Professor Ozpin brought his hand down from his forehead, finding his fingers to be lightly coated with blood. Though he couldn't quite feel on his own without a body, he could sense the pain through Sun's nervous system radiating through them both in an abstract, unpleasant way. The odd sensation alone told him that he had miscalculated- the merge wasn't complete, or even close to it. That locket on the ground symbolized more than he had anticipated. It was a larger part of Sun's psyche than its size would suggest… and there was more fight left in the faunus than he had imagined. With a sharp inhale, Professor Ozpin stood up straight, narrowing his eyes at the young hunter and his golden clone.
"…well done," Professor Ozpin praised. "And yet, it will not be enough. I should be able to predict the commands you issue to your Semblance, one way or another, and time dilation is not to be taken lightly. I propose a momentary truce, before you injure yourself further…"
"Injure myself?" Sun asked, straightening up with an apparent second wind. The faunus made a point of looking at Professor Ozpin's stomach, where the man's clothing was torn open and hanging in tatters. Though Sun's own chest wound was larger, bleeding, and physically painful, the reflected damage to his opponent was still significant. "Back of my head doesn't hurt right now, despite everything else... so whatever I do to you doesn't seem to bounce back at me. I think this link between us isn't fully understood. I think you're grasping at straws, and you only think you know how this whole thing works. I think… you're scared of what I might be able to do, because I'm the first person to resist that could actually kick your ass."
"No, Sun, that isn't it…" Professor Ozpin said hesitantly as he looked up toward the ceiling of the castle. A ripple of lightning flashed beneath the stonework, causing him to narrow his eyes. "You are hurting yourself by doing this. You're hurting us both…"
"And yet it's nothing compared to the damage you've done to all of us," Sun retorted, his clone stepping before him and holding its staff threateningly. "I'm not backing down. Not… this easily. Get out of my head, old man…"
"You can barely move," Professor Ozpin pointed out, noting the slight shaking of the faunus' knees.
"I don't need to."
The sudden rush forward of the clone was predictable, and the headmaster moved to parry with his cane. A second flash of lightning brightened the castle foyer to the point of being almost blinding as an unnatural peal of thunder rang out, and then came another unforeseen sensation. Professor Ozpin whirled, knowing that he had been struck from behind yet again… as another copy of Sun leapt off to the side, whirling its own staff and beginning to circle opposite its brother.
"Parlor tricks will only get you so far," Professor Ozpin warned as he watched two of the nearby columns begin to slowly shift to darker colors, their textures beginning to resemble wood rather than stone. "Even if you manage to rally, I still have the advantage."
"You're not taking this seriously, are you?" Sun asked, sounding infuriated as a third, translucent iteration of himself manifested nearby. "You think you've got my number?"
"With every passing second, my advantage grows," Professor Ozpin answered as he watched the new arrival retrieve Sun's real staff for him. "Besides- you still have my magic to deal with, should this continue."
"…you mean our magic?" Sun asked as the air around his closest clone began to distort.
"Sun, don't! You could h-"
Before another word could be said, Sun's doppelganger seemingly disappeared and Professor Ozpin wreathed himself in a flickering sheen of black and white in response. Sun himself and the other doubles seemed to be moving in slow motion while the primary clone sped up and matched the professor's boosted speed. A series of blows were traded between staff and cane within the altered pocket of time before a shimmering wave pulsed out from between them, returning the surrounding area to a normal flow of time. Sun had doubled over, clutching his stomach and breathing hard… but refusing to break eye contact.
"You said it… yourself…" Sun hissed. "You could've taught me to use this. Looks like as long as we're linked, I've got access… 'cause it's not a Semblance at all, is it? It's just part of you, and some kind of ancient… skill. Or magic, or whatever. Guess I'll have to teach myself real quick to be able to keep up."
Another, more violent surge of lightning danced across the ceiling of the castle, shattering stonework and sending it crumbling down between them. Through the ensuing dust cloud, Professor Ozpin noticed something- with each unfitting weather event, Sun seemed to be regaining strength. More of the forest was manifesting throughout the room, leaving their arena an odd hybrid between manmade and natural. The balance was shifting rapidly… and quickly approaching a neutral state. The sight filled Professor Ozpin with a sense of dread. Sun was at least partially right- they had entered unknown territory. Nothing was guaranteed any longer.
"Do you not see what is happening here?" Professor Ozpin asked as the trio of clones moved to stand before Sun protectively. "This unnatural weather, the environment, this… feeling of sudden cold creeping in. Whatever is happening to you outside of this place is bleeding in to your mind, and the longer we remain in combat, the more is at risk for both of us. Agree to end this, and I will… carefully consider a path forward that suits us both."
"I'm done being careful. That all just means I need to finish this quickly!" Sun announced as all three of his copies charged forward at once.
Professor Ozpin clenched his teeth and prepared for the assault. There was to be no foreknowledge of his enemies' movements. Nothing within the shared nervous system was providing him with warning, and he would need to rely entirely on his observations of Sun at Beacon, his natural skill as a hunter, and magic. He knew some of what Sun was capable of, at least… and he knew the limitations of the boy's Semblance rather well.
