….
….
Tuskon woke up, and when he opened his store, wondered where his new… employee was.
It was around 9:00-9:10, and he was sure he wanted employees to get to the store early before any arrivals.
He sat down behind the till and waited for any customers. He looked over the room and saw that the books were as organised as ever.
…
Wait.
That's not exactly how I left everything last time.
…
Tuskon got up and looked through the titles on one shelf, thumbing along the spines and setting them back down with hesitation.
Children's Stories. Volume 9.
Math: Algebra to Calculus.
Black Shining Stone: Book 18
Unordinary: A Regina Ferrous Autobiography.
Children's Stories. Volume 10.
..
..
..
...
… Who reorganised his shelves?
Who was in here last night?
A shape moved out of the corner of his eyes and he leapt to the side away from it. He turned to watch the intruder…
"What are you doing here?"
… "I'm organising books, Tuskon." she said, gesturing at the shelves. "They're all done correctly? Or did you notice me getting a time wrong?"
… "Time? You were late. How did you do this?"
She lifted a book off the shelf while staring at him, and set it two shelves lower.
The girl just... set a book under an "E" next to texts alphabetized "H" and "I".
...No. just... no.
"I sat in the corner, then started organising after an hour."
He was flabbergasted. "You… literally just stayed here all night?"
Please say no. Please say you were just trying to be amusing.
"I did. It was on account of me not needing to sleep."
"You should have gone home instead of staying here."
"I was planning on hiding away here each night instead. I don't have a home. It burned down, you see."
He didn't know exactly what to say to that besides… "Ah.."
She smiled for a second and slid over to watch her handiwork, then turned her head to watch him.
"Did I mention that I don't need to sleep? Or eat? I can safely just sit in the corner all night and protect you if anyone breaks in."
"I find it's a miracle you were ever not allowed to be a hunter if that's your semblance."
…
"I organised the books by date, in case you were wondering."
Tuskon looked at the young woman. He sighed quietly.
"Please re-sort them according to alphabetical order and genre."
"I'll get started right away!" she cried out, and her face beamed with excitement. She walked to a shelf and started removing books from the old Science Fiction shelf and moving the proper books by "A" authors back into the topmost left of the shelf.
"Your name? I'm going to need to write up some rules on our operation system for you."
"Blair."
"Last name?"
"Hardy."
"Thank you."
"You're very welcome."
Nobody came in that day, so most of the time spent was re-organising the stock to the previously used system.
…
..
..
...
Eventually, Tuskon chose to try to get to know the girl better.
He stood up in front of "Romance" and called out. "Ms Hardy?"
A voice called out behind him and he took a step to the left in surprise.
How-Gods.
"Please don't sneak up directly behind me next time? Please alert me to your presence."
...
Although... now that he contemplated that, if she was here to help prevent him dying, as per the commission... that set of talents was quite useful.
..
..
.
"Yes, Tuskon. What did you need me for?"
"Do you have a weapon on you? I realised I never saw you with anything beforehand, and I may need to help you re-acquire one."
"I do not need any special weapons." she said, holding up her hand. "May I demonstrate in a non-violent example?"
… "What… exactly are you going to do?"
"My ability, sir. I will show you how it works to prevent your attackers from harming you. Please say a limb, or limbs."
…
…
For removing escape? Something that reduces mobility is always effective.
He suspected she was going to do some spiritual bear-trap, and Tuskon was rather sure that it would be not difficult to remove one from a floor. He just had to get a long enough pole to push it away into a corner until it dematerialized.
"Legs."
She smiled, her face grinning in a cartoonishly warm expression. "Perfect. Please catch me?"
He leaned out to her in confusion, but his question was rapidly answered as his employee's legs collapsed in a clattering heap to the floor. Her fall led to her head banging against the edge of a shelf. Tuskon helped her up, rather easily holding her body up with his arms.
..
..
He looked around for some flat position to lay her down prone, and now wished he had some soft objects in this room of the building.
"What… happened to you?" He let her stand again after getting her straightened up…
-and she was down on the floor a second time.
Despite being ,over-limb unresponsive, she was rather smugly grinning.
"Taaa-daaaa! My power!"
"You can disable limbs?"
Tuskon thought about her unusual lightness, and her continued use of her wooden suit.
Secondly, the fact that she supposedly does not eat.
Did she… really do that?
"Ms Hardy… did you disable your body's digestive system?"
"Uh…."
