#evil ozpin au

[charlietheepicwriter7]

memes for chapter 14 of Devil's Daughter

[arc-misadventures]

Okay this could just be me remembering the lore wrong. But how old was Ozma when died in the Vtuber au? Since Salem should at least be in his late 60s or somewhere around that, well assuming Ozma didn't die young.

Well, there isn’t any lore, well much lore for the story in general.

But, I can certainly make some!

Ahem…

Before the VTubers, there was the MMORPG of, ‘The World of Remnant: Hunter’s, and Monsters.’ Salem, and Ozpin were actually players in these games, among the top players at that. And, because of their skills in the game, they were the elected heads of their respective guilds.

Salem was often referred to as the, Grimm Queen, and the leader of the Cabal. And, Ozpin was simply referred to as Headmaster Ozpin, Headmaster of Beacon Academy.

~~~

Salem became the, Cabal leader after the developers of the game came to her with an offer that she could become the canal leader after they notices her skills, and particular playing style that they thought would be fit for the position as the leader of the, Cabal.

Salem herself was a blonde hair woman with deep blue eyes in her early twenties. She started playing the game as a copping mechanism after dealing with a miscarriage that ultimately ruined her marriage as well.

Loosing herself in the game brought peace of mind, and of heart that she sorely needed. Being the cabals master also meant that she could adopted an almost motherly attitude, but strict way of dealing with its members. This way of dealing with the guild members added an air seriousness to its members. Reminding them that they were evil, but not evil.

And, she remained the leader of the Cabal until the very end. She lead her guild throughout the consequences of the, Apprentice Massacre,’ She led her guild in battle against the, Grimm Titan, and she was the last flame to be snuffed out as the, Scorpion incident struck the final nail in the coffin of the, Grimm Cabal..

But, her love for her character, and the, ‘World of Remnant’ endured. See various characters she knew given new life in a new form she decided to join in on the, VTuber crowd, and bring back her dear lady.

The world of hunter’s and monsters may have fallen to the ashes of time. But, Salem the Grimm Queen would endure.

~~~

Ozpin was to, put it simply: a huge nerd.

Like a massive nerd when it came to the lore, and history behind, The World of Remnant. So much of a fan that while the man of his late thirties never having a computer for gaming he immediately bought one just for playing, ‘The World of Remnant: Hunter’s and Monsters.’

He spent countless hours playing this game to the point that where it was often said among the various players that, Ozpin was made the headmaster of, Beacon was just to get him to slow down.

He lead, Beacon Academy with a calm, and wise disposition, that seemed to go on for hours, leading to the rumour that the mug his avatar was often seen carrying around was filled with coffee, and the man himself was a caffeine addict.

A rumour that those who were close to him, such as ErrantryPaladin, and other high rank Academy faculty members would confirm to be true.

He lead, Beacon Academy until the final days of the game. He stood side by side his friends that have played this game since it’s inception. He was among the first to join, and the last to leave.

Now that the, ‘World of Remnant: Hunter’s and Monsters’ was over, he got into the VTuber Scene, and became the Headmaster to his beloved Academt one again as the owner of the, Beacon Academy VTuber Agency.

Bringing back his persona as the Headmaster of Beacon Academy to usher in a new era for upcoming Hunters of The Wold of Remnant: VTuber Verse.

[lovingdabeessss]

based on your interpretation of the military Yang ask, i find it absolutely hilarious that Yang just casually knows government secrets, due to ironwood just telling her. Does Ozpin know he tells her?? Like, during the Mistral bandit can arc, Raven is just giving her the whole 'Grimm has a master' speech and Yang's like, 'duh. I already know. Next your gonna say you can turn into a bird and the sky outside is blue or something??'.

And I love the thought of Penny and Yang being friends, it'll give Penny more *human* interactions and mean she won't act as stilted as she does in canon.

My most favorite part of that au is that she knows stuff she shouldn't. I wonder if that's why I like the time loop and MitC verse's so much....?

(btw, do you have Wattpad?? That is where I am mostly likely to upload once I'm finished writing)

As a mesh of my interpretation and the actual original askers actual AU i think ironwood eventually kinda recruits Yang and sense her whole family was part of ozpins inner circle for a while he probably sees it as fine if he tells her certain things that are definitely secrets probably not everything but enough that he would think it gained her trust and loyalty because Yang is a VERY loyal person (one of the things that would make her a good soldier) but the way Yang is loyal isn’t the way that he’d want which is individually and relationship based so she’d be loyal to ironwood if he helped her and told her this stuff but as like a friend not as a general of the army or like her boss and she’d never keep those secrets if it posed a danger to the people she cared about

And if she knew the army was doing some messed up she’d offer that information whenever it came up cause she has a very solid sense of right and wrong

I don’t know if he’d tell ozpin he told Yang these things but if it ever came up that she knew ozpin would probably assume it was any of the people related to her that told her like maybe qrow when drunk so I doubt he’d get caught

I love the idea of Yang being like “Sky’s blue, moms are birds, government is evil, nothings new, one(1) portal please”

I do not have wattpad I just use the search bar and go “ao3 pls” and that’s how I find the things I read u could always send me the link 🥺 after it’s posted

Also I’m draw’n rn so if you want me to draw doodles for ur au or this one or draw with me that’s available for a lil while

[strykingback]

I never did understand folks that put Jaune arc on a pedestal.

Why can’t people criticize him? Why can’t we use other characters than Jaune when it comes to ships?

I look at papi and the rest of the folks that don’t want anyone to ship characters because of their rules.

Even after explaining that this AU version of Cardin is being redeemed, heart of gold etc they ignore all of that because “canon” (same folks that ship Jaune with Salem or cinder)

What’s the point of writing a RWBY story if I am restricted to expanding characters that are not Jaune?

Honestly I never did understand the hype: he came to a school unprepared and with no knowledge of aura.

He refused training from Pyrrha despite needed it badly.

Complains about being a damsel when he foolishly never try to better himself.

Was harassing Weiss for a long time (and everyone ignores that one sadly)

“Conveniently” the bully arc fixes everything despite no payout. (Nothing earned truthfully)

This is not someone to look up too, heck I question how the whole harem thing works with him?

Sorry if I am being too harsh on the guy but it bothers me that any criticism to Jaune makes you evil with some fans.

Everything about this whole thing is correct anon, I'm glad you did send this in. Cause you are right about a lot of stuff.

Every character in RWBY is subject to criticism, whether it be how they are written, portrayed, etc. Also lets not forget the fact that even the entireity of RWBY's world-building can be brought unto question as well. Especially how they refuse to expand upon the World of Remnant alone.

As for Jaune, there was so many ways you can fix him as a character and in the end still make him better than his canon-counterpart. Just by doing a few things.

Making his semblance based around the Joan of Arc since that is his historical allusion.

Having him take accountability for cheating to enter Beacon Academy and with Ozpin saying while he is disappointed to know Jaune cheated to get in at the same time he wants to see Jaune grow.

Accepting to be trained by Pyrrha, his team, or anyone else that is willing to help him. Oc's/FC's count as well if you are doing a re-write.

Show why he wanted to be a Huntsman; I.E. To show his family that he can stand on his own two feet or because he wants to be a hero.

Not having him whine over Pyrhha's Death every three episodes in a volume.

Have him actually be awkward around Weiss but also accept that she isnt into him but then having a brain (as he should) and realizing that Pyrrha is into him.

And Most Importantly to better fit his Joan of Arc Allusion.

Having Jaune die as a hero in a rewrite of Volume three, post-beacon, or during the Atlas Arc.

I also do agree that the bully arc should have not fixed all of Jaune's issues as he received help from Pyrrha and should have realized that this was not him but Pyrrha assisting him as despite himself putting up a spirited defense/fight against the Alpha Ursa Grimm. It should have been enough to give him confidence to tell Ozpin about him cheating to get into Beacon and accepting Pyrrhas help to start training.

Once again you are totally fine. You and I also have the same criticisms about a character that we dislike. Which is something that papi does not understand. That any characters in any form of media are not safe from criticism at all.

[angstandhappiness]

LMAO

Qrow: Hey, so, what’s Oz’s biggest enemy? Salem, right?

Glynda: No.

Qrow: Ironwood?

Glynda: Wrong. It’s fish.

Qrow: ...What?

Glynda: I said it’s fucking fish.

[oceandirtcountry]

Cookiescross Pokémon AU stuff

Salem, leader of the evil team, is horribly mutating Pokémon into abominations known as Grimm. These Pokémon are untamable, feral, and only listen to her and a select few.

Ruby Rose: A young girl setting out on her Pokémon journey. She obtains a Scizor from Ben as her first Pokémon as Ozpin’s starter that was meant for her ran away. She eventually finds it and adds it to her team.

Ruby just wants to become the best trainer around, the champion rank of the champion ranks. But with new trouble popping up throughout the Remnant region, it’s gonna be pretty hard to do something like that.

Ben is assigned to tag along her entire journey, much to his dismay.

