Yo!
Here we are at the end of Part 2. I don't actually have much to say. I'm on my final week of off time from school, and I'm trying not to cry about it. It isn't working.
Oh well. Back to being a busy bee here soon.
Start Chapter 40
"Remind me again why we're flying coach back to Patch when we could just use your Semblance to meet up with Blake in Menagerie?"
"First, we already paid for the return flights. Might as well use them." Raven crosses her arms. "Secondly, because Summer and Tai want a few days to destress before taking off again on vacation. We'll use my portals to get there once we're ready."
"I suppose that makes sense."
"Mm. Now, if you don't mind," Raven pulls her sleep mask back over her eyes. "I intend to sleep through the flight."
Yang snorts, but otherwise stays quiet.
It doesn't actually take all that long for Raven to start snoring. The low roar of the engines keeps it from being obnoxious, but even so, Yang doesn't really want to be sat there beside her any longer.
Unfortunately, that's not exactly an option, given that the flight they're on is… well, packed is a word for it.
Constricting is another.
Poor Summer had been forced to sit with them given how many people who commuted for the Vytal Festival are now returning home. It had been utter bedlam trying to make it through the airport, but they'd come more than a few hours early, and that had been enough.
No one had tried to stop Raven from leaving the Kingdom, either, which Yang had been concerned about. It seemed that Ozpin had been working his magic to keep Raven from being implicated in what had happened down in the bowels of Atlas HQ. How he planned to sustain that…
Well, Yang isn't really sure, but that's his problem, she supposes.
"Yang?"
She turns her head to the left, where Summer Rose, her mom, is smiling over at her.
"Oh, uh…" Yang realizes she's just been staring at her for the past few seconds. "What's up?"
"Oh, it's nothing really. I just…" Summer pauses a moment. "Thank you. For being there for her."
Yang realizes she's talking about Raven, and she runs a hand up and down the back of her neck.
"She won't ever admit it, but she likes you quite a bit if she can make a portal to you."
"That…" Yang looks away, feeling that familiar ball of gross well up within her. "Yeah. No problem."
Summer just snickers. "She can be like that, I know. But she's a wonderful woman behind the…"
"Raven-ness?"
Summer laughs yet again, full and wondrous, and Yang is caught by how much that laugh sends her back in time, to when she'd been just six or seven herself, watching her dad and Ruby throw cookie batter at each other, and one piece of it hitting Tai straight in the forehead.
It had stuck, and looked like a third eye, with a single chocolate chip in the middle. Her dad had started humming like some kind of Mistralian monk, and her mother had, for whatever reason, found that to be the funniest thing.
She'd rolled on the floor, and laughed and laughed. Tai, never one to miss a chance to milk a joke to death, had just kept going, until Summer had complained that she was going to pee herself if he didn't stop.
Yang… she almost tears up. Almost. At the last moment, she stops herself, and looks away.
"She's… been a reliable ally for me, too, I suppose."
"It's complicated, I'm guessing?"
"I… yeah."
"Something like that."
/
All in all, things aren't quite as awkward as Ruby had feared they might be as they make it back to their shared hotel room. Is that at least partially because Roman and Ruby are both going out of their way to force smalltalk between them? Definitely, yes. But nevertheless, it's working.
"So, uh…" Amber looks between them. "Something happened, didn't it?"
Oh. Well. It turns out that it's only working for them.
"W-What!?" Ruby fakes a laugh. "No. Definitely not. Nothing happened."
"Uh-huh." Amber replies flatly. "Look, if you guys don't want to tell me that's fine. I also have some secrets, although I've been doing my best to reveal them to you as much as possible."
"Yeah." Roman nods awkwardly. "You have. I appreciate it. Even if I think Ruby had already figured out half of it."
Ruby chuckled, but didn't deny it.
"Still, this… maiden thing," Roman clears his throat, "How does that work, exactly? You have a second semblance?"
"Essentially, yes, albeit that semblance is complicated, and is passed down upon… certain conditions being met."
Amber avoids telling Roman that people will be after her life, and though Ruby is tempted to let that slide…
"You don't have to be," Ruby interjects. "But I think you should be honest with Roman about all of this."
Amber looks to her with a somewhat complicated expression, before sighing and nodding her head.
"The Fall Maiden. That's what I am. There are four of them. One for each of the seasons. We're connected to some other mumbo jumbo that I'm not going to talk about, since it's just not worth getting into."
