrupt, and turned away without another word as Nora followed Ruby into one of the dilapidated houses. Jaune met Pyrrha's gaze, and he jerked his head towards Ren's retreating back with a slightly apologetic expression.
"I've got it." Pyrrha said in understanding, giving him a nudge with her elbow before heading off after Ren, slinging Miló off her back and Akoúo̱ onto her wrist. It didn't do to go anywhere alone, not out in the wilderness like this, even if they were in a village that they had just cleared of Grimm. More elusive species could still be hiding in the ruins, after all, like Geists and other possession-type Grimm.
Jaune shivered, chafing his arms a little superstitiously as he turned to follow Blake into the building along with Ruby and Nora, Yang slowly wheeling her motorcycle into a sheltered position outside. The house seemed in good condition despite being abandoned, and he automatically swept the front room with his eyes, checking for exits and obstacles. The windows were too small to let in most Beowolves or Beringels, and the walls were solid enough to hold back all but the largest Nevermore's feathers. The house evidently being only half-finished before it was abandoned, there was no furniture, and most of the wooden boards laid out on the floor had rotted away, revealing dirt beneath.
Eh. He'd stayed in worse places, especially on his last trip through Anima.
"You wanna do another loop of the town with me, see what we're dealing with?" Yang asked of him as she came in, dusting off her hands, and Jaune nodded, watching Ruby and Nora scrape away some wood in the center of the room to form a hearth they could start a fire on.
"Yeah, sure." he replied. "Ruby, you and the others get us settled in, and we'll see if we can find anything useful?"
"Yup!" Ruby chimed, and Nora looked up from the wood she was ripping away from the floor with her bare hands to give him a somewhat grimy thumbs-up. Jaune grinned a little and waved to her, before walking back out the door with Yang. Blake had dipped back outside before them, and was rummaging in the luggage cart trailing behind Yang's motorcycle, unpacking their sleeping rolls. She glanced up and gave them both a brief nod as they passed her, heading in the opposite direction as Ren and Pyrrha.
"So, what do you think happened here?" Yang asked as their boots clomped on the shallow cobblestones, looking around them with morbid curiosity. "Grimm attack? Place is pretty clean for that."
"Mmm." Jaune agreed, noticing the lack of long-dried blood and desiccated bodies. He bent down, squatting on his haunches as he raked his fingers through the disturbed earth by a half-built fountain. "Financial problems like Brunswick Farms, maybe? There's a lot of stuff that just isn't finished, so maybe someone tried to start a settlement and just gave it up when the Lien ran out."
"Better than the alternative." Yang said, and there was silence for a few moments as they continued on.
The Mistral-style buildings of this settlement were clustered around a central fountain and what might have been intended to become a council house, covering an area less than a mile square, and the only thing stopping any Grimm –or travelers– from walking into the tiny, abandoned village was a rotting wooden fence. Jaune and Yang reached it after less than five minutes of walking, and Jaune grabbed a splintering beam, rocking it back and forth a little with dry squeaks.
"Seems like this place's been abandoned for a while." he said, eyeing the wobbly fence as he let go. "Maybe five, ten years?"
"If not more." Yang agreed, rolling her lip in a somewhat uncharacteristically-somber look as she glanced back towards the skeletons of buildings behind them. There was a long, thoughtful silence from her, before she spoke again, hesitantly. "You ever think…"
She trailed off with a frustrated sigh, shaking her head a little to herself.
"Mom says thinking is a dangerous hobby." Jaune deadpanned, making her snort a little and glance back towards him with a smirk.
"Very funny." Yang muttered, playfully shoving him in the shoulder a little. She shook her head more decisively, looking back to the abandoned settlement and running a hand through her hair. "You ever think how… weird it's gonna be, when we're done?"
Jaune blinked.
"What, you mean like, after we kill Salem and stuff?" he asked curiously, folding his eyes and leaning his hip against one of the fenceposts. It shifted a little, warningly, but remained firm as he rested his weight against it. "Yeah, I guess it would be… yeah."
On the not-entirely-optimistic assumption that everyone, you know, survived their victory, that would be a strange situation indeed. If Salem's death didn't vastly decrease the threat of Grimm, Jaune would eat his shoes without sauce. With her taken care of, humanity could refocus all their energies on clearing out the Grimm from every continent, which would then open up vast areas of land for cultivation.
He tried to envision that, the idea that thanks to their efforts, within a few generations land would just be there, open and easy for civilians to settle in. It was supposed to be a pipe dream every Huntsman nursed when their bones began to ache or the gnawing emptiness of lost teammates grew too strong, but with their knowledge that it was actually possible…
"It's gonna be weird." Jaune said at length, unable to articulate anything more complex. "Super weird."
"Mm-hm. And we are gonna be relaxed as shit." Yang told him, cocking an eye in his direction with a slight grin. "We are gonna pester Weiss into paying for a year's worth of day-long services at the best spa on Remnant, and we are gonna go there and not fucking leave until they make us melt through the deck chairs with their fancy massages."
"Eh." Jaune made a little face. "Honestly, I'll just take winning at this point."
Yang's joking grin shrunk into a slightly-guilty frown.
"You think we're going about that the wrong way?" she asked suddenly, and Jaune blinked at her. Yang tossed out one hand. "I mean, 'I'll just take winning,' 'it's enough that we all live through this,' all that. We've got the advantage over Salem and all her minions for what, the first time in centuries, probably? The hell are we doing, being all hesitant and not daring to hope for anything better than satisfying our self-imposed status quo?"
Jaune considered that.
"I mean, we're fucking time-travelers. We've got the biggest damn advantage this side of Remnant, there's no reason for us to be this –complacent!" Yang continued angrily, kicking a clod of dirt.
"You've got a point." Jaune hummed. "We don't want to lose our advantage by not being cautious enough, though."
Yang subsided at that with a drawn-out sigh, giving him a grudgingly accepting nod. She had a point –but so did he, and they both knew it. As Yang had said, they needed to seize the unique advantage that had been given to them before they lost momentum… or just plain squandered their opportunities. But at the same time –as Jaune had pointed out– they couldn't afford to ruin their near-miraculous chance by being too hasty and taking the wrong initiative.