The team I have planned for her is:

Scizor (Basically her crescent rose)

Inteleon (High caliber sniper mon)

Roserade (It used to be Summer’s Pokémon.)

Salamence (Caught from a Bagon, signifies Ruby’s wish to “fly” and become a great Pokémon trainer. Shelgon evolved into a Salamence when the two’s ideals lined up into one, during a fight against Cinder, as Ruby wished to be stronger and Shelgon wished to fly to save her.)

Alcremie (obligatory little guy)

She eventually picks up a legendary to add to her team to stop Salem, being Zygarde, both determined to bring balance back to Remnant.

Ben Tennyson: An ex-champion ranked trainer, Ben is an oddball with an unknown history. Somehow, he threw away his prodigious champion rank, earned when he was Ten, to disappear for five years, whereabouts unknown.

He’s matured since then, but Ruby finds it odd that she’s never seen him fight—until one fateful encounter with Tyrian leaves her team on the brink of toxic damage, and Ben brings out a powerhouse even Ozpin didn’t know he had.

Ben’s team:

Deoxys (basically the Omnitrix. A Pokémon that’s been with him since he was ten, and helped him defeat eight gyms and become a champion ranker. But it mysteriously disappeared when he was twelve, leading to Ozpin and everyone else assuming Ben no longer had this Pokémon on him.)

Xurkitree (Feedback, basically. A Pokémon he lost in a showdown against a corrupted Rotom, which practically absorbed the Xurkitree’s ball into its body. Sensing Ben’s presence later on, Xurkitree broke out of its chains to assist Ben once more.)

Buzzswole (Four Arms. One of Ben’s ace Pokémon, and sees the most use in battles due to its astounding strength.)

Nihilego (Ghostfreak. A wild encounter with this Pokémon left Ben traumatised as a kid, but after encountering it again, hurt, in Ultra Space, Ben tended to its wounds and added it to his team.)

Kartana (Wildvine. Ben’s wild card, Kartana uses the surprise factor of even being on the field to absolutely go to town on opponent teams, cutting them up before they even have the chance to react.)

Rayquaza (Sensing great power from a trainer, Rayquaza faced Ben in a battle atop Sky Tower. It took all his Pokémon, but Deoxys trumped the big lizard, and Rayquaza agreed to join Ben’s team.)

Rex Salazar: Rex did not want to become a Pokémon trainer. But after a Grimm attack on his home town, or a scientific facility made to study those Grimm, Rex joins Ben and Ruby on their adventure to make things right.

Rex suffers from memory loss, so he hopes that his journey with Ben and Ruby will help jog some of those.

Rex’s team:

Ambipom (Bobo. This Ambipom can actually talk—and was basically Rex’s only companion in the facility. A result of some of the facility’s experimentation left this Pokémon with boosted intelligence—and a love for being sarcastic, apparently.)

Tinkaton (Big, massive, hammer. This Tinkaton has been observed to change its hammer based on the situation, having gone from hammer to sword to fists before. Rex is still unsure why it does this, and it feels a little extra to keep switching, no?)

Sceptile (One of Agent Six’s team members, who he sent to watch Rex to ensure his safety. It’s a stark contrast to the rest of Rex’s team, as it fights with a certain rhythm and discipline.)

Randy Cunningham: A chosen trainer, having the ability to empathise with his Pokémon and truly understand their emotions. Randy was selected from years upon years of trained Pokémon to be the final trainer to carry on the legendary “Ninja” title.

Randy doesn’t really understand as to why it was him to be chosen, and he joins the main three after accidentally flubbing a battle and realising he might need more help.

Randy’s team:

Ogerpon (The ninja mask, Ogerpon is adaptable and the most friendly of Randy’s passed-down Pokémon. Often switching masks to turn the tide of battle. When Randy eventually unlocks “Ninja Zen”, an ancient art that basically allows him to be on the same wavelength as his Pokémon, Ogerpon dons the Ninja Mask and becomes a Fighting/Grass type.)

Greninja (A Pokémon that has been with the First ninja. It’s honestly surprised as to why Randy was chosen as its trainer, since he’s a little bit…different from the rest of the Ninjas. It’s stunningly powerful, but only if Cunningham understands what to tell it. When in Ninja Zen, it adopts a form similar to ash greninja.)

Accelgor (A speed demon that Randy is still unsure how to control. It’s erratic and barely listens to him.)

Dragapult (Its a very kind Pokémon, the one which guided Randy on how to train its teammates in the first place. It’s got a motherly nature to it, probably because the two Dreepy on its head are its kids.)

Blake Belladona: A Faunus girl, shunned for their ancient connection to Pokémon and their pokemon-like body parts, even though most of them cannot use Pokémon moves. Blake is part Meowscarada, and excels at sleight of hand tricks.

After saving Ben and company from the White Fang, she’s originally surprised by the group’s lack of hostility toward her and her Faunus traits.

When they eventually go to see Weiss, the two break out in an argument, which eventually leads to Weiss discovering what exactly is happening in the mines.

Blake’s team:

Meowscarada (A pokemon she has a sort of link with. The two battle as if in sync, with Blake not needing to call out moves for the Pokémon to know exactly what she wants.)

Zoroak (A Pokémon gifted to her when she was a child. It can create illusions to hide Blake when she needs it, together with her Faunus traits, and hence comes in extremely useful.)

Crawdaunt (Schnasty lobster. After Blake nearly drowned, this Pokémon came to her aid, and has been at her side as a guardian angel of sorts ever since. It’s the one Pokémon that helped her buy time while she escaped from Adam. She eventually met up with it again, after her re-confrontation with the Tauros Faunus.)

Weiss Schnee: A snobbish, prideful heiress of Remnant’s most powerful company—Dust mining, which work like a mix of Z-crystals and type gems from the Gen 5 games (I’m still working on it)—and has a powerful team to boot.

After a near-death experience when Ruby and co. brought her into the mines, she realised exactly what her dad was doing to the poor Pokémon and Faunus workers, and well, she wasn’t happy.

Her dad took away her Pokémon, but one insisted on staying with her—the family’s most powerful mon,

Kingambit (The Arma Gigas. It’s the Schnee family’s famous Pokémon, prided for its strength and honour. While it used to be Winter’s Pokémon, it chose to tag along with Weiss on her journey.)

Weiss also later obtained her team back, with help from Randy, which consists of

Froslass (Saved her from falling during a ski trip in the mountains. Has stuck with her ever since.)

Delphox (Her starter from Professor Ozpin. She didn’t like it at first, but it grew on her.)

Appletun (Some weird lady gave her an apple, but it turns out that apple had an Applin inside! After eating the sickly sweet apple, it evolved into an Appletun that Weiss finds quite adorable.)

Yang Xiao-Long: A member of Raven Branwen’s tribe, Yang was raised to pride strong Pokémon over anything else. She didn’t even realise Ruby was her half-sister until much, much later, when she joined Ruby’s team for good.

Yang doesn’t like how controlling her mom is, and sometimes wished she’d been with her dad instead, even with her mom talking so much smack about Tai.

She eventually leaves the tribe when the whole group shows up to confront Raven about a kidnapped group of powerful Pokémon from their natural habitats, which is about when Ruby meets Bagon for the first time,

Yang’s team:

Infernape (Yang’s original Pokémon. It’s fast, it hits hard, but the two never formed a bond as Raven deemed it “useless”.)

Tyranitar (One of the two Pokémon that the tribe kidnapped. It chose to join Yang as a Larvitar as it found her to be a strong, destructive force, like its mother would have been.)

Garchomp (The other Pokémon the tribe kidnapped. It’s oddly meek for its species, and joined Yang as she seemed to be the friendliest person in the tribe.)

…Pawmot? (A Pokémon Yang picked up into the journey with Ruby and gang, which she found adorable. It’s more of a sign that she’s shedding the beliefs raven drilled into her head.)

[zacs-of-rwby]

Home is Where Your Light Shines Brightest

Chapter 18: Somethings You Can’t Outrun

Story Summary: Ozpin works tirelessly in his pursuit: to make Beacon of Hope a safe place for kids to grow up. With a bigger location and more kids to take care of, Ozpin starts to feel the weight of responsibility crushing him, and he plans to carry the whole thing himself.

For Qrow, volunteering for Beacon of Hope had only one purpose: to get Summer off his back for a little while. When he meets the polite, friendly, and handsome man in charge, he wonders if he could actually get something out of this whole ordeal after all.

With Qrow’s support, maybe Oz will be able to reach his goal of turning this house into a home.

Story Categories: Mental Health, Recovery, Slice of Life, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Found Family, LGBTQ+ Themes, Alternate Universe, Ozpin’s Halfway House AU, please check Ao3 tags for potentially triggering topics

Chapter Summary: Blake has to confront their past, even though they’re not ready.

Chapter Categories: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, past relationship

Author’s Note: Another chapter for the archive! Basically this chapter and the next are this AU’s version of the Adam storyline. Lots of angst and fun stuff in these chapters :) this is not my evil smile :) not at all

[bestworstcase]

Tbh I don't think anyone's saying that Oz has Never Done Anything Wrong Ever, or at least, personally, that's not my belief.