"…"
She hedged, clearly trying to step away from the changer in the conversation.
"…Technically? It's a long and convoluted story. The more important point is how I can protect you. If I'm here, then anyone that met me before trying to hurt you would become a punching bag of meat for you to beat up, call the police on, or kill."
"That… is useful to know that you can disable potential threats."
"I am glad to hear that, and I'm glad to be working with you! Anything else you would like me to do, or can I go back into my corner and read a book?"
Tuskon watched her quietly for a moment.
"Let's re-organise the rest of the books, then you can go read if you want. However, do not damage the books."
"I would never do such a thing. I died before I did that!"
"You mean..."
… "Yes. Slip of the tongue. I will get started on the first Romance section."
Tuskon watched her walk away before starting again on the shelf. "Uh, Ms Hardy… I've already done the first two shelves on Romance."
"Really? But this one should be the start of the section. It's even labelled Romance A right here."
A chill went down his back as he thought for a second. Beacon. Beacon Students are 17. Either she didn't pass, failed the written, or wasn't old enough to be allowed.
"I'm going to do that shelf, please."
"Okay. Which shelf do I do instead?"
"Try History."
"I shall do!"
"You can do dated order on that one. Just find a label to explain the difference."
She perked up, sidestepped away and started reshelving history books while singing a melody.
The rest of their day went in quiet work after that point.
...
….
Paige woke up.
She slowly tilted her tired eyes to look around the room.
Huh. I'm in the hospital.
"Huuuuuuuh. Imn the hospit." she mumbled.
The walls were a light off-white. This wasn't her walls, she knew that. The idea of a hospital ward coming to her head was a logical jump with these 4 points:
1: The last thing she had done was kneel on the ground after blasting out a ridiculous amount of energy in exertion.
2: This wasn't her room, so she hadn't died.
3: Nobody could even get in or out of her dorm room since she "lost" her scroll-device.
4: She never painted her bedroom wall off-white.
Paige leaned up and slowly looked around the room, her legs dangling over the floor.
"They're gone."
Nothing's watching me anymore.
She looked down at herself, wondering what changed about her.
"I'm not injured, as always…"
Slipping off the bed, she glanced at her soles and arms.
…
…
White fabric shook under her arms, and she stared in empty confusion.
…
Paige blinked and looked back at her chest, quietly pulling at the white suit she was wearing.
It covered the upper half of her arms, and cut off at her thighs and lower arms with a sharp black stripe on the rim.
I… know this.
"Mirror! Where's a mirror?!"
Paige darted around the room until she noticed a door she hadn't yet opened, assuming it was a closet. Pulling it opened revealed a tiled floor and various bathroom obj-
"-AH! There!"
She slid across the floor, skidding on her bare feet to the mirror. Her hair was returned to her original black hue, discounting a small gradient at the tips.
Paige's momentum stilled, and she very slowly moved her eyes up to the top of her head.
She felt her face. Her hair was tied back in a braided top-knot, secured by Moon's engraved disk.
…. White surface, chalky texture, a moon engraved into the surface.
…That… was… a problem.
She gaped at the sight, then began to tenuously reach to the back of her neck.
Please, please don't be there….
Her hand felt a cold, hard surface, rimmed with cloth. Paige lightly tapped the material with a nail.
"…"
"No sound."
No… sound…
She lifted it up, and it smoothly moved with her hand. As she took her hand back to her face, a hood came along with it. Paige completed the arc when the hard object rested over her gaping face.
The skull filled the mirror, and it grinned.
Paige stared at the mirror, detaching from the world. All her little strings were falling away.
A voice whispers softly.
"Hello. This is Nyx Woods. Hi Dad. What does Mom mean by giving angels a family reunion?"
"Because… I saw them talking. Angels aren't that broken."
…
Paige broke, and she was glad that she was alone.
"Knock, Knock?"
Someone spoke calmly outside the door.
…
She barely moved and whispered at the vague direction of the door to her room.
"Don't come in, Cass. It's a gloomy day today."
Paige gloomed on down to the floor, gloomily falling into a little despondent puddle.
A quiet creak came from the next room.
"No, Cass."
Green light shined onto her, like a laser-pointer had been directed straight into her eyes.
"Go. Away." she murmured.
..
..
….
"Go. Away."
"Hello, Mrs Woods."
So this is how her body reforms itself. This could have caused her some problems if anyone else saw it.