This, Jaune thought not-at-all-bitterly, was exactly the kind of teamwork Ironwood and the Ace Ops had been missing out on. Neither of them was wrong, neither of them was right, but between the two of them –and the rest of the team(s)– they could find a compromise as to the most effective solution, using wisdom from both sides of the argument.
"Well," Yang said with another, somewhat more exaggerated sigh, clapping her hands together. "We should ask Ozpin about all this after we meet with him. I mean, yeah, he asked Jinn about how to destroy Salem, but I bet you money he tried at least a few other questions that we didn't see before he reached the, uh…"
"'Give up and desperately just try to maintain the status quo' state we found him in?" Jaune tried.
"Yup. That."
"Well, that's for later." Jaune said, stretching a little as he rested his weight briefly against the pole. "Right now, we need to get the rest of my team ready to fight with us, because they haven't got our years of experi-"
With a sudden creak, the post he was leaning against gave up as Jaune fell sharply backwards, sprawling on the ground with a cry and a clatter of armor.
Yang blinked at him, and then –as Jaune was grimacing pleadingly at her, no less– snickered, snorted, and finally burst out into full-fledged laughter, bending over a little as she cackled.
"Oh, shut up." he grumbled from his place lying flat on his back amidst the settling dust.
Pyrrha's feet slapped against the cobblestones as she ran, the Imp's shrieks ringing in her ears as the creature wailed its fury. The Nuckelavee was a thankfully rare type of Grimm, but as was –unfortunately– so often the case, the rarer a Grimm was, the more correspondingly powerful it was.
Grimm age was, of course, almost entirely a hypothetical science even amongst experienced Hunters, but the one thing everyone agreed on was that size, and the bone growths on the outside of the Grimm, were an important indicator. The bigger the Grimm, the older it was. The more bone plates or spikes, and the more complex those growths were, the more powerful the Grimm.
Power and age were also almost certainly intertwined with Grimm: the more powerful they were, the older they were likely to be, and vice versa.
And this one was old. Very old. The equine portion of it had grown bigger than a warhorse, big enough that if Pyrrha dared to stand beside it –not that she would– its shoulders would be higher than her head by several inches. The Imp fused atop its back was even larger than a man, with stretched, ornate horns –even more indicative, given that most Imp Grimm were barely larger than Geists, who were about the size of a child.
The long-forgotten arrows sticking out of its back told Pyrrha one other ominous thing –this Grimm was a survivor, one that had encountered multiple humans with multiple weapons and lived to slaughter them all. Ren had said that this thing had destroyed his village as a child, and looking at it, Pyrrha believed him.
The clanging and crashing of metal that filled the air was also distracting, but unlike Pyrrha, who could use sense and reason, the sound seemed to drive the Nuckelavee into a maddened fury. Jaune stood resolute despite that, banging Crocea Mors against his shield and shouting as the giant Grimm charged towards him, and he dug in his heels as the bony plating of the horse's skull slammed into his shield with a bang, forcing him backwards over the ground as he grunted and strained against the force of the charging Grimm.
Tension jolted through Pyrrha as she quickly leapt up onto the dead tree in the center of what seemed to be an old, abandoned square, planting her foot in a ridge of bark and launching herself up to a branch as she quickly turned back to the fight –and not a moment too soon.
Though Nuckelavee Grimm were fierce and rare, there was, at least, one small mercy. Because they were created when two Creatures of Grimm fused together, the two beasts shared one operating mind, one nervous system –if Grimm even had such things. It meant that only one "brain" of the creature could work at a time. This was a double-edged mercy, but still, it had its advantages.
So when the horse's head plowed into Jaune's shield, and the Huntsman managed to bring the charging creature to a stop, the Grimm changed tactics. The limp humanoid body that had been dangling off of the galloping horse's shoulder, long arms trailing behind it on the ground, twitched to life, rising up like a demented stalk to loom over a straining Jaune as he held back the weight of the now-inactive horse. A double-edged blessing: the horse could no longer stamp and charge, but now the Imp could attack Jaune, all of whose energy was concentrated on defending himself from the equine half of the Grimm.
But Jaune, unlike the Grimm, had allies.
Pyrrha hefted Miló as she twirled it into javelin form at the same moment, and then threw with all her strength. One of the long arms reaching to encircle Jaune was torn away as her spearhead pierced the Grimm's wrist and carried it to the cobblestone ground, pinning it there as the Grimm gave another hideous shriek, rearing back.
Its other arm whipped towards her, faster than anything that long had a right to be, but Pyrrha was already jumping, somersaulting over the arch of the writhing limb and then plunging down with Akoúo̱ braced protectively before her. The embossed curve of her gold shield hit the Grimm's elongated wrist perfectly, her momentum carrying that to the ground as well as Pyrrha immediately used her Semblance to pin it there, a black glow haloing her shield as the Grimm's arm twitched and writhed beneath its improbable weight.
The Nuckelavee screeched its fury loud enough to make her ears bleed, the Imp form writhing and twisting atop its equine body. But her spear and her body held, and twisting was all the creature could do: tall as it was, even the Imp was too short to reach all the way over the horse's head and snap its ghastly teeth at Jaune or slice at him with its horns. That didn't mean it didn't give both attacks a rousing good try, though, bellowing and keening as the very air rippled with the force of its noise.
The shrieks rose in intensity as the back half of the horse collapsed abruptly, and Pyrrha glanced up through her bangs to see Ren dashing rapidly beneath its bulk, StormFlower out and the sharp sickles turned towards the Grimm's tendons. Another two sharp cuts, and then a tuck and dive that took him out from under the collapsing body as he rolled to his feet behind Jaune, glaring at his enemy with fierce hatred as the Nuckelavee collapsed. Its screams tore the air like a physical attack as Pyrrha winced, trying to tuck at least one ear into her shoulder to try and muffle the noise.
"AH, SHUT UP!"
No longer needing to hold the Grimm back, Jaune collapsed his shield and swung to the side at his teammate's cry, seamlessly making room for Nora right as she bolted in, Magnhild coming up for a full-blooded strike right at the horse's head. It exploded in a mildly impressive cloud of black gore, leaving only a thick neck leading down to where the Imp sprouted. The Grimm thrashed and wailed its fury even louder, but that ended in a choking gurgle as Ren swept his guns forward and ended its keening with a rapid chitter of gunfire fired straight down the Grimm's jagged, open mouth.
