The elevator code Ruby gives Ozpin in this chapter is the OCLC (ISBN) number for the first Wizard of Oz book. Also, vis-a-vis me writing a BG3/RWBY crossover, the vote from the People's Council of Audience Members thus far lies:
I'd Read It: 5
Sounds Cool But Maybe Finish This First Please: 5
Nah: 2
THUS THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN! I've decided I'll be writing the BG3 fic in the corners as I have downtime, but I'll prioritize this and won't post anything until it's finished.
Which is NOT the reason for my longer-than-the-usual-threeish-months hiatus, by the way! As I mentioned previously, I had to catch up on several other projects –namely writing a 30-prompt annual list before June, cannibalizing and sewing a fuck-this-entirely-to-hell-it's-too-hot dress for my seasonal job in August, temporarily working 65+ hour weeks in August and September because of aforementioned second seasonal job, subbing the last two Re Dracula episodes for my sibling before October 1& 3, and trying (and failing) to make significant progress on the latest installment in my other series before it hits the 10-year anniversary.
There's like three or four other things I'm working on, but those were the ones with actual time constraints, so.
(This chapter was likewise brought to you by the Ruby Rose Mental Health Foundation. It's bad, folks! She's not doing well!)
"So, uh. I bet you're wondering why we all gathered you here today?" Yang asked awkwardly, slapping her hands together and then rubbing them. "Welllll…"
"I'm more concerned about the swearing-to-secrecy thingy," Nora commented, idly kicking her feet behind herself from where she lay stomach-down on one of the beds in Team RRWN's room. Blake and Yang had, apparently, managed to convince Jaune to rig up those ridiculously dangerous bunkbeds in ABNY's room.
Weiss sipped her coffee and was quietly grateful for Ren's mitigating influence and Ruby's redirected focus this time around. The beds had been charming, but it was something of a relief to have a regular dorm when she was separated from her real team. It helped the mental adjustment.
"This is important," Blake said, arms folded and shoulder leaning against the windowsill. "Whatever else may happen, we need to know that you'll keep your mouths shut about it. If you gave us your word, we can trust that."
"… but you barely know us," Ren said, looking slightly wary from where he sat beside Nora. Weiss approved of his suspicion: there were few benign reasons for a meeting and a vow like this between fellow students.
"About that…" Jaune replied, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked the other way.
Pyrrha looked uncertain and, like Ren, vaguely suspicious. Nora looked enthusiastic, but there was a hint of a sharp edge in her eyes.
"This will sound completely unbelievable, but so be it," Weiss said briskly, setting her cup down. She straightened her shoulders and folded both hands in her lap, facing the others with a level gaze. "There isn't a way to soften this or make it sound more palatable, so I won't bother trying. We do know you. We have known you for some time, but you have not known us. Ruby, Jaune, Blake, Yang, and myself are time-travelers."
The three ex-members of JNPR stared at her for a second.
"What," Ren said at last.
"Oh. my. GODS," Nora gasped as she cupped her face with both hands, eyes sparkling and expression ecstatic.
Pyrrha's mouth flattened into a tight line, her shoulders prickling.
"Why are you telling us this?" she asked, suspicion blanketing her voice and anger promising to follow swiftly.
"We were friends," Jaune said, and held up his hands when Pyrrha whipped her head around to look at him. Now his position scooted away from her on the bed made sense: he was trying to give her as much mental and physical distance as possible in the crowded room. "Before, when we didn't immediately tell you guys about this, you weren't happy about it. You said we should've told you earlier, so…"
"So we're telling you now," Weiss finished. She, specifically, had been chosen to spearhead the conversation due to her negotiating skills: Blake was just as blunt, but not quite as used to verbal maneuvering. "With a reminder that, whether you believe us or not, you promised not to tell anyone."
There was a long, somewhat uneasy silence.
"Look, I know this is a lot-" Yang began eventually.
"It's absurd," Pyrrha interrupted, although her anger was fading into mere suspicion. "Why… why?"
She gestured broadly, as if physically trying to grasp the sheer enormity of their story and their presumption.
"I mean, really, why any of this?"
