….
Page sat down, clasped her hands, and grinned.
"Have you ever heard the story of the wandering child of death?"
Hmm…
"No, in fact. I don't think I have."
"Okay. This is a good one. You'll like it."
She stretched her hands, yawned for a second, and shuffled her seating around until she appeared comfortable.
….
Page smiled grimly. "Long, long ago, there was a young human that was lost in the forests. It was a long, dark night, possibly the darkest there ever was…"
"-and on this dark night… the young human met death."
The walls began to fade as the light flickered. Shadows loomed over the inhabitants, and one reluctantly stood in between them.
It whispered, "P…please don't kill me."
Ozpin watched, quietly. Remember, it is a imagination based semblance.
"The other being spoke in a soft, assured, breathless voice, deep as the void and old as the moment after the beginning."
Her mouth dried and crumbled away as she spoke.
"Child…You are not on my list. There is no need to be afraid of our meeting tonight."
The shadow genuflected to her. "Then… if you would tolerate my request… please help me."
"I have a reason for my presence here, child. Your words will not persuade me to return anyone to you."
"No. I… want to learn from you. There is something I need to kill."
…
…
…
"They waved their hands softly, and spoke softly in confusion."
"Child. You…have killed in my name. Why?"
"I…I had to kill them. They needed to die."
"You, a human, have slain the being I chose to remove personally? You…have done me… a favour."
…
"… Yes. That is a favour."
"A small one, but impressive for your kind, and a favour nonetheless."
Page cleared her throat, taking a glance at her audience.
"And so, stuff happened. The young human became death's apprentice, learning under the reaper of souls in their eternal arts."
…
…
"Then, after ages, a request was made."
"Teacher, I would like to to leave, and accomplish my goal."
"They had grown to appreciate their student, so they allowed them a caveat to the law of death."
Ozpin's eye twitched momentarily.
"You see, the rule is that all things must die, but the students was allowed to work as death's other hand to reap the souls of the living. Within reason."
"Raising a hand, he explained. "For, Death is inevitable, and comes for all. You shall control the domain of souls, in return for repeating the task you accomplished that night for ever after." Death said."
"Just think of it as returning the overdue books to the shelves."
Ozpin questioned her. "You do know that the Grimm Reaper is a woman? I met her personally. "
Paige glanced up at him. She did not expect him to really be that engaged, but he was watching her very very closely.
.
..
"I said "he", didn't I?"
… Ozpin nodded.
…"I meant they, since I don't really talk about gender identification with my incredibly powerful teacher. It's a bit too personal." She said.
…
"Still, I have met her myself." Ozpin repeated.
"Eh, that's just a side detail." Paige muttered.
"The young woman, now far older, tried to bring back her beloved."
…
"…It… hadn't failed… per se…. It just… didn't work as planned. She was on the rock for too long, you see."
"Explain that, please?"
She blinked and murmured a small sigh. "Literary reference. Also a bit funny because of where Nyx's memorial is."
…
…
…
Page looked stymied at his blank look. "Uh… guess that failed to explain succinctly. My wife is, to finish the phrase, human no more."
"But she is still sentient? Had she not gone insane from being twisted by darkness?"
"The only time she went insane… is when Nyx died. I talked her through it, but then we got misplaced after she wanted to have a short conversation at the grave."
Ozpin thought about that. "How… did you get this lost from a "small conversation" happening?"
"I presume you know that continental drift is a thing."
…
…
…
… There's no way in this world that you are actually 23 years old. She's not actually a Maiden then…
"Now… if we return to the previous points… This… Maiden Moon gave you your punishment? What were the terms of it?""
"She gave me the punishment. I… it's insane though! I have to save everyone? Every. Damn. Person? It's impossible."
…
"I mean the actual, word for word terms of what they told y-" Ozpin demanded.
…
…
…
Ozpin watched her in astonishment.
This… really is quite bad.
"Ah. Let me… rephrase that."
He very slowly took a breath and began to speak.
"Instead of "save everyone"… a more… poetic phrasing would be that you…"
Sometimes it's hard to say a secret of you kept it for a long time. It just becomes part of you so deeply that you can't tell it.
Even if you met someone that shares it, you can't get past the wall.
Ozpin just thought about a story he read once.
The Immortal Man… what was his mission? …Yes, that was it.
"There's a story like this. Another literary reference, if you please."
Page perked up.
"The Immortal Man had a mission. He was (ahem…) tasked to aid your ki-"
"-to aid mankind to live in harmony with one another and set aside their differences-"
His face hardened as he finished his words. "-and, as he was told in his beginning: You will work until Humanity is made whole again."
…
Paige had an "o" of surprise as she looked at him completing his dialogue."Wow. That sounds…just like her. Excellent style. You didn't even meet her and you just aced how she talks."
She clapped in congratulatory applause for a few seconds.