The Imp slumped forward, and the sudden silence made Pyrrha's ears ring as she felt the flesh of the Nuckelavee's arm loosen beneath her, starting to crumble into ash. She stood up, shaking her head slightly to clear out the ringing noise as Ren and Nora watched the Grimm dissolve with a mixture of joy and savage, vicious pride on their faces.
"That was…" Ren said hesitantly after a moment, and then took in a deep breath. "Satisfying."
"Totally." Nora said, and for a moment Pyrrha almost wondered if she was going to spit on the place where even the gritty ashes of the Grimm were dissolving away. The moment passed, however, and Nora's eyes lifted to the sad, abandoned village around them as a trace of clouds entered her normally sunny gaze. Pyrrha stepped over to comfort her, and sheathing Crocea Mors, she saw Jaune put a hand on Ren's shoulder as they shared a speaking look as well.
Nora glanced at them, did a micro-double-take, and then grinned and started chanting "bromance, bromance, bromance" gleefully under her breath. It was strange, but Pyrrha was beginning to realize that Nora didn't do these bizarre little tangents of hers for no reason: she did them to distract herself from sad or negative thoughts with an absurd bit of humor.
It was something Pyrrha hadn't noticed before, instead watching the excitable ginger with bemusement as she rattled on about whatever new ridiculous theory she had come up with, but now Pyrrha was learning that Nora was wiser and more reserved than she had previously thought. It was a nice knowledge to have.
"Would that mean we also have a… um, sisomance?" Pyrrha asked with a slight smile, though she faltered a little at finding the feminine form of "bromance." Bro was brother, so sister would be sis, right?
Nora glanced at her –more than just momentary surprise showing in her eyes– before she grinned and threw an arm around the taller girl's shoulders.
"Heck yeah we do!" she crowed. "Though sisomance kinda sounds like some weird dark magic. Hey, Jaune! Did sisomance ever come up on your guys' quest? Like a sisomancer?"
"Uh… no." Jaune blinked at her, taking his hand from Ren's shoulder. "Never really came up."
"But it could've, though, is what I'm hearing you say."
"Nora, you saw as much as we did for what people used to do with magic." Jaune deadpanned, and then swirled his hands vaguely in the air. "All arcane gestures and whatnot, no spells, no chants."
"But maybe one of them was sisomancy! You don't know what those forms of magic were called, do you?"
"Well no, but…"
Bickering happily, the four of them headed back towards the camp Team RWBY had tactfully built on the outskirts of Kuroyuri, passing Ruby perched on a nearby rooftop as they did. She'd been ready to back them up if they needed it, but Team JNPR hadn't needed it, and Pyrrha found herself walking with jaunty steps as they returned to camp, no matter her dust and sweat. Even more than her initial excitement as they had set out on their mission a few weeks ago, she felt energized, vitalized. She was doing things.
That weary sort of satisfaction thrummed like warmth in her bones as she settled down on logs with the others, bringing out Miló and laying it on her knee for sharpening. Her weapons and armor –once as bright and golden as the sun– had been dulled and scratched into a glimmering bronze by long weeks of fighting Grimm in the wilderness. The leather of her corset had been similarly scuffed, and a few tears had opened in her long red sash, but Pyrrha found a kind of vicious pride in all those marks of battle.
She wasn't standing decoratively atop a pedestal, not anymore. She was sharpening her blade and her skills as she strode through the wilderness, fighting alongside her truest friends as they all grew in leaps and bounds. She had seen her future atop Beacon's tower, and she wasn't going to tamely follow it. She was a fighter, a Huntress, and she'd be a fighter to the very end.
Nora was similarly occupied in fastidiously cleaning Magnhild –after several weeks blazing a not-entirely-metaphorical trail through swarm after swarm of Grimm, they were all running low on Dust ammunition, and the few unrefined crystals that they could pick up in villages were generally small and of uncertain purity. Pyrrha wouldn't begrudge Ren wasting several rounds on the Nuckelavee, though: he'd been telling them in terse, clipped sentences about how Kuroyuri had fallen as they moved closer to where they expected the Grimm to be, and Pyrrha was entirely in sympathy with him for wanting to destroy the destroyer of his home in a bit more… unrestrained fashion than normal.
And besides, it wasn't wasting. They had killed an extremely dangerous Grimm today –certainly nothing as big or cataclysmic as Leviathan class, but an extraordinarily deadly Grimm nonetheless, capable of wiping out whole towns if there wasn't an experienced Hunter or group of Hunters to protect them.
Ruby and the others had encountered two Leviathan-class Grimm in their future travels –including an actual Leviathan– and they had been terrifying enough in image, never mind reality. Leviathan-class Grimm were, quite simply, the Grimm that were large enough to require battleship ordnance to kill or disable –titanic creatures that no Hunter, Huntsman, or Huntress teams, regardless of their skills, Semblances, and/or Dust, could possibly hope to kill.
The eponymous Leviathan Grimm were a good example: the one that Ruby and the others had faced in Pyrrha's hometown of Argus had been large enough that not even Ruby's silver eyes could do more than immobilize it, and one of Atlas's soldiers had then had to finish the creature off with an enormous mecha robot.
Similarly, the Wyvern that had crushed the tower where Pyrrha's future self had been fighting Cinder was another example of a Leviathan-class Grimm, albeit a much smaller, near-inconclusive example. It was possible that Pyrrha or another experienced Hunter with enough Dust or a powerful-enough Semblance might have been able to kill the creature, if they were lucky enough to hit the right vulnerable spot, but it was a risky endeavor, and Grimm threats were usually ranked pessimistically.
The whale-Grimm that had attacked Atlas was certainly a Leviathan-class Grimm, a true behemoth if Pyrrha had ever seen one. Even hours of attacks from Atlas's entire military had not been enough to pummel the creature into submission, and it had taken an explosion of kinetic energy that was, apparently, hoarded by Ozpin for many years to destroy the beast. Obviously, Ozpin in his entirety didn't exactly fit within normal classification systems, but still. No one person or team could have killed that Grimm.