"We were friends: we were also partners and teammates," Blake said after a moment of waiting for anyone else to speak up. "This is our third time coming to Beacon: we all met each other and bonded in the first timeline, where we also discovered a world-threatening conspiracy –one that involves magic, reincarnation, and the gods– and stretches back to before the moon was shattered. Unfortunately, our use of the Relic of Creation…"
She looked at Weiss.
"Backfired, I suppose," Weiss finished with a sigh, pinching the base of her nose. "We intended to create evacuation portals to save the citizens of Atlas, but ended up falling through the magic space in which the portals were created."
"Which landed us back at Beacon, on day one," Yang said, shooting finger-guns at the two beds that NPR were spread across. "Second 'verse same as the first, except that time we died two years too early, even though we did manage to foil a lot of the big bad's plans."
"Which brings us to here and now," Jaune finished sheepishly. "You guys didn't fall with us, so you didn't… reincarnate, loop, whatever. So we have to bring you back in, uh… manually, I guess."
There was another pause.
Weiss met and held Pyrrha's eyes. She was always going to be the hardest sell: Nora took the world cheerfully in stride and would even welcome such oddities as this, whereas Ren was wise enough to know that he wasn't aware of everything on Remnant and laidback enough to not care about any new revelations.
But Pyrrha was used to people angling for favors, for intimacy, for glamor, for trust. She did not know them.
"We are aware that this sounds like a cheap fantasy novel," Weiss said slowly, not looking away. "There are any number of ways to prove our identities. We could talk about your Semblance, or why you came to Beacon; we could talk about Ren and Nora's lives before they came to Vale, and treat the loss of Kuroyuri like a mere story to be told."
Pyrrha blinked without recognition at the name. Ren looked like he'd been punched. Nora's face went completely expressionless.
"We could, using a less personal angle, point out that as a former member of the White Fang, Blake has no reason and even less motivation to personally cooperate with me, a Schnee," Weiss continued, sliding her eyes back to Pyrrha. "You yourselves could check news records, which show that she and I have not met before yesterday and confirm her former allegiance. Nor have either of us met Jaune, who is a nobody from nowhere; or Ruby and Yang, who are unaffiliated with the White Fang's struggle against my family… and yet, we all work together regardless."
She paused, letting this sink in.
"That is all we can currently offer as proof: circumstantial evidence and tales of your past, both of which could be acquired or explained-away by the use of a Semblance," Weiss said, and folded her hands together in her lap. "However, there is another option."
"There's four Relics," Yang said, cutting in perfectly where Weiss had left her an opening. "The Staff creates, but the Lamp tells you things. It can only show the truth, and it proved what we were saying to our friends –to you guys– last time. If trusting us is too much, then at least trust us that far –until we can get you to the Relic of Knowledge."
"Last time we had to manipulate you to get there," Blake admitted shamelessly. "But you told us –in Nora's words– to cut that puppetmaster shit out, and so we did. We have. We're going forward after this with full transparency."
"We're trusting you in the way we hope you'll trust us," Jaune finished, because he still knew to hit where it hurt.
There was another long silence. Weiss watched the members of Team JNPR struggle to digest this, hiding the tightness of her knuckles by the demure pose that kept her hands in her lap.
Nora looked tentatively excited –because true or not, this promised to be interesting. The mention of Kuroyuri and the implicit knowledge they had of her past likely had convinced her of their authenticity: for Nora, the world was background scenery for her adventures, and this sort of thing may as well be a part of it. Because, why not? Things would assuredly be more fun that way.
Ren was a little more reluctant, but Weiss could see he was coming around. He saw that Nora was already invested, and that did a lot of the heavy lifting: he, too, was probably swayed by the implication that they had been told of his past and how his village fell. He was more used to weighting the cost-benefits than Nora, but what costs were they asking him, apart from a little trust? And what benefits did they intend to gain from this, and what benefits were they promising him?
Pyrrha appeared shaken, but she was still the mostly visibly suspicious out of the three. Her wariness was softening, but still present. She was, quite likely, willing to be convinced.
"… so let's say we believe you, and that all this is true," Ren said carefully after several minutes had passed. "What happens now?"
Yang stepped forward.