If she's referring to the Relics, then frankly, Ruby agrees.
"But basically, the power of the Maiden passes to another when the previous Maiden dies."
Roman's eyes widen. "Wait… that… does that mean what I think it means?"
"That people would want to kill me to try and take it? Yeah, it does."
Roman looks shellshocked. He turns to Ruby, likely expecting her to have reacted the same way, but…
"You knew?"
"I know what the Maidens are, yeah." She admits.
"We've got a lot of the same enemies." Amber states rather simply. "Ruby's… well, it's up to you if you want to tell him."
"I'm a Silver-Eyed Warrior." Ruby says, and Roman seems utterly baffled. "My eyes have the power to freeze Grimm in their tracks. A lot of people want that power, but there are a few who want it removed from existence in its entirety."
"That…" Roman pushes a breath out through his teeth. "What the hell? Did I walk into some damned fantasy novel when I wasn't looking or something?"
"It's really not so strange." Amber argues. "Think of them as second semblances. Only more powerful, and with dangerous consequences to those who hold them. Suffice it to say, we have enemies. It's why, for instance, Ozpin has us on a team of three instead of four. I'd imagine that's so he can substitute in someone he approves of to act as our fourth team member, should the need arise."
"Wait, like a bodyguard?"
"Essentially." Amber nods.
Ruby thinks back to Ceil Soleil, who she'd met very briefly during her occasional interactions with Penny before the Vytal Festival. She'd been a curt professional, evidently not the average student she pretended to be.
She might've still been a student, by technicality, but she had the air of a trained warrior as well. Perhaps a prodigy of some kind, someone who could protect Penny without standing out.
Or, more likely, prevent Penny from outing herself to anyone else.
"Well, huh." Roman lets out, deflating visibly as he sits down on his bed, and leans back. "This has certainly been a day. First the Vytal Festival a few days ago, and now this. What a week."
"You needn't concern yourself terribly much with our affairs if you wish, Roman." Amber speaks out. "We can handle them. We have been doing so just fine already."
"What, you kidding me?" Roman laughs. "How could I stay away?"
Amber seems surprised about that. "Well, I–"
"I mean, c'mon, you guys are my teammates." Roman smiles. "Carried my ass through our first year, and made me go from barely able to contend with a Grimm to around the middle of the pack in combat classes. I'm not going to abandon you when you need me."
It's clear that hadn't been what Amber had been expecting to hear. She opens and closes her lips, before turning away somewhat and clearing her throat.
"Well. I guess it's not true what they say."
"Huh?"
"It seems there is honor among thieves."
Roman just scoffs, rolling his eyes. "Had to sneak in one last snipe, didn't you? Can't handle any heavy emotions on their own, Amber?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Riiiiiiiiight. Sure. We can pretend I believe you."
"Oh, you are so insu–"
And as the two of them get into perhaps the thousandth argument they've had, Ruby finds herself chuckling, barely audible at all.
There's definitely still a lot to worry about in the future. This whole situation with Atlas and Vale, the treatment of the Faunus, and Salem perhaps most of all. But the situation with their team, between Ruby and Roman… she has a feeling they can handle it.
They'll have to face it eventually. But for now…
Ruby's fully content to just exist within this moment.
/
By the time that Ozpin's finished discussing the particulars of this years Vytal Festival with yet another group of diplomats from across the world, he's beginning to regret his decision to involve himself more directly in worldly affairs, instead of just being some hermit living in a forest.
Those really had been the days.
He enters into his hotel room after having spent a few minutes doing a quick review of what had been talked about. It's nearly ten in the evening, now, and Ozpin would really rather move over to his bed and lie down.
Unfortunately, that's simply not in the cards. Not with so much still to think about.
The situation with Hawthorne chief among them.
It's no secret, not even to Hawthorne himself, that Ozpin has never liked the man. He's a Warhawk, someone who would much rather plunge the world back into conflict than simply live within their current peace. An Atlas supremacist through and through. He is the type of person who wants to keep Atlas' technology exclusive to its own Kingdom, instead of sharing it with the world, and elevating the entirety of Remnant.
It doesn't help that he's a human supremacist as well.
He'd fought in the faunus wars, and learned all the wrong lessons from them. Ozpin himself had fought on the side of the faunus – in a different life, as another person.