While personally I believe that Oz hasn't tried actually destroying Salem or erasing her from anyone knowing about her at all, I ALSO believe that Salem Is Not an irredeemable monster. I do believe she's trying to overthrow the gods rn, and that she hates the sword of damocles that is the mandate and has been trying to keep Oz from summoning the gods up until now (bc yknow, why wouldn't she try keeping the Relics from him??).

Plus, her fear wouldn't be unfounded (I still believe Oz was gunning for the task for a long time), and the narrative of "Salem is right" can still easily happen. Plus it's not like Oz is innocent; 1. He lied to Salem for their entire marriage 2. He decided to gun for the task Light gave him 3. Hasn't even tried communicating with Salem and 4. Has demonized her in his mind and to those in his circle. Both and neither are at fault imo. Oz fucked up big time, and he knows this, but the belief Salem hates him and his own self hate is keeping him from Actually Doing Anything. I think this also goes for Salem, fear and possibly self hate keeping her from communicating.

I just come from the perspective that both fucked up, Oz a bit more than Salem ofc. I just think that Oz isn't nearly as bad as people make him out to be. Like, this probably sounds really rude so I'm sorry in advance (/gen), but I feel like Oz being paranoid for No Reason and constantly trying to destroy Salem or erase her from public knowledge and demonizing her for No Reason beyond his own paranoia and unwillingness to change makes him seem... almost cartoonishly bad. Like it makes him sound like an abusive husband 100x worse than Adam and Jacques combined. And beyond that, it makes Salem seem completely innocent pre-war, that she was just dealing with her Abusive Husband who's delusional and paranoid.

To me, it doesn't feel nuanced, or at least as nuanced. I DO like the idea, but only as an AU. Not only that but I feel like it'd be really unfriendly to casual fans, people who don't do analysis n stuff, bc unless you bother analyzing every 2 second scene, you won't pick a lot of this up. And this is in terms of the writers, not you lol. Rwby IS meant to be analyzed, but not a lot of people will bother, and those who do haven't exactly picked any of this up.

I do think they're good theories to have though. Really it just gives me an excuse to re-analyze scenes and see if my thinking is flawed. I mean, if it's straight up Confirmed that your theories are right, then I'll be like "Oh, huh, I was wrong". I figured I'd just give insight to what people are probably saying bc I haven't seen anyone say that Oz is an innocent uwu wet paper bag. Cause he's NOT innocent, but I just don't think he's as bad or evil as people insist he is. And I do my best to analyze without any form of bias. I *did* come to the same conclusion about Salem lol.

Anyways sorry, this got long dhchvj. I hope I don't sound rude, I'm really tone blind (autism), I'm just doing my best to give insight to what people think. Cause trust me, it annoys me just as much as you to see people try to claim that Oz is innocent or that Salem is an irredeemable abusive witch. Cause obv neither is true lmao.

I hope you have a good day :] /gen

you’re fine. 

the core issue i have with the reasoning laid out here is that it demands a presupposition that oz is… well, a miserable spineless cowardly fraud who’s spent untold millennia pretending to believe in a pointless cause that he knows he will never lift a finger to advance in any meaningful sense. because it’s made quite clear that ozpin’s inner circle believes that they’ve been at war with salem for decades, that the huntsmen academies are fortresses oz built not to merely defend the relics but specifically to "stop salem"—that’s the language qrow uses in V4 and oz echoes it in V5—and that this is what oz has been doing for centuries if not   thousands of years, fighting to protect remnant from salem. 

the way qrow discusses the great war in both WOR and V4 insinuates that the conflict was really a proxy war between oz and salem, glynda chides ironwood by telling him "ozpin has experience the rest of us lack," in V3 the inner circle tells pyrrha "we are the protectors of this world" and "our group was founded [hundreds of years ago] to protect both mankind and the maidens" by "remov[ing] the maidens from the public eye, allowing their existence to fade away into legend." or as qrow puts it in V2, "we’re the ones that keep the world safe from the evils no one even knows about!"—i.e., from salem—"[which is] why we meet behind closed doors, why we work in the shadows."

now, while ozpin’s difficult relationship with the truth means we do need to be skeptical as to the veracity of these historical claims… the inner circle is circumspect on the details, but they’re not lying or misrepresenting the purpose of their group. they earnestly believe these things because this what ozpin told them, and in V5 we see oz recount the same general narrative to team RNJR: "i am the combination of countless men who have spent their lives trying to protect the people of remnant […] this curse was bestowed on me by the gods because i failed to stop salem in the past, but we must stop her now."

so there is no ambiguity at all about the story oz tells his closest allies: he is trying to protect the world from an ancient hidden evil called salem, who defeated him once in the distant past but can be stopped now by keeping the relics out of her hands, and in order to do that it is essential to keep the relics and the maidens secret (lest world rip itself apart in wars to claim this incredible power) and likewise to ensure that salem’s existence remains hidden (lest everyone panic and be wiped out by grimm). oz and his inner circle frame this as an secret struggle that has been ongoing for centuries, if not thousands of years. 

his inner circle had no reason to disbelieve what ozpin told them prior to jinn’s tale. and even after the lost fable, no one questions the narrative that oz has been fighting salem for a very long time. "ozpin believed that the best way to fight salem was to do it in secret," says ironwood. "ozpin spent his whole life, many lives, keeping this secret," says qrow. later in V7, ironwood describes salem as "an ancient and terrible evil," and in V8 ruby says "this isn’t some new enemy or invading kingdom, this is a force we’ve faced before, for centuries… salem."

for the moment we’ll just accept the presupposition that salem’s war against the huntsmen academies began with the attack on amber following perhaps a decade of planning and careful preparation, incited by whatever happened when she met summer rose, and that before that time salem was not actively participating in shadow war. 

if this is taken to be true, the question with regard to how ozma has spent all this time becomes: do we believe that he’s been doing what he says he has—trying to "stop salem" by guarding the relics and keeping all these secrets—or not? because it is undeniably true that this is what ozma CLAIMS to have been doing for centuries if not millennia. when ozpin tells people this story about who he is and what he’s spent lifetimes trying to do, is it because he genuinely believes that he and salem have been embroiled in a secret cold war all this time, or… is he just lying?

why would he lie about that? 

consider the things he definitely did lie about. why didn’t he tell anyone that salem can’t be killed? he feared they would fall into despair and give up, lose all hope and the will to keep fighting. why did he lie about his personal history with salem? he believes loving her is his greatest mistake ("the hearts of men are easily swayed" etc) and he feels ashamed, guilty, regretful, desperate to make amends yet certain she will never forgive him and terrified that even if she did it would doom the world—the truth is messy and complicated and he’s convinced that what he wants is evil, so he buries it. 

why, then, would he pretend to still be fighting her when he actually isn’t? if ozma had, at some point, resolved this inner turmoil on the side of "salem was right, the god of light is wrong, i am not going to fulfill my task and will instead dedicate my existence to insuring that the relics are never brought together, the best way to protect remnant is by rejecting the gods and their redemption," why would he lie about that? why would he continue to promote faith in the two brothers and the final judgment he foretold long ago (ozpin includes this story in his anthology with notes urging his readers to believe in it and to act each day as if the gods will return tomorrow)? why keep telling his closest allies, his friends, life after life, that he was sent to remnant by the gods themselves to stop salem from changing the world? 

why wouldn’t he change course?—and i want to be very clear that i’m not asking why he wouldn’t seek reconciliation with salem, because emotionally that’s quite a lot harder. but if he decided the divine mandate was bullshit and he wasn’t going to follow it any longer, why would he not… er… stop telling people that the brothers are the Real True Gods who left behind these divine relics which he is put on this world to keep safe until the final judgment? 

ozma strove to keep salem and the relics a secret for lifetimes—and ozpin was stridently opposed to revealing the truth, we see him and his inner circle balk at the idea time and again explicitly because ozpin insists that secrecy is essential to stopping salem, so we have no reason to doubt that he really did feel strongly that keeping these secrets kept people safe—so in the event he changed his mind and came to believe that the brothers were enemies of humanity who must be kept at bay… surely he would shut his mouth. 

but the brothers and their final judgment aren’t a secret! ozpin published that story in a book of fairytales with a commentary telling his readers to prepare themselves to be judged! after jinn’s tale, nobody freaks out about the divine threat of execution should mankind prove unworthy because they already knew that part; it’s the mainstream doctrine of a well-known religion that exists all around the world, which qrow and ozpin had already told them was real and true. 

oz is not a bad person. he certainly isn’t some sort of craven charlatan who’s spent thousands of years exhorting the world to believe in and follow a creed he secretly opposes—even if he still believed that salem was dangerous and needed to be stopped, it would be so simple to cast the gods as dangerous adversaries who must also be prevented from ever coming back. 

like, he wants people to live. he wants the world to be safe, even if at the cost of his own happiness. that is always what ozma is trying to achieve—even during the ozlem kingdom, he sacrificed the happiness he’d found with salem in their little cottage to try uniting the world with her because he truly, genuinely believed his happiness came at the cost of humanity’s salvation. 