"We've got several goals. One, inform/warn the rest of our teams –you guys– about future bullshit," she said, beginning to tick it off on her fingers. "Two, figure out what's going on with this time-loop stuff and see if it's something we can undo. Three, assassinate the bastards who ruined our plans last time before they can get going any of that. Four, work with the teachers already involved in the conspiracy to further thwart Salem –ah, sorry, she's the big bad– and her plans."
A mixture of alarm and confusion crossed Pyrrha's face.
"Wait, is that why Ruby's not here right now?!" she gasped, horrorstruck. "She's gone to assassinate someone?!"
Blake slapped Yang upside the head.
"…okay, so it's not exactly in that order," Yang admitted, rubbing the back of her skull.
"Assassinating Cinder is going to come after several other things," Weiss said, retrieving her coffee and taking a sip. "There's a few… extra steps we'll have to take."
Back again at Beacon's tower. It felt like a bad joke, like she couldn't stop coming back to this stupid building where she had watched Pyrrha die and failed to properly warn Ozpin of what was happening-
Failure, failure. Always failure.
She wondered if this was what Ozpin felt like –a hamster running on a wheel; always moving, but never progressing. Except in this case, the hamster wheel was the gears of a clock, a gauntlet of time that she kept running over and over because there was nowhere else to go, and no way to get off.
Ruby sniffed and rubbed her nose, shaking her head a little. Focus, she needed to focus. She needed to do good. Do better. That kind of thinking was for later, when- if they messed this cycle up.
Ozpin had kinda only half-believed her last time, at least until he checked, so she needed to be more… assertive. She needed to plant a boot in his behind and get him moving, doing stuff to speed up his own counter-plans so that they distracted or even thwarted Salem more efficiently. Maybe she could circumvent his need to check?
The elevator rose. The elevator chimed. Ruby stepped out.
Ozpin was alone, this time, working quietly at something on his computer. He looked up as she entered, and smiled the professional smile of a teacher, eyes crinkling warmly.
"Ah, Miss Rose," he said as he minimized his holographic screen, scooping his coffee mug into his hand en route. "Settling in well, I hope?"
"Is this office secure?" Ruby asked without preamble. His eyebrows rose a little, but his face remained otherwise expressionless as he lifted his drink and took a sip.
"It is."
"Even from Watts?" Ruby pressed. "Arthur Watts? He, uh, was a guy that worked for Atlas –he supposedly died in the 'Paladin Incident'?"
It was surprisingly difficult not to use air quotes for that.
There was a moment of silence as Ozpin blinked –one long, slow blink.
"I suspect you are about to tell me that that information is incorrect?" he replied rather than answering her directly. Ruby didn't say anything, which appeared to be answer enough for him as Ozpin sighed and raised a hand, pinching and massaging the base of his nose. Without opening his eyes, he asked "Is there more?"
Now came the tricky bit. She had to tell him enough to push him to action, but not enough to implicate the involvement of Team ABNY.
"Is this office secure?" Ruby asked again insistently.
"My computer terminal has its own in-room server, neither of which can be accessed save manually, and my office is not connected to Beacon's surveillance network," Professor Ozpin replied, lowering his hand to look at her with weary expectation. "Save for infection via another device, or my office being broken into, there is no way that any malware or viruses can connect to my system."
Huh. That was valuable information –and weird. Had someone broken into Ozpin's office that first time, or…?
Ruby shook her had a little. Distractions.
"Your real name –er, your first name– is Ozma. You rescued the Salem just like The Girl In The Tower fairytale, except that this is real life and your "story" didn't end there," she said slowly, watching his eyes snap into focus, zeroing in on her. "Salem tried bringing you back after you died, but she failed, and for her failure and her part in setting the gods against each other, they cursed her with immortality. When you came back, you tried to get together with her again, but you… realized she wasn't the Salem you knew, and you became enemies."
That was the kindest way she thought she could frame you realized your wife and the mother of your children was obsessed with spiteful revenge and the two of you ended up killing your daughters in the aftermath of your breakup. Look at Ruby, being all Weiss-y and diplomatic.
"After that, you've been trying to unite humanity and keep the Relics out of Salem's hands while she tries to steal them and divide people," Ruby continued. "Which includes you guys fighting for control of the Maidens. Amber was attacked recently and taken back to Beacon because she was injured and part of the Maiden powers were stolen, right? She's in the vault below the school: the elevator code is 9506808."