The Nuckelavee, as Pyrrha and her friends had so gallantly proved, was definitely something a single team of experienced or dedicated Hunters could take care of –or, in a rare and skilled case, a single powerful Hunter. Ruby could probably kill the Nuckelavee on her own, using her speedy Semblance to zip between the legs and hamstring it, then whirl in and take the heads –but that was a chancy proposition, discounting her silver eyes. Weiss could similarly use her glyphs to immobilize it and kill it quickly, if she was not surrounded by other Grimm, but Blake or Yang would struggle to destroy the Nuckelavee on their own, despite being fully as competent as their teammates. Their Semblances and fighting styles left them ill-equipped to deal with a Grimm in this shape, with long spindly arms and a heavy, charging body.
They could, probably, take it out on their own if push came to shove, but that was a very risky prospect. Much better to rely on their teammates to help them.
Pyrrha sank into the familiar rasp of her whetstone against the edge of her blade, content, even out here, in the Grimm-filled wilderness. Weeks of travel had given her teammates and her friends a chance to prove themselves, and Pyrrha had not found them wanting. She felt safe, as safe as she did behind the walls of Vale. Any Grimm that showed up now would take five or six blades to the throat, and that was when everyone's guard was lowered.
"You guys did an awesome job with that Nuckelavee." Ruby commented, plopping down beside her and looking with shining eyes to the rest of JNPR. "You were so in sync!"
"Well, we have been training for a while." Jaune said, giving her and the others a little nod. Despite everything that had gone before, Pyrrha felt her mouth stretching in a brilliant smile as their eyes met, a proud warmth welling up in her chest. No matter what, no matter the things she had seen, the Team JNPR she had fallen in love with was still a team. Jaune was still her leader, her partner, and Ren and Nora were still her teammates.
"I'll say we have." Nora groaned, flopping back dramatically on her log. "We've been out here for weeks! And every single day, more Grimm! I tell ya, we've probably killed more than any first-year at Beacon!"
They had at that, and it was working their kinks out with a vengeance. The champion fighter in Pyrrha was pleased at her teammate's progress –absurdly so. Jaune and the members of Team RWBY were quite skilled, facing down the packs or flocks of Grimm they faced with a resigned sort of equanimity –nothing new to see here, nothing too particularly difficult to deal with. It was the world-weary confidence of someone very good at their job, and the way Jaune and the others had waded into the Grimm without hesitation or mercy had certainly served to back that attitude up.
Nora, Ren, and Pyrrha, however, did not have that same experience. At the beginning, certainly, there had been a distinct gap in their skills, but now… well, after almost a month of near-constant fighting –because Nora was right, they were faced with Grimm attacks almost every day, and occasionally more than once a day– the entirety of Team JNPR was working together like a well-oiled machine.
Pyrrha was a good fighter: an excellent fighter, really. But in practical terms, she was mostly unblooded. She had been a champion that fought in tournament matches, where rules were clearly laid out and the worst consequences of defeat were an accidental injury or public humiliation; where the floors were smooth, polished, and level. On an academic level, even a fight with a mere Beowolf out in the wilderness presented more challenge and serious risk than the combat that had made Pyrrha famous.
Of course, that wasn't to suggest that she wasn't well-equipped to deal with Grimm. Pyrrha fought keenly, eking out every ounce of her skill and experience to flawlessly execute a series of moves to disarm, disable, and kill her opponents, and she was still one of the most skilled fighters of her generation. But she was a student, and like any student, she had her flaws to hammer out: in Pyrrha's case, practicality.
She could fight and kill Grimm, but Grimm were not intelligent, and all of Pyrrha's human-on-human fights had been clean, no-hitting-below-the-belt, methodical spars. She had the talent and the strength to become a fine champion, but not the real-world experience to become an effective Huntress. Her moves were flashy, and while Pyrrha was good enough not to telegraph her moves specifically, she was a painfully methodical fighter. There was no inventiveness, no viciousness in her tactics. She fought by the book, and any real Faunus or human enemies would be keen to punish that.
If they could.
That was what these weeks of fighting and slogging through the wilderness had done for Pyrrha: given her the chance to shave down her weaknesses and remove the vulnerabilities that her enemies could exploit. She was already an incredibly skilled fighter, but all of these live, deadly enemies gave her the chance to season herself. If Pyrrha fumbled now, it wouldn't be to snickering classmates or smoldering cheeks as she trudged off the stage. Someone would get hurt. Someone might die.
That was a highly effective goad to improve herself, and Pyrrha could see the results day by day, week by week. The same thing was happening to Nora and Ren, who did not have her innate talent but nonetheless were economizing their movements by the hour, becoming cleaner, faster, less vulnerable, with each fight. No more tricks. No more unnecessary flourishes. No more anything but the fastest, most precise way to end the fight and destroy their opponent. That alone put them leagues ahead of their peers, and Pyrrha was looking forward with some sardonic amusement towards their next in-class spars.
She half-listened to the others as they continued talking, and conversation turned, as it always did, to what they were going to tell the others when they got back. Their break was dwindling away: in less than a week, they'd have to board the boat-train back to Vale, and they were still, to be perfectly honest, no closer to finding a solution.
"I don't see why it matters so much, who we tell first." Nora said. "Maybe we could just split up and tell everyone everything at the same time?"
"Dude, we had Scarlet hanging on by a thread." Yang scoffed, pinching her fingers indicatively. "If we come to him with anything but hard proof, he's going to bail so fast the bucket'll hit us in the face."
"For that matter, how would we convince the headmaster that we're telling the truth?" Ren asked. "We could tell him about what will happen, and wait for events to prove us correct, but…"
"But sitting on our behinds is kinda what got us into this mess in the first place." Ruby said with a giant, melancholy sigh, palming her chin in both hands. "At least as far as the Fall of Beacon goes."
"I say we wing it." Jaune suggested. "I mean, Ozpin's paranoid. If Ruby tells him all this, there's a decent chance he'll act on it just in case even some of it is true."
Pyrrha frowned thoughtfully, and then finally spoke up. After all, she was the one who had the most to be concerned about, as far as the near future went.