He finds Hawthorne's opinions to be utterly idiotic. The fact that he actually believes them, that he's not just trying to grift racists and idiots, is what makes him truly dangerous.
And that danger… might be something that Ozpin will soon set out to correct.
He's been stagnant too long. He needs to act to prevent the situation from worsening. Still, he has plenty of old contacts he can go to for this sort of thing, loathe as he is to call upon them.
But, for now, he'll focus in on the other thing that's been bothering him.
Those five; Ruby Rose, Weiss 'Schnee', Black Fang, Yang Brown, and one of Salem's agents, Jaune Arc.
They haven't truly left his thoughts since he'd first seen the reunion of Rose and Brown, some few weeks back. He'd been thinking about all sorts of possibilities regarding them, and doing research in his own time as well.
The simple fact of the matter is that, no matter how much Ozpin goes looking, he can't find anything on them.
For some of them, that's more understandable than others. Ruby Rose, for instance, is a survivor of the Silver-Eyed Warriors, a clan that Salem had sought to wipe from existence itself over the last century or so. The Grimm Reaper, the Silver Streak, even Summer's own Grandmother… all of them had been hunted down and exterminated.
They had been some of Ozpin's staunchest allies against the Grimm, and now, they'd been whittled down to all but 2.
Or, so he'd thought.
Now, there are three. Ruby Rose, Summer Rose, and the other Ruby Rose.
Ozpin continues to think, running through more options.
The others that make sense for him not having records are Weiss 'Schnee', and the Black Fang, aka Blake. A Schnee bastard; for that is what it makes sense to assume she is, would have likely been kept out of the public eye. The thing that confuses Ozpin on that particular point is that Nicholas' wife had died long before Weiss would've been born.
It would not have been a scandal for him to announce a child from another woman. Not at all. It would have been expected. The fact that he'd never taken another partner in his life had been the odd thing.
As for Black Fang, as much as Ozpin detests it, record-keeping on the faunus is a relatively new phenomenon. Even so far back as fifty years ago, the lineages of most faunus he'd met had been unknown. And in the modern day, many faunus who are born into less than favorable circumstances somewhere like Mantle aren't properly documented when they take up jobs in an SDC mining camp.
So, when they disappear, no one even knows where to go looking.
So, yes, the girl being the daughter of a miner, and appearing as if from nowhere, makes complete sense. She is the one whom Ozpin is least concerned with the origin of.
Yang Brown, and Jaune Arc, on the other hand…
For the first, she simply looks too similar to Raven for Ozpin to truly classify it as a coincidence. She's the woman's spitting image, and the way that those two lean on each other…
A sibling; it seems almost assured. That, or a distant cousin. The problem, of course, is that Raven and Qrow's parents had been killed when they had been very young. More than young enough that Yang would not have been born yet.
She is, after all, eight or so years Raven's junior, if not more.
And she's not even the least complicated.
Jaune Arc takes that particular cake.
Because the Arcs are a clan that Ozpin knows quite well.
They have been some of his staunchest allies; some of his most elite defenders. The Arcs had been one of the major factors behind Ozpin's rise as the King of Vale a few hundred years back, and he had seen them rewarded for their services.
But along with that, Ozpin also kept an eye on the Arcs.
There had, to be fair, always been quite a lot of them. Arcs, even if it had always been a bit of a stereotype from the other knights that Ozpin had employed, bred like rabbits. There had been hundreds just a few hundred years ago, although that number dwindled steadily as many either married out of the family name, or perished in combat.
These days, there exists only a handful of Arcs. One of them, Nicholas Arc, has his family right in Domremy, a village only an hour or so flight from Vale.
And his weapon, Crocea Mors, has been passed down through the family for generations.
And yet… Ozpin had seen the weapon this Jaune Arc utilized in the security footage.
It's different; rusted beyond belief, but…
He can't shake the feeling that he knows that sword and shield. Has seen them; has personally fought beside those who wielded those weapons before.
Ozpin shakes his head. All of this… he simply can't wrap his head around it. Five unknown figures, suddenly blipping into existence out of nowhere. All capable, and all of them, seemingly, on their side, aside from this new Arc, but then, the others claimed him to be assisting Salem only to save another.
Such is foolish, but Ozpin cannot entirely blame the boy for it.
Still…
Something occurs to Ozpin, then. A tiny, wriggling doubt that there's something more going on.