it follows that the reason ozpin tells his close allies that it is his god-given task to stop salem by keeping the relics out of her grasp whilst striving for unity and keeping all this a secret, he does so because he truly, genuinely believes that it’s the best way to protect the world. likewise, when he uses his public platform as the headmaster of a prestigious academy to publish an anthology of tales, including the one about the two brothers that articulates the divine mandate exactly, upon which he comments this: 

We have a fragile peace, and in some ways, we are more divided than ever. Even if the gods aren’t real, even if they don’t return to judge us for our deeds, we should act each day as though they are arriving tomorrow. In the end, we will be the arbiters of our fates. We will either create a beautiful, peaceful world and live in harmony together or destroy ourselves and our planet, and the gods will judge what we have chosen.

ozpin really earnestly does believe that proselytizing the brothers, imploring everyone to live as if the gods will return for the final judgment tomorrow, while keeping salem, the maidens, and the relics secret, is necessary and the best way to keep people safe. he wouldn’t be doing this if he thought it didn’t protect people!

so the story he tells his inner circle about WHAT he does—his purpose, his methods, his strategy—is true. it must be true because it would be both reprehensible and beyond foolish for ozpin to convince his allies they’re fighting in a war he knows isn’t real for a cause he doesn’t actually believe in, and ozpin is neither reprehensible nor stupid.

it follows that ozpin a) believes he has been fighting a protracted covert war over the relics with salem since the ages, and b) can be taken at his word when he says that insuring the relics and salem’s existence remain secret is an essential part of his strategy, especially because without fail he prioritizes secrecy above every other concern throughout V1-6 so he’s very much putting his money where his mouth is in that regard.

in V3, the inner circle makes the claim that their predecessors ("this brotherhood"), centuries ago, chose to "remove the maidens from the public eye, allowing them to fade away into legend." while i do have my doubts about the historical accuracy of that claim—a) the nature of the maiden inheritance rules would make it very difficult to keep the maidens under wraps and b) i think it’s more likely that ozma always intended for the maidens to act covertly, didn’t know what would happen when the first four died, and only pieced it together after a few centuries had gone by and he started to hear stories about young women blessed with magical power and went "…ah."—i don’t think there’s any reason to doubt that the maidens became a fairytale because ozma decided they should be kept secret. 

neither oz nor his inner circle make an exactly equivalent claim about salem… but. the situations are quite similar: the maidens were once "common knowledge," and when ozma first reincarnated he traveled around for years hearing tales of "the witch" wherever he went. some time long ago, ozma and his allies undertook to suppress public knowledge of the maidens, and in the present the last trace remaining is an old fairytale that no one could believe holds any real truth. as for salem, no one knows about her anymore either, and "ozpin spent all his life, many lives keeping this secret." 

the existence of the relics, similarly, is a secret because ozma chose to keep them secret—although the crown seems to have passed through at least a few pairs of hands before ozma tracked it down, hence the fairytale. (this is a subject for another post, but i actually don’t think 'the indecisive king' is about ozma—ozpin’s commentary on it is VERY impersonal and perfunctory compared to what he has to say about 'the infinite man,' 'the girl in the tower,' 'the story of the seasons,' or even 'the grimm child.' i think the original inspiration for the tale was some other person who had the crown before ozma found it, and he included the story because, as he says, he thinks it has an important message.)

so, basically, in the present ozpin and his inner circle are hiding three big secrets: the maidens, the relics, and salem. it’s stated outright that the maidens are secret because ozma and his allies chose to hide them from the world. 

of the relics, three are entirely unknown and one is the subject of a single fairytale of which the reliability is unknown (although my bet is on "the real crown isn’t that straightforward and may not actually work like that at all"); oz has been in possession of all four for at least fifty or so years. we know he found the lamp first, thousands of years ago, that he used both the sword and the crown to end the great war eighty years ago, and ozpin raised atlas using the staff. it’s very likely that he found the other three much earlier. the fairytale inspired by the crown suggests that one might have eluded him for a while.

in any case, once he had them all (and a few centuries had gone by to allow the story about the crown to be forgotten as anything but a fiction), ozma would’ve had nearly absolute power to decide who knew about them—salem being the only other person who could tell anyone, and at the time she didn’t know anything more than "there are four relics of some kind, somewhere in the world, that will call the gods to remnant to judge humankind if they’re ever brought together."

so the relics, too, are secret because ozma decided to keep them secret.

this leaves salem. before the rise and fall of the ozlem kingdom, she lived on the fringes of civilization and knowledge of her existence was widespread. (her decrepit house sat at the end of a paved, well-maintained footpath—she was within walking distance of the nearest town and did not make herself remotely difficult to find.) thousands of years later? nothing but fairytales that are, like 'the story of the seasons' and 'the indecisive king,' either believed to be entirely fictional or (in the case of 'the grimm child') about a real, if very rare, phenomenon unrelated to salem herself. 

this is not something that could have happened at all if salem hadn’t withdrawn from civilization as far as she did—which is one of the core reasons i think she hasn’t been at war with ozma all this time—so she tacitly allowed it to happen. but why did she withdraw so far? 

here is the part where it gets murky and highly speculative because we just don’t know what happened or where she went or what she did in those first few hundred years after the ozlem kingdom fell. it is plausible that salem just ran and kept running until she’d gotten as far away from people as it was possible to get, and stayed there in self-imposed isolation until, well, now—in which case ozma’s effort to suppress the knowledge of her existence would have mainly entailed not telling anyone about her and maybe destroying bits and pieces of the historical record. 

(i do think he’s made an active effort to keep her secret all this time, regardless: that is his first priority at all times until jinn spills the beans in V6, and if he can’t keep the world safe by destroying her then making sure the world doesn’t know she exists is the obvious Plan B. if nobody knows about her, no one can piss off the gods by siding with her. it’s really more a question of whether she put up a fight.)

hooowever. salem is a character defined by loneliness and longing for freedom, which to her explicitly means connection with others. love. companionship. this is why the gods punish her by making her immortal—separating her from the one she loves forever—and then when she overcomes that by going out into the world and turning her immortality into a gift that brings her closer to people and allows her to form new alliances and friendships, rather than a curse imprisoning her in isolation, the gods just. kill everyone. and leave her alone in the ashes. 

and as i said, even when salem is miserably isolating herself before ozma, she isn’t that far away from civilization—she’s living by herself but close enough to somewhere that she could walk into town, and her presence there was not only well-known but welcomed enough that people built a road right to her doorstep. this during a period of her life when she was so profoundly depressed that her house was rotting and falling apart around her! 

the point is that while salem does inarguably have self-isolating tendencies, i… don’t think hers are anywhere close to being as severe as ozma’s. his rendition of himself in 'the story of the seasons' may well be more poetic than literal ("So cold was his heart that the lands around him were covered in snow, the trees were bare, and animals and Creatures of Grimm alike avoided him. For centuries, no one dared disturb his peace…"), but at the time ozma certainly would have had the magical power to freeze all the land for miles around to keep people away from him, and even if it’s only a metaphor for how he felt then the implication is that he hid himself away in total solitude for possibly multiple consecutive lifetimes…

…whereas salem, at her absolute lowest, in the darkest depths of her self-isolating depression, lived by herself a short way from the edge of some town whose residents were probably rather wary of her (she’s not exactly friendly, nor human, and everyone knows she’s a witch) but nevertheless accepted her as a member of their community (because salem certainly wasn’t the one bothering to take care of that path). 

the way things ended between her and ozma, his deception, the deaths of their children, their kingdom collapsing, all of this was extremely traumatic for her and haunts her to this day just as ozma; i have no trouble at all believing that salem would flee to the edge of the world in the immediate aftermath. 

but i find it a lot more difficult to believe that she would stay there for thousands upon thousands of years if the only thing preventing her from returning to the margins of civilization were her own guilt and self-hatred. the gods punishing her by murdering the whole world, being completely alone for hundreds of millions of years, grimming herself, and the way humans would have treated her in an era when faunus were hunted down and caged like beasts wasn’t enough to drive salem into exile. i don’t believe her self-loathing, by itself, is strong enough to overpower her desperation to be free for very long.

i also really doubt that ozma would just, for lack of a better word, trust her to stay gone. especially not if—as jinn implies—he believed salem kept finding him somehow and sending grimm after him, which probably wasn’t true (her command over the grimm seems to be restricted to the ones she makes, and the incarnations we see in this part of the lost fable were not at all significant persons easily identifiable as ozma), but it isn’t an unreasonable fear for him to have? given how badly things ended between them. 

we know salem doesn’t like, obsessively devote her time to scrying until she’s found ozma again (because she doesn’t bother to do that after ozpin dies, she’s caught completely off guard by oscar—and if she doesn’t do so while she is actively waging war against him, it’s unlikely that it ever crossed her mind to try it at all, or else her scrying just doesn’t work that way), but ozma doesn’t have any way of knowing that. we know salem doesn’t control every grimm in the world, and oz seems to have figured that out eventually, but in those first few centuries before he found the lamp? he had no idea what salem might be capable of, what powers she might have hidden from him!