"I think Nora has a point." she said, drawing everyone's immediate attention as she looked up from her weapon and across the fire. "It doesn't really matter who we tell first, because we aren't relying on the relationship between Ozpin and the others in regard to this news. They both need to know, simple as that. That being said…"
She tucked a loop of hair behind her ear.
"I think we should prioritize telling Ozpin before we reconvene the others. As has been pointed out, he has authority. Credibility. Assuming he reacts well to the news, we can use that to help convince the others that we aren't lying. Furthermore, he knows most of this already. The information about Jinn and the Relics won't be news to him."
That got her several thoughtful hums.
"She has a point." Ren said at last, making Pyrrha's eyes flash to him. His chin tilted to her, just slightly. "It will be easier and quicker to tell Ozpin all of this, and he won't need as much convincing. We can use that to help us convince the others. And…"
His eyes flicked to Jaune, sweeping around Team RWBY, before they lowered back to the ground.
"Well, he's probably the only headmaster we can really trust, isn't he?"
"Ehhh…"
The unified, uncertain drawn-out choral hum of both RWBY and Jaune was not encouraging.
"I mean, he'll try to do whatever he does because he thinks it'll help." Ruby said fairly.
"He definitely has our best interests in mind." Blake agreed.
"And really, his only mistake when it comes to Beacon was sitting on his ass and not doing anything." Yang added.
"He's willing to do pretty much anything except trust people." Jaune mumbled.
There was a long silence after their quick round of answers as everyone's eyes lowered absently to the campfire. Both teams were quiet as they stared into its flames for several minutes, thinking many thoughts. Nora, predictably, was the first to break the moody silence.
"The last generation kinda sucks, huh?" she asked. "Leaving us to clean up all their messes."
"And maybe the generation before theirs did the same thing to them." Ruby said. Her voice was firm, and her silver eyes glinted in the light of the fire as one hand slid almost unconsciously over the length of Crescent Rose in her lap. "What we do know is that we have a mess to clean up now. And we're going to see it through to the end."
Going to the principal's office was never a comfortable situation, and that was even after one factored in the knowledge that Ruby had grown up with a teacher parent. And a teacher uncle.
Honestly, that just made it worse in some ways, because even though she knew the faculty of most of her schools in a sort of… friendly-not-quite-older-relative way, that just made it even more awkward and uncomfortable on her end during the (rare) occasions when she had to be disciplined.
Ruby was a pretty good student, all things considered. Her only real problem was over-enthusiasm, which Uncle Qrow had solved like the total badass he was by taking her under his wing and teaching her the ways of the scythe.
Still, there was going to the principal's office for any old reason, and there was going because you had to tell him an intense and possibly world-rocking secret.
No pressure.
Ruby hummed and rocked back and forth on her heels, trying not to feel uncomfortable as the green-tinted elevator whummed softly, carrying her up and up and up through Beacon's tower. She didn't actually have any bad memories of the interior –she'd run up the side of the tower when she was trying to save Pyrrha– and the office itself had been shattered, unrecognizable, when Cinder had… well, when Pyrrha had died. Her fidgetiness now was mostly just nerves.
Relax, Ruby. It's okay. He'll believe you. I mean, he has to, right? There's no way I'd be working for Salem willingly, and there's no other way for me to know about all this.
Staring into the reflective sheen of the metal doors, Ruby sighed and poked her cheeks several times. Trustworthy, she may look, but competent and wise, she did not. Stupid lingering baby fat. It was almost as bad as her precious lost inches of height –it had taken Ruby weeks to properly adjust to her swings and new bodyweight. She couldn't wait to grow up again.
Her fingers trailed down nervously, smoothing out the pins that held her cloak to her shoulders, adjusting the belt cinched around her waist. Ruby had taken some care in choosing her outfit –well, okay, Weiss had drilled the importance of presentation into her via Scroll message once they had landed back in Vale, but still.
(Neopolitan had also sent them a somewhat short and lazy text, but the end result was still reassuring them that she was alive and things were moving forward on her end.)
Anyway, according to Weiss, Ruby couldn't show up to this very important meeting in her uniform. She needed every ounce of authority she had, and walking into Ozpin's office dressed like one of his students would severely undercut her efforts to appear old, mature, and to be reckoned with. When it came to projecting an aura of gravitas, Ruby needed all the help she could get, and looking like a schoolgirl would not help.
The fact that her clothes were still a little damp in some places after being hastily run through the washer didn't matter, because she had been weeks in the wilderness and she needed to tell Ozpin about things now, before someone from Team SSSNI spotted her.
She was armed. Ruby didn't think Ozpin would react badly to her news, but then, she hadn't thought Ironwood would try to arrest them in Atlas, either. Once bitten, twice shy, and Ruby had had some very bad experiences about her expectations being betrayed in headmasters' offices.
The elevator binged softly as it slowed to a stop beneath her feet, and Ruby swallowed a little, then exhaled slowly and pulled her shoulders back. She was a Huntress. She could do this.
Her boots clomped softly on the floor as Ruby left the elevator, echoing in the quiet office. Ozpin was behind his desk, a steaming mug at his side as it so often was, Professor Goodwitch standing stern and implacable at his side, a clipboard cradled in one arm. The clockface window behind him looked out on Vale, and the exposed gears everywhere clicked and whirred softly to themselves, peacefully ticking away with the patience of time itself. It was so much an image of Beacon that something twisted painfully in Ruby's heart, and she had to swallow down the urge to cry for just a moment.
Ozpin looked up the moment the elevator sounded, of course, and one eyebrow rose slightly as he saw her.
"I trust nothing untoward is the cause of this visit, Miss Rose." he said smoothly, leaning back from the files he had been bent over and steepling his fingers. A hint of grave concern ruffled the normally-implacable mask of his face: Ruby and the others had gone beyond the settlements, after all, and they were only first-years.
"No. Uh, well, I mean –nothing to do with our trip." Ruby said, half-laughing and little and rubbing the back of her neck. "Everyone made it back okay."
Warmth twinkled in his eyes.
"And I am glad to hear that." Ozpin said, settling back into his chair just a fraction. "Team RWBY is a most promising group of Huntresses."