A number of complicated emotions were cycling across Ozpin's face as she paused for breath, wariness and shock chief among them.
"Fria is the Winter Maiden, and she's safe in Atlas. You don't know where the Spring Maiden is, since she ran off about ten years ago, but you know she's in Mistral and you know Salem doesn't have her. I, uh… I don't actually know anything about the Summer Maiden. We never met her."
"We?" Ozpin repeated pointedly, raising a single eyebrow as he folded his hands atop the desk. He had regained control of his expression, presenting her with a blank mask.
"I'll get to that in a minute," Ruby said. "Y'see, we didn't learn all this –well, most of this– from Jinn. We learned a lot of it –the Maidens, the gods, Salem– from experience."
She gulped.
"The, um, the Ozma stuff we did learn from her. We asked a question about what you were hiding from us… Sorry."
"Apology noted," Ozpin said without inflection. Ruby winced.
"The thing is, we also used Ambrosius, too? In Atlas?" she continued, unable to avoid her sheepish fidgeting. "Salem showed up with a huge army of Grimm, and we needed to evacuate everyone, so we used the Staff to create portals, which led to paths in a sort of weird magic space that we modeled after the area inside the Vaults. Part of Remnant, only not quite and not really."
She took a deep breath and forced her fingers to stop playing with each other, folding them flat against her palms and holding her arms at her sides as she drew her shoulders straight and lifted her chin.
"Then we fell. Me and Weiss, I mean. We fell through the magic space and came back to… now, I guess. Only it was yesterday, during our first day of Beacon. We tried to warn you, we tried to get you to fix things, but I guess we… I guess all of us didn't do a good enough job, since even though we managed to thwart a lot of Salem's plans, her agents still managed to push the Fall of Beacon through."
Her knuckles quivered, fighting the urge to play with and twist her fingers, remembering the eye-searing agony as molten metal had run through them, as her nerves were cooked black under her skin, as her eyeballs had boiled in her skull.
"We… died. And then we came back to yesterday again."
Ruby waited on tenterhooks as she finished and there was a long silence. Setting aside the obvious miracle of Ruby somehow getting her hands on the Spring Maiden, she knew that Ozpin knew that the Lamp had only two questions for this era: her hope was that by giving him far more information than those two questions would provide, she could prove she really had time-traveled.
And –one of the benefits of telling him now– they could also take him to see the Lamp as they asked their questions this time, and prove the truth that way.
Ozpin seemed to be measuring her words, his eyes shut and his hands folded neatly on the desk. Ruby began to squirm as the silence dragged on and on and on, like he was weighing each grain of truth on a scale she couldn't measure, individually and slowly.
"I see," was the eventual calm response. He opened his eyes. "I take it you wish for my assistance?"
Ruby nearly collapsed with relief.
"Yeah. Well, um, I mean… kinda," she said, reaching up to sheepishly rub the back of her neck. "More like… allyship? Allegiance? We don't wanna be tripping over each other trying to stop Salem, and we don't want you to think that we're… y'know."
Ruby counted off the unspoken y'knows in her head.
In over our heads. Part of Salem's cohort. Reckless kids who don't know anything and are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"You can check Jinn if you don't believe us," she offered. "She has two questions left, and we know who and where the Spring Maiden is."
One of Ozpin's eyebrows rose slightly, but he didn't say anything. Ruby rode out the expectant silence by folding her arms and raising an eyebrow back.
"She doesn't wanna deal with you," she added after a few minutes of loud wordlessness and the gears ticking rhythmically overhead. "But you only half-believed us last time, and we wasted a lot of time and effort trying to prove that the stuff we were talking about was true. We can cut that all short by asking the Lamp now. Er, soon-ish."
Ozpin lowered his eyebrow and sighed.
"Miss Rose, if what you state is true, then any action you propose would involve a massive rearranging of our plans and resources, many of which are public," he said eventually, and raised his mug to his lips. "You can understand my reluctance, I hope."
Ruby knew an invitation when she heard it.
"Weiss and I plan on telling our teammates," she fibbed. "They've always been our friends, so they deserve to know."
"And Miss Schnee is absent from this meeting because…?"