"However, interesting choice when you turned into direct address at the end there. Why did you do that?" Page pointed out his unusual choice with a few gesticulating fingers.
"I've met her."
…
…
…
…
Page sat without a word, staring at him after those words.
…
"Y… God, what did she do to you?"
He smiled briefly at her astonishment.
"The same as you." he whispered.
Page continued staring at him. Then she recoiled in disgust.
"THAT BI-"
"..iiiiii…."
She petered out as Ozpin glanced at her judgementally.
Page slowed to silence and started to watch him again with a more… intense energy.
"You believe in gods. You believe, because you can't forget the proof in your mind." He said.
…
…
…
Her eyes silently closed. "Ah. That… that makes sense. That's how my mind knows you as Ozma. At first I thought it was a bloodline thing, that fathers and avenging sons all took the name to stand against her."
Ozpin stretched, speaking to her and laughing quietly at her pretenses dropping. "So you did know me as Ozma. There goes your claims of being 23."
Page clutched her hands and groaned at his jovial quip. "No. Shut up. You don't get the high ground here. Moth…"
Ozpin paused his stretching.
"What do insects have to do with this?"
"Stop that. She… no, Sa…aaaalem."
"Salem knew of you as that. She occasionally reverted back to it from Ozpin when she wasn't near us. I could still hear her voice sometimes."
He tried to further investigate a significant grammar choice.
"Us?" Ozpin remarked. "Interesting person choice along with the "I"."
Page glared at his line of questioning with tired, yellow rimmed eyes. To further emphasise her point, she gestured at her eyes.
"I obviously meant the Grimm in this situation."
"Didn't you say you weren't related to her?"
"I'm not! You must have mistaken me for Salem at some point in the past, which honestly makes sense… and it led to this issue we are facing right here!"
"What issue?"
She pulled out her hand as her face fully melted away, reforming as a bleached white flesh.
"She is an immortal because… something. I am an immortal because I'm tasked to kill people like her. I just so coincidentally have the same abilities as her. We are not related in any significant tie."
"You said you knew a witch in our first conversation."
"UUUUUUUUUGH DAMN YOU."
"YES. I knew a witch! ME! It wasn't fun for you to bring that part of my life up again."
…
"It appears we had a small misunderstanding, Mrs Woods." Ozpin remarked. "Would you be willing to share further details?"
…
...
"Does Aura help you live longer?"
Ozpin replied briefly with "No."
"I mean if you didn't get relentlessly hunted by Grimm."
He gestured with a finger in a postulation. "Aura can allow you to live longer, theoretically, by nature of the regeneration allowing you to last longer than you may have without. It may just be more of a false measurement based off of a long and… rather reliable casualty rate… but having it and living means you live much longer than normal people. For example, despite so few celebrations you'd think my life is a constant build up to a surprise party… I'm not 60."
Page turned her eyes to slits and stared. "We aren't included in this example, Oz. I'm immortal, and you're… practically ageless.."
"It all depends on the answer you are looking for."
"I was called a witch when I was younger and escaped my home town. It was that, or eventually die young."
That was… quite unnerving for him to hear. He thought he had been very very careful to avoid creating all kinds of "witch" based discrimination.
People usually died faster when they did it.
"Ah. I… am sorry you had to go through that." He started.
Page grinned and waved a hand to return to her dialouge. "No, no. It gets even worse than that. Guess who, upon literally a few minutes after meeting me, decided to very pointedly ask a problematic question to me?"
Ozpin spoke quietly. "I apologise for that. However… what… exactly did I say to you that made you feel this way?"
Page lifted four of her fingers as she spoke, for some emphasis. "Is. Your. Name. Salem?"
"For all legal purposes, it's a no. I do feel that it makes sense to be unnerved at a man that never fully admits to the fact that they know everything about you and just passive aggressively talks about it constantly."
They came to an agreement on this point, since he now realised she was most likely intentionally shying away from clear answers to give him a taste of his own actions… but there was still something missing in this talk.
"You still know about the other Salem."
"Yes, I do." Page replied.
"This is not you trying to explain how you were mistaken for her by myself? You are aware of her existence, her threat to humanity? You have, somehow beyond my understanding, seen her and worked with her?"
"No to the last part."
Ozpin went to stand by the opposite wall, leaning back slightly against it to support himself. How? How are you so bad at giving a coherent answer? Did I get it wrong and you are just awful at conversation?
"-keep making mistakes and calling her… ugh… Mother, but that's not really my fault. I know about her by a second degree connection. You know, you don't know them, but you do know someone who does. Kill Grimm, get souls, know memories. Simple."
Ozpin felt that if he had a drink right now, he would have went to a new vessel by then. Page appeared to keep reverting from simple replies to long, long information drops like a character in one of those new digital games.
He was now trying to keep a nonchalant face.
Qrow must never know about this. I would never ever live this down until he died.