Pff. You don't know the half of it. Ruby thought to herself.
"Yeah. Soooo…" she said aloud a moment later, one leg swinging a little as Ruby tried to think of a way to open this conversation that wouldn't get her put in Beacon's emergency ward for dangerous hallucinations. "Um, you don't have any meetings soon, do you?"
"Is there a purpose behind that question, Miss Rose?" Professor Goodwitch asked, her eyes narrowing a little behind her thin spectacles. No doubt she was a vicious defender of the faculty's itinerary plan.
"I have some stuff to tell you." Ruby said. "And it's gonna take a while."
Both adults blinked at her as Ruby finally settled her stance, unconsciously transitioning between one breath from the next from an endearingly awkward student into a calm and experienced Huntress.
"Really." Ozpin's face gave nothing away, but he reached for his mug rather than his cane, propped up against the desk. Ruby tried to ignore how odd it felt that it wasn't Oscar who was holding it as the headmaster sipped.
"Well, yeah. It's –you guys aren't recording anything, are you?" Ruby asked in a sudden spate of nervousness. "Like while you're doing your teacher stuff or whatever… I swear, this talk is important, like, super important, and I don't want a video or an audio of what we say getting spread around."
"Miss Rose," Ozpin's smile was indulgent. "I highly doubt there is anyone with the drive or the knowledge to hack my private device."
"Watts could." Ruby said, and the smile slipped from his face. "That guy from Atlas –he was some kind of scientist, or a doctor?"
"Arthur Watts died in the Paladin Incident." Ms. Goodwitch told her, frowning.
"No, he didn't." Ruby said stubbornly. "And now he works for Salem."
The silence in the headmaster's office iced over. Ruby could hear the slow, monotonous ticking of the giant gears above them, ominous as a slowing heartbeat –and that was all she could hear.
"And how do you," Ozpin dipped his chin a little, peering over his glasses. "Know of Salem?"
"The Lamp of Knowledge told us." Ruby said, straightening her shoulders and meeting his gaze without fear. It was like staring into the eyes of an ancient dragon –something deep and incalculable swam within his gaze, promising both great wisdom and great power… and great destruction if he was somehow stirred to anger. "It told us everything."
"I see." Ozpin's expression was unreadable as he lifted his mug and took another sip. Ruby could smell the cocoa from here, warm and chocolatey, and she felt a little twist of hunger in her stomach. "When?"
"After the Fall of Beacon." she said steadily, and Glynda's clipboard slipped from her hands. It froze midair, haloed by her purple Aura, but that didn't make the deputy headmistress any less flustered as she snatched it back and pierced Ruby with a needlelike glare.
"What?! Miss Rose, even as a joke-"
"Salem has agents here in Vale." Ruby said, trying to sound calm and professional and absolutely not like the fifteen-year-old she was in their eyes. "They're the ones that attacked the Fall Maiden, and they're the ones behind the Dust thefts. Torchwick is being manipulated as their pawn, and so is the White Fang. They want to cause chaos in the city and bring down the school, both to weaken you and to snatch the Maiden's powers. And it h-happens."
Despite her best efforts, her voice cracked a little.
"Ironwood brings practically an army of drones for the Vytal Festival, but it isn't enough. They get hacked and turned against us, and you die, Ozpin. Salem gets the Fall Maiden, Beacon's destroyed, Yang loses an arm, and Pyrrha dies too. She's not the only one –s-so many students die in the Fall. The CCT goes down and inter-kingdom communications are shut off. Ironwood shuts down the Atlas borders and starts a Dust embargo, and then you send Qrow along with me and what's left of Team JNPR to Mistral. We met your next incarnation there –his name's Oscar. Oscar Pine. We managed to stop Haven from falling, but Lionheart died: he was a traitor too, did you know that? He'd spent months sending Hunters out to die, and he gave Salem's agents entry into the festival."
Ozpin closed his eyes, drawing in a slow breath. He was hurt, clearly, but there was something else Ruby noticed, which she might not have noticed if she was still fifteen –he was resigned, and hurt at his very resignation. He'd long ago accepted that he would be betrayed by people he trusted, and that acceptance hurt him.
"Ironwood's no better. I –we trusted him, at first, we gave him a chance to prove himself and we thought he was okay, that we could believe in him, but-"
Ruby's eyes watered, and she sternly told herself to stop. She was talking to Ozpin like an adult, trying to give him a report that he would take seriously and not dismiss as a child's ramblings, and crying would not help.
"It was horrible. Salem showed up in this, this floating octopus thingy, and Ironwood lost it. He declared martial law over the city, he arrested Uncle Qrow and Robyn Hill, and he tried to arrest us, just because we warned her about Salem and wouldn't let him go forward with his plans!"
Her nails dug into her palms as Ruby's arms trembled a little, feeling the fury, the injustice of it all over again.
"We got away, though. We tried to help, tried planning with the Happy Huntresses and stuff, but… but we didn't manage to make it the whole way. Salem attacked Atlas, and we got a message out about how we needed help, but no one came. Not in time, anyways. Penny became the new Winter Maiden, but she got infected by a virus Watts made, one that was going to make her open the Vault and then self-terminate. Ironwood was threatening to bomb Mantle if we didn't help him use the Staff to raise Atlas-"
Professor Goodwitch's mouth drew into a tight, hard line of fury at those words, and her eyes glinted with a deadly steel that promised no good for her once-ally.
"-and Salem was still throwing her whole army at Atlas too, of course, and we… we thought we had something figured out." Ruby gave a sad little huff and smile. "It almost worked, too. We had Penny open the Vault, but then we used the Staff of Creation to make her a new body, a real one that wasn't infected by the virus. Then we made portals that would take all of the Atlas people to Vacuo, b-but Ambrosius did something, made it so we couldn't come back once we'd gone through, and Cinder-"
Right, she hadn't said Cinder's name yet.
"-the one that attacked the Fall Maiden, the one who killed her and took her powers, she beat us. She threw us off the paths, me and my whole team, and Jaune from Team JNPR, too. She k-k-killed Penny."