like it isn’t that ozma has No Reason to be paranoid. he knows that he hurt her really badly and that when salem gets hurt she lashes out, often in extremely vindictive and extremely violent ways. (he has no way of knowing that salem has spent these thousands of years clawing her temper under control, and no reason to think she would try.) he probably had no idea to what extent salem being grimm might be influencing her thinking—that’s where all the really deep distortions start to take root, ozma anxiously second-guessing every little thing like were there warning signs i ignored? was he right? did i let infatuation blind me to what she’d become from the very start?—by the time he finds the lamp, assuming jinn didn’t skip over any lives, he’s on his fourth life since the end; that’s a span of like, at least two to three hundred years depending how long he lived and how much time it took him to reincarnate each time. 

that is plenty enough time to convince himself she’s nothing but an evil monster who needs to be put down before he finds the lamp, and then he immediately uses his three questions for that lifetime so it would be another full century after that before he had the opportunity to ask jinn anything about… what salem is doing now, or what she lied to him about, or if she told him the truth after all. which is a terrifying prospect to even consider after a) multiple centuries marinating in an inescapable anxiety torment nexus echo chamber and b) hearing she can’t be destroyed, period. like what if the truth turns out to be "yeah the pool of grimm destroyed her soul and also she wants to burn the world to the ground and eat your heart now because you ruined her FOREVER!!! and there is nothing you or anyone else can do to fix her. you stupid fuck." like his cursed haunted brain keeps screaming at him 24/7?!

so.

we don’t really know anything about this period of time before ozma went after the lamp, except that "no matter where or how he lived, her presence was always felt." jinn combines that with a memory of two beowolves attacking ozma’s town to insinuate that salem kept sending grimm after him, or at least that ozma believed as much. 

but. but—"during his years of travel, he heard the same frightened whispers that spoke of a terrifying sorceress who commanded dark powers in the wilds, among the beasts and monsters. ozma was convinced that this woman was salem, and decided that he needed to see what she had become."

"but no matter where or how he lived, her presence was always felt. if humanity were ever to stand a chance at being united, one thing was clear… [he had to destroy salem.] knowing he could never rid the world of her through any mortal means, ozma sought out the power of the relics: armed with my knowledge, he believed he could fulfill his promise to the god of light."

<- these are parallel statements. everywhere he travels, he hears stories about a witch; no matter where or how he lives, her presence is always felt. ozma was convinced that this terrifying sorceress was salem; ozma grew convinced that he had to destroy salem for humanity’s sake. he needed to see what she had become; he needed to find the lamp to guide him. see the repetition? the echo?

i don’t think salem just vanished into the wilderness. i imagine she ran pretty fucking far, but remnant is a big world and there are people all over—there have even been people living in the southern region of the now-uninhabited continent where salem presumably lives, based on the map shown in WOR: vale. 

(the markers for those settlements are red in color; all the other markers are color-coded to the kingdoms, orange for vacuo, green for vale, while for atlas, blue for mistral, yellow for menagerie and what i assume are a couple of faunus settlements in southern anima, with tracks with the white fang’s headquarters being located vaguely in anima. in the blood-splattered map in the great war episode, there’s a fire burning in the southern peninsula of the uninhabited continent—implying battles were fought there and possibly that some of those red settlements existed as recently as eighty years ago. 

i turn this over in my mind a lot. it doesn’t make any sense to me to think that salem could have been remotely present in civilization anywhere within the past century, but rwby is so particular about color that the only reason to choose red for the now-defunct(?) settlements on the continent where salem lives would be to imply some degree of association with her, and if a WHOLE KINGDOM had been destroyed i think that would have been mentioned so these were probably just free towns and villages—possibly with a loose connection to vacuo? it’s sort of the logical place for displaced peoples from vacuo to wind up after fleeing their conquered kingdom. and in that case their "connection" to salem might be nothing more than her having taken pity on a bunch of refugees with nowhere else to go and kept the grimm off their backs until the great war…happened. but i would like to know.)

…the point being, i think "her presence was always felt" because salem, after some decades, maybe a century, hating herself deep in the wilderness, crept back to lurking on the periphery of civilization because a) ozma was gone and she had no idea where, when, or even if he would ever come back again and b) no matter how determined she is to punish herself, she just isn’t capable of wallowing in abject misery forever, even when she was the only person alive with absolutely no hope she kept moving until she found something to try.

so naturally people would have kept gossiping about the terrifying dark witch who lives in the woods among the beasts and monsters, and ozma would have known it was her. imagine if he’d reincarnated for the second or third time, wound up on a different continent altogether, and immediately started hearing the exact same sort of frightened whispers as before? even if it was pure unfortunate coincidence and salem did not have the slightest idea he was there, how terrifying that would be? and if salem didn’t want him to find her because she was scared or ashamed or angry or all three, then she couldn’t stay in any one place for too long—so this sort of indirect crossing paths oh-gods-she’s-already-found-me nightmare scenario could conceivably happen more than once.

(frankly, even if salem wanted nothing to do with him and was trying her level to avoid him without just never being able to come within sight of another person again, i think her not vanishing forever makes ozma’s intense paranoia so much more understandable because like. very literally, no matter where he lived, her presence would always be there—rumors, frightened whispers, everywhere. of course he’d start seeing her in the shadow of every grimm!)

i don’t think they’ve ever actually come face-to-face since that night—maybe glimpsed each other from afar across a battlefield, but if they’d met or spoken to each other i imagine it would have been necessary for jinn to show it happening. BUT i do think it’s likelier than not that there were several centuries when salem was legitimately an inescapable presence dogging ozma through life after life because she was just sort of… wandering around in a miserable traumatic haze on the very, very edge of civilization. and people talked about her.

so he went for the lamp, and fell into the depths of despair when jinn crushed whatever passed for his hope at that point. that is, almost certainly, what pushed him into his hermit era. 

now! if the fairytale’s centuries of eternal winter isn’t a pure fiction—if there is even the smallest kernel of literal truth in there as to ozma using magic to force people, animals, and grimm to stay far away from him, then. if salem was not already living in exile, this would have been when she began to hear rumors about him. yes? this is the first thing he does that would rise to the level of local legend salem might possibly hear. 

that his seclusion ended with "and then i met four young women who reminded me how to be a person so i gave them my magic" as opposed to "and then salem turned up with thousands of grimm to murder me and salt the earth" suggests that if she wasn’t living in exile at this time, her interest was probably more in avoiding him than vengeance.

and if that’s so, what does she do upon finally discovering where he is? er, probably travel as far away from the Cursed Wizard Forest as it is geographically feasible to go and decide that this is fine, that’s his continent and this is her continent and they can just stay on opposite sides of the planet until the end of time and never have speak to or see each other again. amen. 

if we take the fairytale literally, several centuries pass. lifetimes. enough time for salem to find somewhere to, if not quite belong, at least become a constant because well she’s been here since before granny was even born and no one knows who or what she is because she doesn’t really talk to anyone, but she’s not hurting anyone either, and legend has it that a goliath once attacked our town and the witch just walked out of the woods and exploded it with a glare, and that’s why grimm never come here, so she’s our witch. maybe enough time to send someone halfway across the world to check on the Cursed Wizard Forest to reassure herself that yes ozma’s still there, he’s not going to come after her and he must have come to his senses about the gods so she’s. safe. ish. as long as no one ever finds those relics. 

the fairytale ends with the hermit dividing his magic among the four maidens, and then he says: "My rest is over. It is time for me to resume my journey and work as well."—they didn’t just resuscitate ozma’s will to live, they restored his faith and his commitment to his task. maybe the world can be saved! maybe he can really do it this time, now that he’s found people willing to help him shoulder the burden!