Salem's not the type to simply allow someone into her service; especially not someone who, it seems, is not at all on her side. Her magics would have been able to identify his true feelings.
So, either she's keeping him around for some unknown reason…
Or he's of interest to her.
And Salem is, famously, hard to intrigue. She's destroyed entire kingdoms without so much as raising an eyebrow.
But one of the members of this quintet of people…
Ozpin goes over the facts one more time in his head.
Ruby Rose is seventeen. The others are all nineteen or twenty years of age.
There's Yang, who looks like a spitting image of Raven. Ruby, who looks like the spitting image of Summer – albeit the Rose's have always looked rather alike to each other.
A Weiss, who's a Schnee, and just so happens to be the same age, and a black-haired faunus who… while Ozpin is less familiar with, bears some small resemblance to the Belladonna's that he'd once known a few hundred years ago, back when they'd first started talking about trying to overthrow their human slavers.
And this Jaune, wielding a shield emblazoned with the Arc emblem…
And, in an instant, a terrible, treacherous thought enters into Ozpin's head. Something impossible.
…Is it impossible?
As much as Ozpin would like to claim to know all there is about this world, he cannot. He has lived so very long, but all in an effort to prevent the world's destruction. For something like what he's thinking to occur would require an amount of magic seemingly impossible to acquire.
But that is seemingly. For, if Ozpin considers it, he supposes there are figures who could have done such a thing.
The Brothers themselves…
Or, if they existed, whomever created them.
When he takes that conclusion, it seems so obvious. The sheltered behavior; the attempts at hiding the truth, being dishonest, and distrusting. Walking on eggshells despite seemingly having so much to say.
How those figures, in so short a time, had managed to get themselves so involved with the world as Ozpin had known it.
These five mysterious figures…
They're from the future.
And it is in that very instant, as Ozpin finally puts the final pieces of the puzzle together, that a white-hot pain shoots up his back.
He gasps out; the air robbed from out of his very lungs. He tries to turn, but finds himself unable to. His muscles are weakening, and he can't bring himself to bring his arms up.
He can barely bring himself to stay standing.
He turns his head alone, and, out of the corner of his eye, he spots his assailant.
"Y-You…" Ozpin is barely able to push out below his breath.
Because there stands Tyrian Callows, with his stinger buried in Ozpin's back.
"Why hello there, Ozma." Tyrian bows performatively, and though Ozpin makes to draw a weapon, or to shout, or scream for help, he cannot muster up the energy. His body is lethargic already; the amount of toxin that had been injected into him too much for even his iron will to overcome. "I've heard so much about you."
Ozpin doesn't understand. What's the point in this?
The people in his inner circle already know the actions to take if he is to perish. This will not destabilize Vale, nor will it serve any of Salem's immediate aims. So what reason could she have for eliminating Ozpin?
"What… are you–"
"Curious?" Tyrian giggles. "Oh, we're just stoking the flames a bit. After all, you and I are going to be seen on camera exiting out. And I'll be sure to flash this tail of mine for all the world to see. Why, can you imagine all the hubbub? A faunus kidnapping the headmaster of Beacon Academy in the middle of Atlas?"
And it is then, only then, that Ozpin puts together their plan.
"You're… going to…"
"Hehehe… if the faunus and Atlas are at war, that just leaves more room for my mistress to work." Tyrian's lips peel up in a cruel mimicry of a smile. "But you don't need to worry about that, dear Ozma. You're going to sleep for a long while.
Ozpin tries to bite off his own tongue, but he doesn't have the strength. If he could get a knife, and stab himself, or any other number of things, he could force himself to reincarnate to the next life.
Without him here to check Hawthorne's more rabid tendencies, the situation within Atlas will become untenable.
But Ozpin's faculties are leaving him. His teeth barely make an indent on his tongue, and they certainly can't manage to make it bleed.
"Don't you worry." Tyrian says as Ozpin's consciousness begins to fade.
"I'm sure everyone will do just fine without you."
Ozpin slumps entirely, his mind giving way to the toxin coursing through him.
And so, the king is taken off the board.
End Chapter 40
End Part 2
Tyrian strikes out, Ozpin's kidnapped, and things are getting interesting!
I actually don't have much to say. I'm a bit exhausted atm. We'll be learning more on what's going to happen next week!
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