Ozpin stood over the black liquid pooling on the tiles, and waited for a reply.
"Did your ill advised plan work?"
An eyeball floated up from the blackness and bobbed towards his direction. A few seconds went by with him watching the eye in quiet patience. It continued on until the pool began to boil up into a cloud.
The dark cloud was a vague shape that could be called a human… but not just yet.
Ozpin took a few steps back as a flash of Aura came from inside the cloud.
He then reached forwards to grab the young woman when her body reformed.
She lay in his arms unashamedly, her body more a limp heap than a real human.
"Now isn't a good time," she whispered.
"Is there a specific problem you need help with?"
She raised up her garments in a defeated way.
He "hmm-ed" quietly. The garments had a much more… stylistic tone compared to the old outfit she arrived in. Now, he did recognize the style, and so Ozpin assumed the simplest explanation:
"This is a quite interesting outfit. I presume this is what you wear for your huntress outfit?
It was a reasonable question, he thought. After all, she hadn't ever worn clothes besides her old coat and white shirt.
It seems… more familiar in some way. Not.. just the form of the robes…
…
…
…
"Step aside, you old man! It's not like you can't even stop me!"
Ah, yes.
Ozpin noted the resemblance to a different garb, an older one. "You replicated your teacher's outfit, I see."
…
"Although, it's not exactly the same. The dress style is different, and you chose a direct inversion of the original's coloring scheme. It's less a replica, and more a foil to the original desi-"
She twitched her hands, and as he quietly moved her onto her bed, Page broke down weeping.
"I can't do this again."
"No."
"Just let be live in peace."
… Ozpin looked at the breakdown and clearly spoke to excuse himself from the room.
"I'll let you have privacy to deal with this."
Ozpin glanced around the room for a moment, before turning to close the bathroom door with a "click." He spoke towards the door out as he reached for it. "When you are amenable, I would like to talk to you. I was told something about your family?"
A flickering of Aura came from behind him in a sizeable burst of energy. His hand reached out to guard against the attack.
…
…
…
Ozpin reached for his glasses, wiped them off, then put them back on.
"Mrs Page?"
"Hello, Headmaster."
Two flaming eyes set in a bone mask watched his hands.
…ahem…
"You are currently on fire. Please do something about this before it causes an accident." he suggested.
…Her tenuous sorrow evaporated.
"I apologise for the immature behaviour I showed you."
She reached up to touch her hair, brushing through and not reacting to anything strange. Page had completely missed her eyes burning like flames.
Her breathing was shuddering, however.
"Ozpin. Aura is your soul, right?" Page asked.
Ozpin turned around and looked at her. "Manifestation of the soul."
"So if you do something that completely wrecks your soul irreparably… that will cause your Aura to change with it?"
"Yes. You can weaken your Aura with enough mental trauma."
Page looked up at him with gleaming orange eyes. It was a rather noticeable change from her first set of black pupils, and he wondered brie-
"Forwards. No questions!" she barked out.
Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "I am currently on guard because you activated a significant amount of Aura right behind me. I choose to not follow your demand. Please expl-"
"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
Ozpin frowned as she fell off her seating to lay on the floor, laughing uproariously.
"It WORKED."
Page struggled and eventually wobbled herself up, laughing all the while. Throwing her hood back, she reached out for her top-knot, and removed her hair pinning object away, deftly unravelled her hair.
..
..
..
Or, that's what most people would assume.
Most people don't always observe everything in a perfect observation. You can't see everything, so you remove what isn't important. In this case, the important detail of those seconds would be this:
1: Page had her hair up in a top-knot.
2: She pulled her hair down.
…
..
Ozpin was not most people. His eyes narrowed.
…
As she reached up to her hair, her fingers were stiff, and pulled at the hair above her implement to hold in her hair. She did not pull it out by her hand.
In a minuscule period, her ring finger had brushed against the disk.
The disk was detailed with a circle akin to the moon, with the main two differences being the whole aspect of it, and it having a different pockmarked surface.
In the next moment, the moon carved disk was gone and Page was pulling her hair down.
…
…He glanced to the sides. The walls showed no structural damage... so...
…
"Do you care to explain how you managed that clever little party trick?"
Page stopped laughing.
She turned her head to look at him. "Do what?"
Ozpin sighed.
"The disk, hair pin, whatever you called it. I don't care about the terminology. I'm mostly just amused that there's anyone that can so casually move faster than me."