(i do firmly believe that ozma told the original four maidens about his task and salem’s sworn hatred of the gods and the danger she could pose to the world if he emerged to try again, before offering them magic—as we see in v8, he isn’t naturally predisposed to lie or manipulate people, that’s a pattern he only falls into when he feels hopeless and scared. so i think he and the original maidens planned to gather the relics and get to work on uniting humanity, and the vague fairytale ending is an obfuscation.)

aaand i think that’s when he went after salem, because he emerged from his Cursed Wizard Forest after multiple lifetimes rotting in solitude, filled with new hope and ready to try again to complete his task, immediately tripped face-planted into rumors about the witch in the woods AGAIN and panicked. 

he can’t kill her, he can’t get rid of her… she can’t be stopped but, as oz says to hazel, she can be fought and someone has to try. doesn’t he have to try? if he believes the world can be saved, isn’t it his duty to try?—he knows she’ll never, ever bow to the brothers, she made that excruciatingly clear, and as long as she’s present in the world, as long as people might listen to her about the gods, remnant is doomed. so he has to make her go away. somehow. he has to try.

i think for salem all it would take is once. one time. if she still tried after everything to do what was right, leave him alone and not hurt anyone else and pick up the pieces as best she could. because the thing is, salem blames herself for getting her daughters killed in her anger—that’s why she tries so hard to keep her temper in 6.4—she hates herself for lashing out that night as much as ozma hates himself for the same. that self-blame would counterbalance her anger at ozma: yes he lied to her yes he tricked her yes he attacked her but she attacked him right back and now her children are dead.

how much of a temptation is vengeance with that clawing around in her head?

but if her mindset was like, "that was the most horrible thing that has ever happened to me and the worst thing i’ve ever done, and i don’t understand why he lied to me but i just want it to be done, and he’s over there and i’m over here and we can just. leave each other alone forever," and she found a place for herself where she started to feel maybe almost kind of ok again and then ozma violated the truce she’d invented in her mind but never thought to communicate to him by appearing out of the blue to attack her, completely unprovoked as far as she could tell, and whatever little town or village or even just one single person who’d been kind to her got destroyed in the resulting fight?

that’s an injustice. that’s i did nothing to deserve this, how dare you do this to me. 

and… that’s also, i think, the one thing that would compel salem to willingly cut herself off from all civilization and remain in exile for thousands and thousands of years (because she’s impossible to kill and too powerful to force her out if she decides she’s not going to go gently into the night). her fear of collective punishment. if she thought there was even the smallest chance that ozma might start doing what her father did or what his gods did to anyone close to her, i think she’d go and stay gone until she felt absolutely certain she could take him down forever.

(also theres a certain narrative elegance to the idea that they had their horrible mutual-incineration duel where they were equally matched in every way… and then ozma rotted in isolation while salem tried really hard to be okay and convinced herself they could just stay peacefully at a distance forever, until he found a spark of hope that ignited all his desperation so he went after her and she was blindsided by this truly awful and unfair and egregious thing that he did… and then she rots in isolation and ever-mounting desperation while ozma tries really hard to fix everything and pull the world into a semblance of peace until she finds a spark of hope and blindsides him with this brutally ruthless charge for the relics. 

they explode each other, fly in opposite directions—downward spiral vs picking up the pieces—then reach critical mass and explode again so hard they fully reverse positions and do the whole ordeal again. so it’s both a journey of learning to understand each other and a vicious cycle they can only escape by inversion of the first exactly-equal fight that exploded out of nowhere from a seemingly happy partnership, i.e. both reaching out unexpectedly in the midst of a seemingly inescapable conflict. it’s about symmetry)

This Has Been A Very Long Post Sorry About That. but—all speculation about the details aside—i do strongly feel that the most compassionate reading of ozma is that he is completely sincere about whathe’s trying to achieve (uniting humanity without committing genocide or turning salem into a scapegoat so everyone can be saved including her!!) but has absolutely no idea how to make it happen and has only just, in his second-to-last life as the king of vale, accepted the reality that it isn’t possible, and thence the whole building a replica of salem’s father’s castle to put his office in her tower-prison and hucking his emotionally tortured anthology of fairytales out the proverbial window (you know, like the girl in the tower who writes herself out of danger, coming from mr. fairytales this is a tornado siren of a cry for help) so forth. 

thus what he and his inner circle say about his efforts both past and present is true—he has been actively working to keep salem a secret for as long as the maidens have been hidden if not longer. as long as salem cooperated by not wandering around letting other people see and/or talk to and/or run away screaming in terror from her, what "erasing salem from public knowledge and keeping her existence secret" means, practically speaking, is tracking down any texts that clearly describe her as a real person (not a fairytale) or artistic depictions of her from the ozlem kingdom and destroying Those, and perhaps muddying the waters of all those folktales by inventing new nonsense out of whole cloth or mixing stories about her with other stories that definitely aren’t about her to a) blur the details and b) make it look to future scholars like the witch-in-the-woods was a loose folkloric archetype encompassing a huge variety of different beliefs and superstitions as opposed to one very specific kind of story about one very specific witch. 

which is a bit obsessive and weird but given the fate-of-the-world stakes at play here and the plain unarguable fact that humanity cannot be redeemed if anyone sides with salem against the brothers, which is demonstrably something she can accomplish if given the opportunity, honestly pretty restrained. 

and so the million dollar question is: what does it take for salem to cooperate by staying in exile? is the fight in lost fable and her guilt over her daughters shattering enough to lead her to just give up and hide forever alone?—who knows, right now it’s purely a matter for speculation, but i think the circumstantial evidence suggests "no" more strongly than it does "yes." 

which is not to say that she was the pure innocent victim of an abusive revenge quest, but rather that i think the facts of the situation for her would, in the immediate aftermath, tilt her in a more positive direction (he did a horrible thing but so did she, and she’s survived many horrible things before, and she can’t exactly lay down to die instead so she has to do something, and she doesn’t ever want to see him because it hurts so much and she’s so angry but her anger killed her daughters so she cannot ever let it out again so she’ll just have to stay away from him and live with it) whereas ozma. yknow. Spiraled. and her being elusive but inescapably present in the world make that so much worse, which isn’t either of their faults, it’s just a terrible situation.

it’s like. short of literally stumbling into each other by chance and yelling at each other until it was all Out There. i think no matter WHAT she did, ozma was bound to snap and lash out at her sooner or later because he spent centuries. centuries!!! with all this trauma reverberating and intensifying in his head with no reprieve because there were stories about her everywhere he went.

and then as soon as he does that salem’s lifelong extremely traumatic history with collective punishment and her self-hatred and guilt are going to smash together and she’ll run the fuck away to alternately freak herself out and plot his downfall and tailspin while ozma, meanwhile, after a few centuries of her being gone and the endless rumors fading into just old folktales no one really believes anymore, finally gets the distance he needs to catch his fucking breath—his hermit era doesn’t count he was just ruminating for centuries—so he can focus on other things. and by then keeping her a secret mostly boils down to "don’t talk about her" lmao

his paranoia never really goes away, as we see in 9.10, although he does also get really complacent by ozpin’s time, and i think it’s irrational and grounded in a lot of very wrong conclusions he reached during those first couple centuries of Spiraling—but given what he did and did not know at the time i do also think the reasoning and inferences he made were fairly logical; it becomes irrational over time as the reality of the situation (salem avoiding him) increasingly doesn’t line up with his perception, but as we see in V2-3 ozpin is supremely, irrationally confident that salem is not about to unleash a major attack, which suggests that on some level he’s aware that his paranoid beliefs are unsound even if he hasn’t yet had the conscious realization. he’s right on the cusp. 

& then none of this precludes smaller scale, limited conflicts like e.g. salem assassinating a troublesome member of his inner circle or throwing grimm at people to intensify social conflicts and insure ozma never gets comfortable enough to invite his gods to remnant. i’m very sure that salem has made it a habit to check in on him at regular intervals and cause problems if it looks like he’s doing too well because she Does Not Want him to ever summon his gods. and that’s obviously going to be one-sided because i don’t think ozma actually knows where she’s hiding, and salem’s terror of collective punishment is her own seething bundle of irrational paranoia, because after he digs himself out of Spiraling ozma absolutely would not kill people just because they happened to be near her. 

[kitkatopinions]

It's the last day of Nitpick November and I wanna talk about the 'canon compliant' additional content for RWBY.

First of all, it's incredibly annoying to hear that it's 'canon compliant' that Team RWBY worked with fucking Batman in another dimension and that's never once come up somehow in the main series, and it's impossible to hear 'Amity Arena is a game that exists in Remnant-' Like WHAT?!

But on top of that, I think media in general but RWBY especially would benefit from non-canon alternate universe content that experiments with fun concepts without having to worry about canon.

"This series of short animated episodes focuses on every day events and conflicts in a world where the war never happens." That would be great.

"In this manga, we see what would happen if the teams we all know and love never got together. Yang is partnered with Pyrrha, Ruby got saddled with Cardin, Jaune is partners with Blake, Nora is partners with Weiss, Ren is partners with a new character introduced for it that seemingly existed in the backgrounds as one of the shadow people." Awesome, sign me up.

"This special released web cartoon is a coffee shop AU where Ruby and Yang are both working at Ozpin's Coffeehouse in Vale and they keep meeting people from the show and it's all comedy driven and fun and cute and quirky." Sounds like a dream.

"Roleswap AU where the main hero characters are Emerald and Mercury and Ruby and her team are evil followers of Salem who need to get redeemed." YES PLEASE.

"Comic where Team RWBY actually suggested the 'use the staff to create bridges to get to Vacuo' plan when they first realized Salem was on her way, but because Cinder still showed up to try to wreck everything, tons more people fell into the Ever After and now we're going to follow the wacky shenanigans of Ruby attempting to get together all the Atlas people including still good!Ironwood, Whitley, the Happy Huntresses, the Ace Ops, Team FNKI, etcetera and get them all back home." I would definitely read that.

Instead they're like "Do you want to see Team RWBY go on some missions in Atlas set during a montage in season seven while they fight a union leader?" "How would you feel about watching VTuber RWBY talk about making microaggressions against Velvet?" "This arc set in-between V1 and V2 is about Weiss being anti-faunus in a dream where she has to be rescued and it will never come up in the main show.'