Even then, he might get his nieces to keep it up as a family tradition.
She just admitted it, even. Nothing even had him try to search it out. Everything just… piled one on another in an overwhelming load of information; Grimm hunt her relentlessly. She couldn't die. She could easily face Grimm. She had magic. She, when questioned, gives a ludicrous backstory with trained consistency and throughlines. She calls him Ozma.
…
"Can I have your Hunter ID, please? I need to update the information." he spoke quietly.
"Hmm?"
Page stood up, shuffled around her leggings, then looked up at him, straightening her outfit.
"That's fine. I have to fufill my duties now-ish, anyway, so it's better to do it legally,"
She held out her empty hand to him. "Ozpin, Sir. May I use my abilities during my duties?"
…
"Yes. You may, as long as you do not knowingly or willingly commit any kind of harm against any living creature. I would prefer no casualties."
Page tilted in cartoonish confusion. "I'm going to go out to some nowhere place and help kill Grimm."
"It's a Hunter task. Not the task I got this for." she muttered, gesturing in disapproval at her dress.
Ozpin took a moment to feel for a writing implement in order to write on a blank card to function as her physical ID.
"That is not your hunter garb?"
"N….No!…"
"…"
"Oh, wait. This isn't a secret with you anymore… this… yes, is my work outfit. If I have to send someone off this mortal coil, this is the sign I have to do it."
"Before I allow murder by my staff… who are you going to try to kill?"
Page stared at him while he passed over the new impromptu identification.
…
…
…..
….
"What… the hell is this?" she muttered.
Ozpin glanced at the card. "It all is correct, isn't it?" he asked.
The card read as so, in Ozpin's handwritten crisply done lettering:
Page Woods née Ozmadöttr
63700-31518-16195
PLACE OF ISSUE: VALE
AUTHORITY: BEACON ACADEMY
RESTRICTIONS: UNRESTRICTED
The symbol on the bottom left changed the red eye somewhat, tilting it 90 degrees, applying 5 droplets underneath it, and rimming it in a complimentary (and very dark) dark green geared circle.
"No. I meant your choice to use a badly replicated Eye of Earth as a symbol for me. That's not the issue. I can't read this. Can you fix that somehow?"
…
Ozpin glanced back at the characters written on the card. "Ah. I apologise, I wrote it in a cypher by accident-"
She pursed her lips at his excuse. "Nope. No way, buddy. What's distracting you?"
Ozpin ignored her, and revised the information onto a third card. He had expected her to break hers at least once, so he had two other spares besides these.
"Here's your new informational documentation."
"You wrote in your first language by mistake. It happens." she replied.
…It really doesn't, you know…
… Page looked up briefly. "Thanks for the help. Do you care if I head off now?"
"I believe I can allow you a trip out for good behaviour. You haven't killed anyone else yet."
Page blinked at his little chuckle. "You… so casually are joking about that. Good to see you have a sense of humour. Thank you for letting me stay here, Ozpin."
"Now, if you excuse me, I have work to catch up on. Thank you for humouring this talk with me."
He went to the door and opened it smoothly. A small breath came behind him as he walked out with his current companion.
"I hope you enjoy your trip. Would you like me to book you a bullhead or train ticket to wherever you planned to go?"
"No. I'll probably be back by… one to two days? I'm ok as I am."
The duo went along the hall in a brief lull.
"If I hadn't verbalised it, I'm very sorry about what you've been through. I know what it's like to lose people you love."
Ozpin spoke quietly. "I… also lost a daughter in the past."
"Ah." she muttered.
…
…
…
"You also lost children."
"I did. I hope that, if you need it; you can talk to me about it." he offered.
"Damn. You just oh-so-casually drop the fact that you had multiple children? Here I was thinking it's not polite to judge your traumas to others."
…
His wan face fell down to the depths of his fuel.
"I'm sorry for that. I thought you would find it useful."
"Talking isn't the problem. You just dropped that bomb straight on me without any warning! That is the true issue. Now I know I was somehow unaware I wasn't an only child all my life?"
…
Ozpin was stymied by this reaction. "How is that related to anything here? What do you me-"
"Just don't. You see, after a young woman has a heart to heart, you really don't steer it towards your personal traumas and ignore her wish for help. That… is a pretty horrible move, Dad."
Page flashed her ID at him. That was a rather unnecessary move because he wrote the card less than a few minutes ago. He knew exactly what was on it.
…
…
…wait.
Ozpin turned to look at the handheld card. "Did I fail to put down the proper details?-"
Right there, in the gleaming text reflecting the light, was the words:
Page Woods-Ozmadöttr.
…
…
Ozma.
Ozmadöttr.
He had not, as he thought, changed the details after his humorous card.
Shit.
…
Although… this could be… useful.
If, by useful, I mean the most useful example of my good sense of humour to ever exist.
…
…
….