Despite her best efforts, despite all her straining to sound professional and calm, Ruby choked. Cinder had been the one to kill Penny, not Jaune. Jaune was innocent. Cinder had been the one to plunge those terrible talons into Penny's chest, gouging out her life, and Cinder had been the one who hadn't given them enough time to heal Penny. Jaune could have done it. His Semblance was amazing like that.
Even as Ruby swallowed down the choking lump of grief in her throat, a single tear scalded its way down her face, dripping onto the floor with a faint plop. Ruby raised an arm, aggressively scrubbing her face clean with her sleeve before she looked back up at the teachers again. Professor Goodwitch looked shocked, torn between sympathy and incredulity, and Ozpin… Ozpin was as inscrutable as ever.
"We didn't die, though." Ruby continued, her voice still a little tight. "We woke up –at Beacon, during our first semester. And we decided we needed to stop everything that was gonna happen."
There was a moment of silence from the teachers: Professor Goodwitch was visibly struggling with herself. Both of Ozpin's eyebrows inched upwards, slowly.
"You seem to have been late in telling me of this." he finally observed –and it was an observation, not an accusation. He knew better than anyone what the kind of betrayals that Ruby and the others had seen could do to someone's sense of trust.
"We wanted to be sure." Ruby said, cutting off that train before it could leave the station. She took a step forward, her stance placating, her eyes honest. "We didn't know- we'd just been fricking reincarnated, we had no idea what to think, and we decided we needed to ask the Lamp what was going on before we committed to a course of action. We weren't going to cut out in the middle of school since we didn't want to tip someone off, so…"
"Hence the well-disguised camping trip to Mistral." Ozpin said, something like a crooked smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Ruby giggled sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck again.
"Uh, yeah."
Ozpin nodded slowly, almost to himself.
"And?" he asked at length. Ruby thought she saw a brief flash of curiosity in his eyes.
"The Lamp that this world is real and that we didn't die." she replied honestly. "It was, um…"
She waved her arms around in vague windmills that she hoped helped to convey the weirdness of Jinn's explanation.
"Since we asked the Staff to make the portals like the Maiden vaults, the space we fell through wasn't really connected to Remnant, and the laws of physics were all wobbly, and so we sorta… slipped through the cracks?"
Ozpin raised a single eyebrow. Ruby flushed and rubbed the back of her neck.
"The Lamp said it was weird, too." she almost-apologized. "She said something about how time definitely got twisted and bent to take us back, but she wasn't sure how, or if there would be, like, costs or consequences down the line. She warned us to be careful about that."
Professor Goodwitch shifted, cradling her clipboard closer to her chest.
"'She'?" she asked, eyes narrowing a little, and Ozpin spoke before Ruby could even finish opening her mouth.
"The spirit that dwells inside the Lamp, and what allows it to answer three questions every one hundred years." he said, his eyes never leaving Ruby's face. "Her name is the key to summon her for answers, so I'm sure you will forgive the both of us if it is not spoken aloud."
Ruby closed her mouth. She knew a pointed hint when she heard one.
Still, the fact that Ozpin believed that she did know Jinn's name was encouraging. That meant he might believe her on more stuff, right?
"So, um… yeah." she said, kicking awkwardly at the ground. "Now that we know we've come back in time and we know this isn't an alternate dimension, we came back to warn you guys and, um… hope we can take steps forward?"
There was another moment of silence. The giant gears above Ruby's head hummed and clicked, and Ozpin closed his eyes, steepling his fingers together on the desk. Both Ruby and Professor Goodwitch watched him attentively, neither daring to break the long moment of contemplation.
"What steps were you planning on?" Ozpin asked at last, without opening his eyes.
"Preventing the Fall of Beacon is our top priority." Ruby answered honestly. "We're strengthening ourselves and our friends, y'know, training, and we figured… um, ehehe…"
She swallowed and looked away. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ozpin's mouth curl up.
"You figured that if I took no steps, you would be prepared to take them for me?" he asked gently, and she flushed.
"M-maybe…"
Ozpin chuckled and opened his eyes.
"We will obviously need to hear more details of this now-hypothetical future, Miss Rose. Personally, I would advocate for supposed tutoring sessions with I or Professor Goodwitch." he said, pushing his glasses up the slope of his nose with one finger. "We cannot avert anything unless we know our enemies' plans more fully. Following that, I would say that your plans to increase your training and that of your friends is very wise. Do they know of this future?"
Ruby thought of Team SSSNI and Penny, no doubt impatiently waiting with the rest of her team for results.
"They will."
"Hmm." Ozpin's face was expressionless, but at least he didn't seem visibly disapproving as he reached for his mug again. "In that case, I would suggest a more… private, area in which to hone your skills. As you know, our enemies are everywhere."
"The basement?" Ruby asked. "I mean, like, where you kept the Fall Maiden? That's got room enough to train."
Something like wariness flickered in Ozpin's eyes, before it was gone again in a flash of calm command. Him not being used to people knowing about the basement vault, or him being reluctant to open it up?
"That will suit." he said. "Do you have the means to get down there?"
Ruby shook her head.
"I will give you the elevator code, then."
"Ozpin…" Professor Goodwitch hissed, looking stiff. Ruby could actually understand that –this was going way smoother than she had expected. She half expected Ozpin to say sure, why not? if she asked him to hand the Maiden over to her right now.
"Miss Rose has extended us her trust: it would be churlish not to reciprocate." Ozpin said, unruffled in the face of Professor Goodwitch's quite frankly terrifying glare. "Particularly considering the enormity of the stakes at hand. I will, naturally, advise her and all her fellows to use the vault and its entrance will all due and proper caution."
"Of course." Ruby said, fidgeting nervously and trying not to think about Neo and the absolute lack of caution bringing her to the vault would involve. "We'll be super careful."
"Very well, then." Ozpin said, and –still apparently immune to Professor Goodwitch's intensifying glare– gave Ruby a reassuring and almost sunny smile. "As momentous as this news already is, I can't help but be reassured. I can't quite remember the last time we had this much of a potential advantage over Salem… it would be foolish to not capitalize on it."
Professor Goodwitch's glare lessened just a fraction.
"That being said, we do not wish to ruin anything by blindly rushing in. Salem and her followers are no fools, and if we begin to foil their plans when we should have no knowledge of them, they will grow wary and change tactics." he continued.