Talk about missed opportunities. I may not like additional fan content very much, but I'd like it a whole lot better if it was experimental fun concepts and less 'no see, this actually could've happened off screen.' Enough of Ruby already happened off screen, I don't need to add Batman into that list, thank you.

[howlingday]

In the Jaune is Hades AU will Jaune ever tell his team and RWBY he's a god? And what exactly can Jaune do while on Remnant?

"DAMMIT! DAMMIT!" Jaune ran as hard as he could towards the tower. Towards where he last saw her. At this moment, nothing else mattered. Not the White Fang. Not the Grimm. Not the innocent souls he would have to sort. The only thing that mattered was her.

'Don't worry.' Weiss' voice played in his head. 'We'll help her.'

How could she? How could anyone? Nothing escaped death. Not even Ozpin could.

He reached the tower, and a shade slowly crept towards it. Jaune held out his hand, and the entity stopped. With a wave, the shadpw retreated back to the burning city. Back to where the rest of hell waited for him.

Jaune sat himself down against the stone wall and let out a deep breath. His true form, invisible to mortal eyes, stood above his corporeal disguise. Reaching out to the top of the tower, he lifted himself high, higher and higher into the air until he reached the ruins of what was once Ozpin's office.

He watched in horror as his worst fears were confirmed. He could see Pyrrha's soul, his best friend's soul, the soul of the woman who threw herself upon him only moments ago, and it was fading. Her time was running out.

"Do you believe in destiny?" Jaune's fist tightened.

"Yes." In a foolish attempt, Jaune ran forward, hoping to stop the deathblow.

But even gods bent to their laws.

"No..." Jaune's voice broke, reaching for Pyrrha's fading soul. The least he could do was bid her good-bye. Welcome her embrace into his and guide her to the afterlife that she truly deserves.

But this was not to be.

Pyrrha's soul splintered, fracturing into smaller pieces. Like embers of a dying flame. A hand reached through his body and he watched her blow away. He barely caught her dying words as she soul faded.

"Jaune...?"

Everything went white around Jaune.

---------------------------------------------------

Jaune awoke from his trance, shaking his memories of that horrible night free from his mind. He had spent most of the morning "training" with Ruby, Nora, and Ren. Said training consisted of video games, exercising, and cooking new Mistrali recipes, respectively. Meanwhile, Qrow lay across from him on the couch, a flask of alcohol Jaune wished stayed empty.

"What time is it?" Jaune looked to the clock. Four in the afternoon. Almost time to get things ready for dinner. Standing with a stretch, he walked towards the kitchen.

But stopped when he noticed something. Someone.

There was a knock at the door. It was small, feeble. A child's knock. Jaune felt his mouth go dry as Qrow awoke and answered the door. To the partially sober man, Qrow saw a young teenager who looked barely old as Ruby. To the god of souls, Jaune saw two souls living inside one body. And one of them was too familiar.

"What do you want, kid?" Qrow asked. "You lost, or somethin?"

"Um, h-hello, sir." The boy's voice cracked. "Um, my name is Oscar and, uh, I was told to come find you."

"Oh, yeah? By who?"

"Who is it, Uncle Qrow?" Ruby called as she descended the stairs with Nora.

"An old mentor." The voice changed. "And an older friend."

"Wait, is that-?" Nora began to ask, but didn't finish as a blond blur rushed past Qrow.

"YOU BASTARD! YOU SICK, EVIL, INSANE BASTARD!" Jaune roared at the man guised as a child. "YOU SWORE YOU WOULD NEVER DO THIS! YOU GAVE ME YOUR WORD!"

"HEY!" Jaune turned to see Qrow pointing his gun at him, with Ruby and Nora behind him, looking on in fear. "Put. The kid. Down."

Jaune set the boy down. Ozpin dusted his body off and let out a sigh. "My apologies, Mister-"

"Lord Jaune." He growled. "You don't get to use that name anymore."

Ozpin nodded and walked past, retreating to the house. He could feel their eyes on him, but none made an effort to approach him. Instead the door shut behind him and he heard the lock latch to keep them all safe.

He couldn't blame any of them.

He never flew into such a rage before. Not once in Jaune's existence has pushed him to a point where he would physically attack someone. Leave it to Ozma to push said boundaries. But even so, his rage was justified, wasn't it? Before, Ozma's vessels had all been adults, mortals who had married with children and spent their lives dedicated to a craft to the benefit of their community.

Ozma swore to the god that he'd never inhabit the body of a child. And oaths to divine beings were never to be taken lightly.

"Jaune?" He turned to find Ruby standing next to him. "Are you okay?"

Jaune looked at her. Her silver eyes cut into him, thinking back to a distant time when he last met a silver-eyed warrior. More than 200 years ago. And yet she was the first he met since. He needed to learn the truth about what happened to the others, but to find this truth, he need honesty. And honesty, was a two-way street.

"Jaune?"

"I'm a god."

[novankenn]

Shock & Awe AU: does imply that Jaune has an army of clones, which would make a certain girl happy.

Sorry for taking so long to answer.

TBH... I never thought of it. I get a kick out giving Jaune, Mikoto Misaka's epser abilities, but I never thought of the clones. That would definitely "amp" things up wouldn't it. That's an interesting thought... how would Beacon/Ozpin handle finding out there is an ARC-Network (Misaka-Network)... how would Pyrrha.... (evil good thoughts)

Again sorry for taking WAY too long in answering.

[likemosaic]

⭐ hi. all of them, obviously

send a " ⭐ " and i will list muses i would be interested in throwing at yours. / @glacierfront

yeah bench all of them, you know i'm gonna say all of them!!!! i'm gonna do julie and your ffxivs for spice.

FFXIV SPECIFIC:

hythlodaeus & ancient siobhan <3 bard friends?

minfilia & ryne for shard fuckery

modern chiyo and julie because julie's blood relation to tony stark, chiyo working with the modern version of the scions and their philanthropy...could be cute and cringefail

chiyo giving ryne big forehead stepmom kiss. and also mentoring her on the first and teaching her to do girl things and why boys are evil, yes including your father, he's a whor-

carmilla & aymeric navigating ishgard's fucked up politics. in a distinctly gay way. signed, carm the lesbian

really any of your ffxiv characters i would smooch <3 and any of mine are yours, just some spitballing ideas!

GENERAL:

let hermes torment julie in a very fourth wall breaky way. move over odysseus

i'll happily pull ozpin out of his setting (where he essentially teaches a school for kids with superpowers) for something with julie and her powers. an au or her main verse, maybe a personal tutor helping her control them? possibly paid for by tony? just spitballing

julie moves to stardew valley and meets fen the mermaid as well as krobus the shadowfriend. shenanigans and more mermaid annoyance ensues.

[angstandhappiness]

Interesting

Hey i love the blog!!! For the au's could u tell us more of salem!oscar?? Or if nah ozpin lives??? I know u just did that one but i freaking love it!!

Ozpin lives AU Headcanons

Awww thank you!!! (Sorry this was late)

- Since Oscar and Oz are connected, Oscar has access to some of Ozpin’s memories or knowledge. This is how he knew Jinn’s name.

- Oscar held Oz back from grabbing the relic from Ruby. Since Ozpin is stronger, he was able to get out of his hold and run at Ruby.

- Oscar feels bad after v6 because he caused Ozma and Salem’s backstories to get revealed

- rwb_ and jnor try to be as nice as possible to Oz after they realize the effect they had on him.

- Yang and Qrow... aren’t as kind. Yang is aggressive towards him and glares at him. Qrow just ignores him, avoids him at every turn.

- Offscreen, Neo attacks Oscar. She disguised herself as Oscar to confuse Ozpin. However Oscar sent Oz a telepathic message so he knew this wasn’t the real Oscar. They fought but Neo had been able to lose the both of them by going into another hallway. That’s when JNR found her

Salem!Oscar Headcanons

- After v6, Oscar has nightmares about Salem. Jaune, Nora, and Ren comfort him.

- since this is the first time rwbyjnr are actually speaking to the real Oscar, they’ve tried getting to know him. They’re nice to him and give him space.

- Oscar doesn’t know much about Ozpin except his backstory, so there isn’t exactly trust there. volume 8 would have Oscar and Oz learning to trust one another.

- In this AU, Oscar would have less training and fighting experience than canon Oscar. He only starts training at Atlas. This is a disadvantage for him and he could get hurt easily 👀

[arc-misadventures]

Rebirth AU: couldn't Jaune or Jeanne look up who is running Beacon if Ozpin then shadow war if it's human Salem then all is good

Shall we Dance to Our Own Rhythm~?

Arc Twins Age: Nine

Jaune: Okay, okay… Let’s see who it is…

Jeanne: What are you looking up?

Jaune: Whoever the Head of Beacon is.

Jeanne: Why!

Jaune: To determine how fucked we are.

Jeanne: What?!

Jaune: Hmm? Oh that’s right, you weren’t trapped in hell like I was.

