When Ozpin came to retrieve him and Neo, he looked less than pleased to be in their presence.
Which, given Roman’s reputation among those do-gooder types, wasn’t exactly something he’d never experienced before, but it was something he normally at least knew the reasoning behind.
He’d been real tight lipped, however, barely speaking, and only in clipped tones as he led them towards the elevator.
The tap-tap-tap of the man’s cane was grating on Roman’s nerves. And that was really something of note, given Roman’s love for his own cane.
“You’ve got to give me something, you know. We were part of the big secret meeting, weren’t we? We can be trusted with information!”
Neo gave him a disbelieving look, and he could hear Mr Immortal-parasite grinding his teeth instead of responding.
No dice on that front, then.
“You really aren’t going to tell us anything?” He asked once again. “Is this a game of twenty questions or something? Fine, then. Let’s start broad… has it ever been alive?”
Ozpin sighed as he pressed the button for the elevator. “Mr. Torchwick. Has anyone ever told you that you are quite annoying?”
Roman gasped theatrically. “Me? Annoying? I’ve been called roguishly handsome, sometimes charming and fashionable, but annoying is definitely a first!”
He ignored the way that Neo rolled her eyes.
Since she didn’t speak, all the times she thought that he was annoying didn’t count.
The elevator doors opened, and the three of them stepped inside. Ozpin pressed a button, and Roman immediately noticed that they were going down, quickly sharing a slightly wide eyed look with Neo. Was this the moment when they tried to steal her aura away from her? Trying to fight their way out of the school might be tough, but Roman figured they could take the old man, even if he now knew the bastard would hunt them down in a younger body afterwards…
“Cinder Fall has been captured,” Ozpin suddenly dropped on them.
Roman laughed. Clearly this was the set up for some sort of joke.
Ozpin did not laugh.
Neo elbowed him in the gut.
Grimacing, and shooting a glare at his pint-sized assistant, he cautiously spoke up. “You… you’re serious?”
Ozpin adjusted his glasses. “I am, and I am quite happy about it. The sudden and unexpected nature of her capture does present a problem, however, which is where you come in.”
Though the words were being exchanged with Roman, he didn’t think that comment was directed at him.
“...you haven’t figured out your backup plan after the kid and his double ruined the whole sending a student off to die thing, have you?”
Ozpin ignored his jab. “Containing Cinder with the power she currently wields is a challenge.” That tracked. Prisons weren’t enough to contain him, let alone someone with the power of a Maiden. “We need to remove it from her as quickly as possible. As little as any of us want to do things this way…”
“You have no choice but to give it to Neo.” Roman concluded.
Ozpin didn’t answer, but Roman didn’t see any other possibilities.
The elevator doors opened once more, and they stepped out into Beacon’s basement. Before them was the transfer machine, Bart and Goodbitch standing beside it, their bodies tense. And of course, Cinder was inside the machine already, seemingly unconscious.
Roman ignored the way he started to sweat. Just being near that psycho was enough to have him on edge… but if what Ozpin said was true, that’d soon be a thing of the past.
Bart noticed them first. “The General still isn’t here?” He asked Ozpin.
The geezer shook his head no. “No, and I do not want to risk anything by waiting for them to arrive. Let us start right away.”
As Neo gleefully stepped into the empty chamber, no doubt rejoicing in the idea of stealing away power from the bitch who had strong armed them for so long, an idle thought crossed Roman’s mind.
“Whatever happened to the other chick? She dead or something?”
Roman didn’t know how long the last Fall Maiden had been stuck inside this machine, but he definitely hadn’t seen nor heard of her walking around at any point since the blond brat had helped Neo steal her power. He sort of assumed this thing had a life support system in it, so if they had unplugged her to shove Cinder in it…
Well, Torchwick may be a criminal, but he’s not a heartless monster. That seemed cruel, even to him.
“She has been transferred to a life support system at a location you do not need to know of,” Goodbitch informed him.
Roman held up his hands in surrender.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Talk about touchy…
Goodbitch and Ozpin started tapping away at some buttons, looking like they had a much better understanding than he’d had when he tried operating the thing.
Stealing away Cinder’s power. Not what Roman expected to do today, even if he’d fantasized about it often. Something about the scenario was off, though. It was missing something.
“Hey, can you wake her up? I want to gloat and see the look on her face as she loses everything.”
Neo nodded along with a wide smile, but everyone else in the room turned to glare at him for a moment.
“Must you be so childish?” Bart asked him.
Roman rolled his eyes. “Like you don’t want to as well, I’m just more honest than you all.”
Goodbitch scoffed. “As much as I would enjoy that, no. There is a time and place for gloating, and that will have to be after we’re done here.”
Everyone turned to stare at her after that answer, not having expected it in the slightest.
She raised an eyebrow. “What? He’s not wrong in this one instance, she deserves to be taken down several pegs.”
Ozpin sighed. “Let’s just get this over with already.”
He started the machine, and Cinder Fall was the Fall Maiden no more.
----------------------------------------
The dorm room was tense.