"I just thought about giving up the power and I… Wait. The.. di… Moon's engraving is gone?"
Page started looking around the floor.
"I thought I just dropped it or something! It's… gone? GONE gone?"
"Mrs Page Woods. Are you aware of exactly how bad of a thing you have just done?"
"… Blair. Must be Blair."
"Mrs Woods. Stop talking to the voices in your head and listen. You have just… somehow… sent out the maiden powers to an entirely random young woman in this world. This is a significant problem and you should recognise the ramifications of thi-"
"It's not random. I gave Moon's power to Blair. It's not even that big of a threat, even. All Moon does now is just tell people what's important."
Ozpin started at that. "What… do you mean by that?"
"I mean that even if some random girl got the power… which they won't… all it does is make a little white outline around important things to you. It's literally just that. It's not any of the soul powers."
He watched her closely. "Semblance."
…
She stood up.
"Semblance. An ability that is tied to a soul. In this case… my soul, correct?"
Yes. After all, you keep lying about your abilities.
"Yes, Mrs Woods. Your semblance is tied to your soul."
She appeared to notice his dissatisfaction. Good.
"Uh… Oh. Ah. You want to know what I can do because you were trying to make sure nobody unplanned got the power of Maiden Moon. That… makes sense on why you're upset. Don't be."
…
"My power…. We… I can't die."
Finally, consistency.
Page continued speaking, starting to rush in places.
"But that's not exactly a semblance. That's a punishment. The more soul-tied ability is that I have souls in my head. Absolutely insane sounding, I know."
…You…
"What?" Ozpin replied. "What exactly did you say-"
"The effect in fighting being more a subset of this is that I can borrow the abilities of those souls. It's a practical mechanism, but the blurring of memories isn't very useful in ordinary society, so it's mostly just done in isolated environments."
…
"As of right now… I'm the woman with… two souls? Let's say two souls."
...
She smiled slightly, and rubbed at her chin.
"Heh. that's funny. I knew I heard that somewhere..."
… Ozpin stopped his plan to leave the room.
He sat down on the opposite side of the room, and stared at Mrs Woods.
His eyes were focused.
His mouth was set.
His voice was calm.
"You are… let's use this as a baseline… a soul that goes between bodies in an endless cycle of reincarnation."
Page clenched her mouth closed… "Uh… wow. Give some authors a run for their money."
...
He frowned at her unserious replying.
...
..Wow. You're really good at this. Well… it's more… ehhh…."
She flitted her eyes around her bedroom, anxiously looking.
…then, she relaxed again.
"Uh… Yes, actually, that's pretty much what it is."
He asked the first, and least important question first.
"How old are you?"
"23." she said.
Hmm? Automatic response.
…
….
"How are you so sure that this power you had wasn't the maiden power?"
Ozpin raised a good point, and Paige tried to explain the answer without making things unnecessarily complicated.
Because I faced it before I had it myself.
"Ah. That… that… is where the weirdness starts piling on."
"That… The controlling thing… Sharing my soul? All that was my younger sister-in-law's ability. I borrowed it because… I thought you all would not want to see what I'm carrying in most of my head."
"So you lied about the woman you called Maiden Moon?"
Page's face froze, defrosted, then fell down an arctic crevasse.
"Ohhhh no. She… Moon… She is real… or was…and I hate… hated her. I actually did get rid of her abilities as I wanted to. She's with Blair now."
…
Opine thought back to her relatives text block.
"Blair."
"Yes."
"Blair Hardy, as your paper says."
"It does say that, Headmaster."
"Your dead, younger sister in law?"
"Yes."
"The one that worked alongside her sister, and sister's partner?"
…
…
…
She rasped out a reply after her face reformed and started working again.
"You… heard that… where?"
"Around." Ozpin said calmly.
…
…Paige stared at him. You… really can't just know about that. What did you even do?
…
…
Ozpin… struggled to keep this calmness together. "You… say you gave maiden abilities… to a dead woman. Even if that was achievable… How does your Semblance even allow that?"
"Just transfer it to her. She's in my head…" she reached up to tap her brow-
-Paige looked down slowly.
"Was. Was in my head. She used to be in my head, so it's easy. It's not even my job to do it. Moon gave her the power because she wanted to give her the power. Done-presto."
…
That… isn't actually as bad as I feared.
"That.. is good to be aware of… I think. What does all of this have to do with the burial you performed earlier at 5:00AM three days ago?" Ozpin asked.