"Three clones at once, moving independently," the man commented as the flow of time around him and his enemies distorted once again. "Impressive. I had only ever seen you make two, in the past…"
"I've gotten better at it," Sun replied, the dilation effect surrounding him as well. Debris and leaves began to fall from the intermixed ceiling in torturously slow motion, though the boy remained in place as his clones began to swing for the former headmaster. "But I don't need your praise."
A clash between Professor Ozpin's cane and an ephemeral staff resulted in a loud crack in time with a fourth lightning strike. The temperature in the forest seemed to drop inexplicably, as did the visible area around them. In the distance beyond the trees and fragmented walls was nothing but darkness- a pure, total darkness of the void, lacking features entirely. Professor Ozpin didn't allow himself to be distracted by it as he narrowly avoided a spinning sweep from the staff of one of the golden images of Sun by leaping over it.
"You know, Professor… I think there's more to all of this," Sun considered, seeming to strain as his clones continued to pressure the other man with wild blows. "If this is my mind we're in, some limits don't apply. I'm not feeling an aura drain at all…"
"How astute," Professor Ozpin said as he clenched his teeth, striking his cane through the side of a phantom's head and causing it to dissipate in a shower of golden dust. The two remaining clones flourished their weapons, one breaking theirs down into two sets of nunchaku as they came at the professor from opposite sides. "Send as many of these as you'd like- you won't be able to keep up the dilation much longer!"
As though to prove is point, Professor Ozpin swung hard to deflect a shotgun blast from one of the remaining clones before thrusting out with a stab of his cane for the construct's stomach. The illusory faunus leapt backward out of range before bringing its arms in and swinging its chained weaponry across its chest, trying to catch Professor Ozpin with a pincer attack. The maneuver failed to reach him as he took a hopping step to the side and brought his cane up to the side of his face, pointing forward. A rainbow trail of raw magic manifested around the shaft of the weapon before he darted forward, accelerating the passage of time around himself even more to allow him to spear straight through the vulnerable clone, shattering it.
And then, Professor Ozpin saw something that he could not explain.
Sun Wukong- the real Sun Wukong- was running straight for him with incredible speed. Despite the fact that his Semblance was still engaged, the boy was moving. Professor Ozpin received the mental warning a half-second too late to bring his weapon back up as it was snared from behind by the one remaining clone, a chain from its newly separated weapon wrapping around Professor Ozpin's wrist and pulling it back down.
A pair of heavy shots from Sun collided into Professor Ozpin's chest in the moment he was left vulnerable, tearing through his torso and sending him flying backward to the ground without his cane. Another loud peal of thunder rang throughout the forest as he skidded backward through the dirt. Before he could react, a golden foot had stomped down into his chest wound, pinning him to the forest floor as Sun approached at a slow, purposeful pace.
The mansion behind him was burning, and the light from the flames framed the faunus from behind with an angry glow.
"Sun…" Professor Ozpin said, breathing hard and letting out a hiss. "You… your aura, your Semblance… if you can control it in this way independent of yourself… if you can actually manage to move it and yourself at once, while keeping spiritually linked to it…"
"I can't," Sun spat as he closed the distance, aiming one of his guns downward at Professor Ozpin's forehead. The boy was panting and caked with blood, his eyes ablaze with fury. "Not normally. Not outside of here."
"You… need to find a way," Professor Ozpin insisted. "I… I may have been wrong. There may in fact be a way for you to stop her, seeing this."
Sun hesitated, his hand shaking slightly as he tried to keep the gun leveled at the center of Professor Ozpin's forehead.
"…you said she couldn't be killed," Sun reminded, his lip twitching. "You said this was an impossible war. Start making sense, or I'll…"
There was a pause, and Professor Ozpin closed his eyes.
"…you need to listen to me. You're not yet ready, and I cannot simply t-"
A shot rang out through the forest, and everything went black.
There was no pause, no transition to waking up for Sun as he sat up out of bed, breathing hard and listening to an unfamiliar, steady beeping. His headache was gone, as was the backdrop of Qrow's summer home. He felt inexplicably good as he looked around himself in a panic and quickly realized that he was on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance with two other people beside him. A shocked looking nurse on his left was holding defibrillator pads, looking very much like she had just pulled them back from his chest as he had shot upward into a sitting position. Sun's right hand was freezing, and upon looking down to the side, he found Blake's gripping it tighter than ever before with both of hers. Their eyes met, and Blake looked terrified, her cheeks streaked with tears.
"Sun!" the girl cried, squeezing his hand even harder. "What just… you were… I-I thought I lost you! You looked like you were having a seizure in bed, and I called for help, a-and…"
Blake trailed off, still unsure what to make of the situation as Sun stared at and through her while breathing hard. Eventually, he swallowed and shook his head as he tried to figure out how to explain what exactly had occurred.
"I…" Sun began, casting a sidelong glance at the nurse before turning his attention back to Blake. "…I think I… that guy that's been following me, causing all those headaches these past few days. He's gone…"
Author's Note:
Was "killing" Ozpin a good or bad move? Only one way to find out…
-RD