Nora was clearly dying to ask Second more questions, with Pyrrha not that far behind her, even if she figured that the questions she wanted answers to were of a very different nature than the ginger’s, but with a sharp look from Ren to keep Nora in check, the team refrained from poking at the Ursa that was Jaune.
She wasn’t sure what to do in this situation, and that irked her. Jaune was her partner, it was her job to support him, but how was she meant to support him with a problem like this?
With her position as a celebrity athlete, she wasn’t exactly an expert on how normal interpersonal relationships were meant to resolve issues. It was always her agent handling things and Pyrrha quietly accepting whatever terms were laid out, or her mom stepping in when it wasn’t even necessary, or… well, definitely a step away from “normal” in any case.
Yet, even if she did have normal friendships before joining Beacon, she doubted they would have prepared her for the bond between Jaune and Second Thoughts.
But even so, she couldn’t just sit there and do nothing about a problem festering in her team. She may not be the team leader, but with her team leader being at the core of the issue, she felt it was her duty to step up to the task.
She would just need to… adjust the problem, mold it into a shape that she was more familiar with. Something she knew how to handle, or at least something she could fake her way through knowing how to handle.
And so, though this was not the sort of fight that she was used to, she stepped into the metaphorical ring, hoping for yet another victory.
“Jaune.”
Her partner looked up from his scroll. “Yes, Pyrrha?” He responded warily, likely already anticipating what she wanted to talk about.
Though she was strong enough to simply overpower most opponents, tripping them up with an unexpected maneuver was always a good step towards a win.
“When you manifest Second’s physical form, do you have to think about what he looks like?”
His brow furrowed, clearly expecting a different question regarding Second, just as she had thought. “Uh… no? That’s just what he looks like. It’s not like I wanted a kid version of me to appear when he first manifested.”
Ren and Nora didn’t speak up, but she saw them watching the interaction carefully out of the corner of their eyes.
Second, on the other hand, looked at her just as confused as Jaune, truly looking like her partner’s double in that moment.
“Hmm,” she hummed in response. “I was just curious, because his physical form is you, but what is your semblance defining as you? Obviously your body, but he has your clothes too, right? And yet, he doesn’t come with his own version of Crocea Mors, which you could argue is more a part of you than your clothes are.”
She could see Jaune mulling the question over in his head, his initial suspicion having fallen to the wayside. “I… don’t know? I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess it is a bit weird…”
Nora laughed. “Yeah! It would have been really weird if Second showed up as Jaune but with no clothes!”
“I’ll thank you not to imagine that,” Second demanded as Jaune blushed.
“Maybe that’s simply what his semblance considers his default state?” Ren suggested. “He wears those clothes a lot more often than he has his sword at his side, so maybe this is just what the baseline is set at, if you ignore the aspect of Second being younger with less aura.”
“But if that’s the case, and Jaune has no control over what form Second takes, is it set in stone forever, or can he change what the baseline is?” Pyrrha prompted. “It might be a little strange to see Jaune in ten, twenty, even thirty years down the line if Second still looks like a teenage version of him, in clothes that are way out of fashion.”
“That might not be so bad, though,” Second pointed out, “because being like this permanently would mean that I’d never have to deal with any injuries Jaune picks up in the future.”
While that was a good point, Pyrrha’s mind quickly went to a Yang who had lost her arm, so she moved past it as fast as she could, not wanting to consider Jaune in a similar situation. “Perhaps, but I think being able to update it would be more beneficial. It might take some planning and getting used to, but you could be the source of another weapon that wouldn’t need to be carried around and adding weight. I know you’re still a complete novice when it comes to combat, but eventually you’ll want to be using a weapon of your own, and it could be a hindrance if Jaune has to carry around a spare for you to use.”
Ren nodded. “Even just being able to manifest another shield would be quite the addition, allowing you two to deflect multiple attacks at once.”
“Without using your body as a meat shield, anyway!” Nora giggled. “Though you do take a hit pretty well!”
Second grimaced at the reminder of Nora’s participation in his “training”. “That’s definitely something we should test, I like the idea of having something between me and any weapons coming towards my face.”
“Or maybe…” Jaune spoke up, “I mean, I barely understand how my semblance works in the first place, so maybe I can control it, and I just don’t know how yet.”
“In which case you could summon Second with any gear you’d like, whether that means some proper armor or a variety of weapons,” Ren supplied.
Pyrrha wasn’t so sure, though. “Just because they’d be able to summon the weapons doesn’t mean they’d be put to good use. It took me thousands of hours to master Miló and Akoúo̱. Trying to learn more than one or two weapons, especially for a beginner…”
“But maybe if it was something simple?” Second countered, “I mean, if it was some sort of explosive I’d just need to be able to set it off, right? That doesn't require a ton of training. Although I’m not sure if any sort of explosive would actually work since it’d be made of aura and not normal materials…”
As the conversation continued, Pyrrha smiled. The tension had dissipated, and while she held no belief that this had magically solved everything, Jaune was at least participating in a conversation with Second cordially again.
Another victory for the invincible girl.