"Burial?" she started…
Then thought for a second more.
Page chuckled. "That? That was me trying to think of a way to allow the transferring to work right. It went perfectly. Moon's already chosen Blair as her new person. Everything is fine now."
Ozpin questioned her logic. "So… you sealed away your maiden abilities by preforming a "burial" on the originator of the power, who you thought was in your head."
"I did."
"This… worked, and you say you lost the power."
"I did lose the power."
"In other words," Ozpin summarised his theory to how this could even function. "You made your mind believe you lost the power, and since your semblance heavily relies on your imagination due to your mental state's ability to visualise those you killed…"
…
…
"-it becomes invalid." Ozpin finished.
….
"It won't exist anymore. Damn it. That's a really clever solution." Paige whispered.
…
…
…
She stood up and started pacing about the room, clutching at her head.
"OH. That actually could work! DAMN, that simplifies it down so much! Why send it away to a separated edition when I can just never write the line on paper!"
…
…
"Wait." Paige raised her hand. "This still isn't an issue. Even if Moon did have a transference power like that one I described, there's no way anyone could steal it off of Blair. The first point is that she's still technically part of my Semblance, so if you tried to steal the power of Blair… she goes back to me.
Now, the second part is much more wrench throwing: Let's say that Moon's power… and by this I mean the full power…is the controlling from Blair... AND the classic light and the Grimm destroying slash soul sharing abilities. You can't really steal abilities away from a goddess of…"
…
…
"You… uh… guys believe in gods and such?" Page asked him hesitantly.
"Some people believe in gods, and there are a few religions out there in the world. You won't offend me. I'm an objective viewer of gods." Ozpin assured her.
"Good. So… yeah. Moon's…hope? Light? Unity? I'm not actually sure what her domains are. Whatever they are… she's practically a god. You can't beat gods. That's… like… a major rule in quite a few gods-made-the-world legends. Yeah, they can be fallible, but you can't ever really… win."
Ozpin chuckled at that. "After all, gods just exist as stories to explain away events like the seasons, or the creation of the world, correct? That's like saying that a man can reach the moon. We can't though, so they explained that a god, being greater than themselves, made it so people can't."
…
"Yeah. Stories. Then, to explain why the moon's existing in a large orbiting ring of rocks, because they didn't know about meteors back then, they say that a god destroyed it. It's more understandable." Page continued on.
"But, you used the term goddess as a metaphor, to explain this woman you met. This was because, with her incredible powers and unexplainable abilities, was like a god, so I could understand the idea behind her strength?"
Page hesitated. "Uh… we're getting more into the weeds of the ideas behind the point. To summarize, she's a goddess of light. I can't just take away her godliness."
"Like how if you take water, you took a portion of the water, but you can't ever take the entire river, or get people to not recognise the river as being a body of water. It never stops being water even if you call it dirt." Ozpin noted.
Page stared at him like he said that he had never heard of Dust.
He then realised the actual ramifications of her ranting. What it meant for Remnant.
…
A chill went down his spine.
…
"Mrs Woods. Do you believe in gods?"
…
Her skull stared with a sorrow far beyond what a young woman should have.
"Yes, I believe in the gods."
"Why do you believe?"
"They can't punish you for ignoring their beliefs if they aren't real."
…
Ozpin quietly hummed. This wasn't... as bad as it could have been. The young woman's opinions can be explained as just a mentally disturbed zealot.
"Could we not say that your belief in a god punishing you is you applying your belief to your troubles? You did not follow their rules, so you are punished? You hurt someone, your god has a rule against that, and you break a limb a few days later, so your god punished you."
Page laughed grimly, and her face darkened.
Only for a moment. A moment so fast a human couldn't perceive it.
...oh.
"Ah. That…" he began.
"Is religion what you use to explain the universe when you don't have facts to explain it? What happens if you can only prove this fact with a god's existence?"
His embarrassment shifted to some judgement at the statement.
"I would say you were arguing with a false positive."
…
She looked up at his face.
"What about when you met them in person?"
"I… don't know. It could be your personal belief that you had a divine experience…"
…
…
..
Ozpin was very much struggling here. Humor won't work, deflection is failing…
He's going to have to defuse this completely or face serious issues.
..
..
..
..
….
"You like fairy tales. Want to hear one?" Page asked, turning animated with a smile.
He laughed quietly at the change.
She must have read up on me by now.
… "That's fine by me."
...