"Yang's having her team meet my team," Ruby said with exact and perfect –if not whole– truth. "Weiss and I thought this'd be a good time for us to, um. Talk. She's covering for me."
"I see." Ozpin's expression was once more unreadable.
"We dragged our feet too much last time, so this time we want to be proactive," Ruby continued. "Not waiting for the bad guys to fall into our traps, but going after them before they can even start making moves. Last time, we delayed instead of going for it immediately, which let them weave some of their plans to the point where Salem's other minions could just kinda… pick up where they left off. We wanna nip it in the bud."
Ozpin looked at her for a moment, then brushed his keypad and mug aside. Bending down a little, he reached inside his desk drawer and retrieved a paper notepad and pen, which he clicked and set to the top page before looking up at her expectantly.
"I believe you should start from the beginning, then," he said. "And give me more detail."
So Ruby took a deep breath, mustered what she could remember of Jinn's second vision, and began.
She told him about Cinder, and how she'd tricked her way into Beacon both times. She explained what Cinder had done after the Fall of Beacon, and how she had so thoroughly stymied their evacuation plan in Atlas, and that rooftop conversation with Watts. She told him, briefly, of her and Weiss's deaths atop the airship.
She told him about Mercury and Emerald, how they'd begun to show signs of faltering –and in Emerald's case, defecting entirely– the first time around, and how Emerald's Semblance had been key to framing Pyrrha and Yang.
She told him about the White Fang, how they'd been shamelessly manipulated by Salem the first time around, used and then discarded once the growing number of factions destroyed its cohesion. She talked about the attack on Haven, and how in both the first and the second timeline Adam had been fully willing to commit to doomed attacks as long as they furthered his cause.
She told him of how Salem had used Hazel's grief, and how he had eventually sacrificed himself to save all of them. She relayed all she knew about Watts and Tyrian, and how they had acted in both cycles.
She talked of Ironwood –his hubris and fall in the first timeline, his help in the second, and how he and his forces had been integral, last time, to preventing the Fall of Beacon. She explained how Ozpin himself had died in the first Fall, and Lionheart's perpetual betrayal.
Ruby talked until her voice was hoarse and Ozpin had politely pushed his mug across the desk for her to sip at, until she was holding the cooling cocoa and sitting wearily in the chair for visiting students as she watched him finish his scribbled notes. He tapped the pen to mark a dot, then laid it aside and began to shuffle the papers into neater stacks.
He paused when he finished, and simply sat there for a long time with the papers spread under his hands, as if only now re-realizing the sheer magnitude of the collected information.
"Well, then," Ozpin said after a moment. "This is… something."
"It's a pain in the butt is what it is," Ruby replied automatically, before flushing and taking a sip of the no-longer-hot cocoa. That had been a very Yang answer.
"I wouldn't argue your point," Ozpin half-murmured under his breath, before sighing and sliding his spectacles up to perch atop his bangs. He massaged his eye sockets with two fingers, looking every one of the years that had turned his hair grey –and every one of the centuries on top of that.
Ruby didn't blame him. Lionheart's betrayal, Ironwood's failure –not to mention the chagrin of being so thoroughly outmaneuvered by Salem (technically) twice– it was all enough to make anyone weary.
"I assume, then, that you plan to go after her current agents in the city?" Ozpin asked after some time, adjusting his spectacles back onto his nose and lowering his hand to once again interlace them gravely.
Ruby nodded.
"Right now, Cinder's alliance with the White Fang is pretty tenuous, since it's new," she said. "If we take her out of the picture, then it'll crumble, and they won't have the manpower, the connections, or maybe even the idea to attack Beacon and destabilize Vale."
"And her two associates?" Ozpin asked a little pointedly, and she winced.
"We're… not sure what to do about them," Ruby admitted. "Neither Emerald or Mercury are good enough to replace Cinder when it comes to scheming n' stuff, and Mercury's only really loyal to Salem out of habit. If Cinder dies and Watts or whoever doesn't come in to pick up the reins fast enough, he might just bounce."
Ruby didn't mention that Emerald was still wound up in Cinder's grasp, or that they had Neo on the inside of the baddies' circle to report back on how things were moving and how Cinder's death would shuffle plans around. They were only telling Ozpin about two people that came back, and those two people were herself and Weiss.