Ruby blinked.
"You're… going to wait and see?" she faltered.
"We are going to err on the side of caution, Miss Rose." Ozpin said firmly, tilting his chin a little to peer at her over the edge of his glasses. His gaze was stern. "We have the element of surprise, here, and it would be the height of foolishness to ruin it by hasty moves –as I'm sure you know."
Ruby fidgeted. There was nothing wrong in what he said… but part of her couldn't help but wonder, in the timeline that wasn't, was this what Ozpin's tactics had been, too? To wait and see and hold his cards close to his chest, unaware that the game was changing before his eyes, until it was all suddenly too late to make any play at all?
"Train and tell your friends, Miss Rose." Ozpin said, rising from his desk with a warm smile. His mug of hot cocoa was in one hand, his other drifting towards his cane, and it was all so Beacon again that Ruby's throat closed up. "I'm sure they're eagerly waiting to hear your news. Don't be alarmed if you are called up to this office again sometime soon. We have, after all, much to discuss."
She swallowed around the lump in her throat and nodded, turning back to the elevator. The buttons dinged softly as she jammed her thumb against them, and she rocked on her heels a little, waiting for the cabin to arrive.
Ruby glanced behind herself one last time as she walked into the elevator, seeing Ozpin and Professor Goodwitch standing tall against the windows that showed all of Beacon, alert and watchful, as the gears ticked slow and soft overhead.
As the doors swished shut behind her, she prayed that her warning had been enough.
"Do you believe her?" Glynda asked. It was a question well worth asking: they had both been part of many, many impossibilities in this world, but the kind of impossibility that involved looping through time, skipping dimensions… well. That was a whole other level of unreality.
Ozpin swirled the cocoa in his mug, staring out over the skyline of Vale without really seeing it, thinking.
"I do not disbelieve her." he said at last, and took a slow, meditative sip. "Her knowledge is thorough and her story is consistent."
"But…?"
"I have been alive for many, many years, Glynda." Ozpin said, an understatement if he'd ever uttered one. "And never once in that time have I seen anything even approaching this."
Glynda nodded slowly. Yes, Miss Rose's story had the ring of conviction about it, but conviction didn't necessarily mean truth. Evil was at its most dangerous when it hid behind a mask of kindliness or charity. Miss Rose was a delightful child in many ways, but her trusting nature could easily have led her astray.
Still, there were parts of her story that could not be ignored. Qrow may be fonder of the bottle than Ozpin might like, but drunk or sober, he kept any secrets he encountered locked tightly behind his teeth, even around his family. He would not have told Miss Rose of Amber's existence, much less her current condition or the attack that had led up to it. So, how had she known, if not from one of the other principal participants?
But then, if Salem's agents had tried swaying a silver-eyed warrior to their side, how did Miss Rose know Amber's current location exactly? Why was she able to so accurately describe Salem's ways of using and discarding her pawns?
If they were trying to corrupt Miss Rose, they would have used soft words with the young Huntress, luring her into their clutches with misinformation and lies. It wasn't difficult to paint him in a negative light, he knew: there wasn't any real inaccuracy in calling him a body-hopping parasite, a shadowy puppetmaster with his hands on the strings of every Hunter academy on Remnant. Presented in a certain way, at a certain time, the truth of who and what he was could have driven Miss Rose straight into Salem's arms.
Which had clearly not been the case, here. Ozpin could see the dislike glinting sharp in her eyes as she spoke of Salem, the resentment and even hatred boiling under her steely gaze as she talked of Salem's latest Maiden receptacle, Cinder. Such emotions could not be faked, especially not in a child. So then, if Miss Rose had not learned of Amber's attack from the attackers, the defenders, or Amber herself, how had she learned of the existence of Maidens and of Fall's current condition?
She could not have. It was quite as simple as that.
Another impossibility, of course, was her knowing which new host he would take, what poor soul he would overcome after the person he was now had died. That was simply impossible under any circumstances except those she described.
Setting aside how she had even known of the Lamp's existence and managed to access it, Jinn might have given her an answer that revealed the existence of the Maidens, and then Miss Rose might have asked another question to clarify –but the knowledge of who his next host would be lay strictly in the future, which Jinn could not touch. There was no knowledge, no force on Remnant, that would let Miss Rose predict who his next host would be with any accuracy, never mind with such unshakeable certainty.
Ozpin adjusted his glasses slightly and took a deep breath, staring at the vista stretching out beneath his tower. There was, of course, a very simple solution to all these doubts and disbeliefs.
"Amongst her other claims, Miss Rose stated that Leo has betrayed us, and is currently sending Hunters to their deaths in Mistral in order to thin their numbers." he said slowly. "He is also the one responsible for sending this Cinder to our school in the guise of a student."
Glynda's eyes were sharp behind her glasses.
"Contact Qrow. If what his niece says is true, then there is no more need for reconnaissance in tracking down the ones who injured Amber. I want him…" Ozpin's eyes closed, and he exhaled slowly. "To investigate Lionheart, and see if there is anything to this matter."
It hurt him to do this. Leo had been a friend, but –but Ozpin could not afford to ignore the threat to his Hunters, Huntsmen, and Huntresses. They were the front-line defense, what prevented Salem from merely engulfing civilization and snuffing out all hope or cooperation with a wave of her hand. Without Ozpin, the world might hold out against Salem and her slow but steady plans for a few millennia. Without the inner circle he created to protect and guide in his place, it would probably take a few centuries for the world be brought to its knees.
Without Hunters, without the academies, Salem's victory would be a matter of a single decade –perhaps less.
No, he could not allow that to happen. Even the threat against Amber paled in relation to the swathes of brave warriors that might even now be cut down by Leo's theoretical treachery. A mere half-Maiden would not bring Salem that much closer to victory, especially not if Ozpin took James's advice on the Aura transfer machine. Besides, the Beacon Relic was better-hidden than most, and even if this Cinder woman managed to wrest all of Amber's power away, she was still but one Maiden. One Maiden, against the dozens of warriors and the hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives they could save if they were in turn not betrayed and abandoned to their deaths.
It wasn't even a question of priorities.
Leo first, discover the truth of Miss Rose's statements –and then the Maidens.