"We've got maybe-contacts that we can pick up in a few places to see how things move after Cinder dies," Ruby continued, and drank the last dregs of his cocoa. "And then plan from there. Hopefully, killing her so early will draw in Tyrian or Watts or both, and we can set up an ambush for them too. With pretty much all of her agents gone, Salem's gonna have to massively rework her plans, which gives us plenty of time to come up with a counter-plan. Speaking of which…"
She smiled, very politely, and set his mug back down on the desk.
"…what are your plans? Because last time, you said that you didn't have any."
There was a long silence, punctuated only by the rhythmic ticking of the huge gears overhead. At length, Ozpin closed his eyes, sighed, and slumped back in his chair.
"Miss Rose," he said, "you gave me this information less than ten minutes ago. I am flattered that you think I can plan so quickly."
Something small and sharp tightened in Ruby's chest.
"Wha- no, you've got to have something," she replied, trying not to splutter. "You're –I mean, you said the first time that you didn't have any plans, but you meant that for right now, right? Like, like for this generation? You're out of ideas, so you're working on shoring up our defenses to give you time to think. You're working on stopping Salem, so you've got to have at least a few ideas right now!"
She hated the pleading in her voice.
"…right?"
Ozpin's throat flickered as he swallowed slightly, and he looked away.
"Miss Rose," he said again, quieter. "I-"
"No," Ruby said, and now the tightness had moved up into her throat. "No, you don't get to- to sit there and tell me something stupid about how you were planning to have a plan and this is how things work. You don't. You're –you're you, this is your purpose. This is your mess you're supposed to be helping us clean up and you can't tell me that you left us to pick up the pieces because you were on vacation o-or something-"
Pyrrha died because of that, Weiss died because of that-
"Miss Rose," Ozpin said, quiet but firm, and her mouth snapped shut. His eyes were tired, but dark with sympathy. "You, of all people, can understand me now when I say that I move according to a different count of time. Miss Rose: I had plans. I had plans and plans and plans; some succeeding, others failing, and still more contested, broken, or thwarted. I have been planning for centuries. I have been planning for eons."
He took a deep breath, and Ruby felt like she was looking into an abyss as she stared into his dull hazel eyes.
"Miss Rose, I have tried. I do not have the words to convey to you how hard I have tried, how long I have tried," he said quietly. "And if I was to tell you all I have tried, we would be here for weeks. I have no plans –not through a lack of motivation or necessity, but a lack of new options to explore."
Her throat worked convulsively, and her fists clenched. Ruby wanted- she wanted-
She didn't know what she wanted to do most. Burst into tears, slam her fist on his desk and demand something better, hit him, scream, sob.
Because this couldn't be it. This couldn't be the man she'd put her faith in, who'd helped shape the person she became. This was Ozpin, who'd been the guardian at the door for centuries. He had to know what to do. That was- that was why he was here. He'd lied to them before because he was afraid, concealed his lack of information and his absence of plans because he was dealing with a new situation, because he'd never had to plan for something like what had happened after the Fall of Beacon.
Because if he hadn't-
If he didn't-
She felt like she was plunging off the paths again, careening headlong into blackness as the ribbon that held her up abruptly snapped. She'd stopped relying on Ozpin as a shining bastion by the end of Jinn's first vision, but Ruby had still fundamentally trusted his wisdom and experience, even in Atlas. Ozpin knew what to do, he had centuries of practice knowing what to do, that was the point-
Her ears were ringing. Ozpin was supposed to be able to bring something to the table, he was supposed to be able to help. Because if he didn't-
She had been carrying the burden of leadership for too long. Ruby had expected something to lighten her load, and instead been forced to shoulder an additional weight. Because Ruby and her friends had been the ones fixing things, because they had been the ones doing Ozpin's job, and if she lost the frail hope that it was only until they came together with him and worked up a new plan-
She couldn't keep carrying what was, in a very real sense, the whole world on her shoulders. She couldn't. She couldn't.
"So what are you even doing?" came her own voice, seeming to come from far away, and sounding more bitter than Ruby could ever remember. "What are you still trying to do?"
Ozpin adjusted his spectacles slightly and sighed. "Miss Rose, I have made more mistakes than any man, woman, or child on Remnant-"
"Heard that. You told me before."
"Then allow me to share something that you do not know –or perhaps have not yet realized," Ozpin said patiently. A brief, humorless smile stretched his lips, polished and worn thin through endless repetition. "You and I –and Miss Schnee– share a position unique amongst humanity. We have an infinite length of time to make our mistakes… but I, and certainly you, also have an infinite number of chances to fix those mistakes."
Ruby lifted her head a little to look at him. Hope dared to venture a little gleam, deep within her heart.
"We have no choice but to keep going. Neither you nor I are capable of stopping," he continued, folding his hands. "Under those circumstances –if we cannot either stop or retreat– moving forward is our only choice."
He looked down, and Ruby saw his hands tighten atop the desk.
"…whether or not we believe we have the strength to do so," he finished quietly, not looking at her. "Many people stronger than both of us put together have been broken on the wheel of duty, Miss Rose. It is neither your fault nor your responsibility that you struggle now."
Kind words kindly spoken. It didn't change the way that things were. It didn't change the fact that she was struggling, that she was breaking on this so-called wheel of duty.
Ruby sucked in a deep breath and let it out.
"If you don't have a plan, then," she said, keeping her voice as even as she could. "I guess we won't be getting in your way."
Long after the team celebrations and initiation parties had wound themselves down, Beacon slept. The halls were dark and still: even the headmaster had signed off his computer and sought his bed. Nothing stirred –not the Bullheads on the docks, not the locked and reinforced doors, not even students sneaking off for a post-midnight quickie.
Nonetheless, something was afoot.
Safe in her cloak of Aura shards, Neo's fingers danced over the keypad in the Beacon tower's elevator, typing in the code she had memorized over those long months of planning with Little Red and her friends. A sequence of soft beeps rang out, and then the elevator hummed softly, vibrating under a shift in gears, as she pressed the button for the first floor.
It began to descend –going beneath the surface, beneath the foundations of the school itself.
Down, down into the earth, sinking through the elevator shaft with barely a perceptible change in the carriage around her. The walls were metal –no windows– and so were the doors, giving the illusion that she was not moving at all. Neo brushed some hair away from her forehead, missing –for a brief moment– the weight of Roman's hat on her brow.
Perhaps she could ask him to make her a replica. Neo grinned at the very thought –Roman had a tendency to get flustered at the smallest of odd things, sometimes, and she could hardly wait to see his reaction at her asking to have a hat identical to his. Sentimentality was neither of their strong points, but one of the reasons she trusted Roman so wholeheartedly was that he had never truly mocked her. Not for anything.
The floor shuddered softly under her feet as the elevator reached its destination. There was a soft, automatic chime as the metal doors slid open.
The flames of Beacon's vault burned green ahead her, dancing off the slick floors and casting long bars of shadow over the pillared walls and clerestory windows. Neo paused for a moment, gauging any dangers, and then slowly began to step forward. Hidden in the rippling curtain of illusion that masked her every movement as just another part of the gloomy green light and shadow, her heels nevertheless clicked audibly as she strode her slow and deliberate way down the nave.
That steady, delicate sound tapped against the solemn stone walls, running on ahead in fragile echoes into the darkness. There was no response from cameras, no sudden uprising of traps, no bright flare from the sorcerous green flames lining the nave in response to this intruder. So, everything was still as it had been when she had come down here to plot with the others. Perhaps to avoid the chance of accidentally offing the already-crippled Maiden, Ozpin had planted no traps, left no guardians.
Neo's smile was sharp and pleased as she made it all the way to the end of the Vault, and paused before the raised dais and glass-and-metal coffin that held Amber. She let her cloak of illusion ripple away, pink shards cascading down her body as she "appeared" suddenly in the space of the vault.
With almost insulting slowness, Neo sauntered her way up the brief rise of steps. She let her fingers trail over the glass plate that showed Amber's upper torso, like she was already the green-tinted marble bust of a hero put on display. Then, Neo turned away with a smirk.
Swinging Hush down and ready by her side with one hand, she pressed the button to open the casket with the other as there was a frantic beep, and then a slow, reluctant hiss of pressurized air as the door to the comatose Maiden eased open.