Jeanne: W-What are you talking about?

Jaune: Okay, in your life you had a, Headmistress Selma, while I had a, Headmaster Ozpin; Did you ever wonder why it was like that?

Jeanne: Uhhh… Nooo…?

Jaune: Well, in my world, Selma, who’s real name is, Salem, is an immortal witch who threw herself into a pool of Grimm, became evil, and wanted to destroy the world. Meanwhile you still have an immortal witch, only she wasn’t evil.

Jeanne: …

Jeanne: What on, Remnant are you talking about?!

Jaune: Haa… Have you ever heard of the story of, ‘The Girl in the High Tower?’

Jeanne: Of course I have, Mom told us that story together when we were kids dozens of times, remember?

Jaune: I have to ask because that story is true.

Jeanne: T-True?! The story is true?!

Jaune: Yes, and Salem was the girl in the high tower.

Jeanne: Seriously?!

Jaune: You want to hear the story?

Jeanne: Yeah!

Jaune: Okay, so… thousands of years ago. Salem was locked away in a tower by her father, there she lay a prisoner for years, until one day a wandering wizard, saw the girl, and decided to free her from her prison. And, that wizard was named, Ozma.

Jeanne: Ozma? Is that, Ozpin?

Jaune: Yes; Also no questions until the end of the story!

Jeanne: Sorry.

Jaune: As the two escaped it could have gone the way of the books, ‘And, they lived happily ever after.’ All that trite. However, reality is never as it is in the books. Ozma fell ill, and there was nothing anyone could do to save him, so the man who saved, Salem, the man she loved unlike any other, died.

Jeanne: Oh… That is a really sad story…

Jaune: But, it is not over yet!

Jeanne: It’s not?!

Jaune: No. Salem was unwilling, no, incapable of letting the love her life just fade away, so she went to the only two beings capable of saving her husband; The Gods of Light, and Darkness.

Jeanne: Wait?! There are gods?! Why haven’t I heard of any of this?!

Jaune: Brother Gods; Real uptight pricks the lot of ‘em! Now, stop interrupting!

Jeanne: Sorry…

Jaune: So, she went to the, God of Light, and pleaded with it to bring back the lover of her life. The God of Light said no, why be you ask? Because bringing him back would bring unbalance to the world. So, after the, God of Light spurred, Salem’s request she went deep into the Grimm Lands, and went to the, God of Darkness, and asked it to bring, Ozma back. And, it did, Ozma was back in an instant, but it only took an instant the, God of Light to show up, and send him back to the afterlife. Then they played ping pong with, Ozma’s life, killing him, and bringing him back, until, Salem had enough. They stopped, but then the, God of Light showed that he was a real motherfucker…

Jeanne: What did it do?

Jaune: It punished, Salem because of her selfish request. So, to teach her the value of life, it made her immortal.

Jeanne: Immortal…? It made her immortal as a punishment?

Jaune: Yes; Immortal. Ha! Bringing one life back would bring unbalance to the world, but bringing an immortal into the world, that doesn’t make things unbalanced!?

Jeanne: It would be like telling a cripple to outrun a huntsman. Hell, even a child can outrun a cripple!

Jaune: Precisely. So, after years of suffering from her immortality, Salem tricked the various rulers of the world to attack the, Gods. They thought if they did that they would be able to gain immortality too. The Gods were enraged by this, and took away people’s ability to use magic…

Jeanne: We can use magic?!

Jaune: Could! Could use magic! Pay attention!

Jeanne: Sorry.

Jaune: So, after that, the God of Darkness had a little hissy fit, and while he, and his brother left the world, and… He… He blew the moon…

Jeanne: Wait?! That’s why the moon is broken?!

Jaune: Yeah, talk about a bunch of sore losers… Anyway, after a series of meteorites hit the planet it became a winter apocalypse. After a time, the world healed, Dust, and Faunas showed up. Don’t ask, I have no idea how, or why they showed up. Anyway, Salem had enough, and threw herself into a pool of Grimm, and then she came out as some sort of Grimm monster.

Jeanne: So that’s how, Salem was born?

Jaune: No, what really made, Salem the monster she sadly became happened years after that…

Jeanne: What happened…?

Jaune: The God of Light brought, Ozma back.

Jeanne: WHAT?! Why would they bring him back?!

Jaune: It wanted to fuck over the world some more?Who the hell knows, or care. All that matter is that, The God of Light likes to fuck people ovet, and Ozma was back, sorta…

Jeanne: What do you mean by sorta?

Jaune: Well, the body of, Ozma didn’t come back, but his mind did. You see, Ozma has the ability that upon his death his mind immediately gets transferred to a new body. New face, new, Ozma.

Jeanne: Wait, what happened to the mind of the original host? Did it cease to exist after, Ozma came, or?

Jaune: While he can be fought, Ozma tended to take over his host body… To the point where the hosts original mind might as well be as good as dead.

Jeanne: Oh… No wonder you called him a parasite…

Jaune: I don’t see, Ozpin in a positive light after everything I learned about that SOB. Anyway, Ozma heard of a witch in the woods, he went, and found Salem, the married, had a family, and then things went to hell… Haa… You see, Ozma, and Salem still had magic, and they used this magic to put, and end to the fighting around them. Salem then reached a point where she thought they should rule over everyone, powers unparalleled tend to give ones delusions of grandeur. They fought about this. Then in the dead of night, Ozma tried to run with their daughters, and got them killed in the ensuing battle they had… And, the world was forever plunged into a unending shadow war because of them…

Jeanne: Oh… Oh gods…

Jaune: Oh gods indeed…It was much better in your world, with Selma…

Jeanne: Why was that?

Jaune: Well, Salem, never fell into the pit of Grimm batter, so she was never that, Grimm Hybrid thingy she became. Ozma did come back, only this time he grew envious of, Salem’s immortality. And, he started do experiments on how he could gain his own version of immortality… The victims of his experiments turned out to be… his very own children…

Jeanne: Oh gods!

Jaune: Yeah… Worst of all, his experiments worked!Salem was forced to kill all of her children in order to stop him. But, he could still transfer his mind to a new host. It took centuries but, Salem managed to track him down, and lock him away with the power of the, Relic of Creation. She locked him in a vault that only she can open, and that only she knows where to find.

Jeanne: Wow… That’s some heavy stuff, but, uhh… One question?

Jaune: Yeah?

Jeanne: What’s the, Relic of Creation?

Jaune: Haaa… Okay, when, Ozma came back he came back with four, Relics given to him by the, God of Light. The Staff of Creation, the Lamp of Knowledge, Crown of Choice, and the Sword of Destruction. Pretty self evident names there on what they do. But, they each have rules on how they work. At least that what the spirit things say.

Jeanne: Spirits? These things have minds of their own?

Jaune: Yeah, I only knew the name of one of them by the time I died. The Relic of Knowledge, her name was, Jinn.

Jeanne: Really, what did she look like.

Jaune: Don’t know, I never saw her. Anyway the relics aren’t really that good; The Relic of Knowledge only let’s you ask three questions ever hundred years, and every time to use the, Relic of Creation is destroys whatever was made before… it…

Jeanne: What is it? You’ve got that, “I have a brilliant idea,” look on your face!

Jaune: There’s a look?

Jeanne: Yes, its quite rugged, and dashing.

Jaune: …

Jaune: Okay…?

Jaune: So I haven’t been able to see if, Salem, or Ozpin were the Headmaster, Headmistress because of the Beacon Academy website being shit. However, all I need is a photo of Atlas to find out which one we will be dealing with.

Jeanne: Atlas, how would you find who’s here based on a photo of, Atlas?

Jaune: Because, in my world, Atlas was a floating island because of the powers of the, Relic of Creation making it so. But, if, Salem used the, Staff to imprison, Ozpin.

Jeanne: Then there would be no floating island~!

Jaune: Bingo~! And, would you look at that~!

Jeanne: Atlas isn’t a floating island! It’s just the upper city, and Mantle is the lower city?!

Jaune: Whoo, Selma is the Headmaster of, Beacon Academy!

Acheius: What are two doing?

Jeanne: Oh… Just learning who the Headmistress of, Beacon Academy.

Acheius: Headmistress Selma? Why did you want to know that?

Jaune: Yes!

Jeanne: Well, we need to learn who’s in charge of the school when we train to be, Hunters!

Acheius: You want to be a, Huntress, Jeanne?

Jeanne: Yeah! I-Is there a problem with that, Dad?

Acheius: Hmm… We’ll need to discuss that with your mother, okay dear?

Jeanne: Okay, Dad.

Jaune: Can I join that conversation too, Dad?

Acheius: And, why would you want to do that?

Jaune: Because I want to be a, Huntsman.

Acheius: You?! A, Huntsman?! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

Jaune…

Jeanne: Hh oh…

Acheius: Hahahaha hooo… Oh that’s funny~!

Jaune: Is that a no?

Acheius: Yes.

Jaune: May I ask why?

Acheius: Because I said so, end of discussion.

Jaune: …

Jeanne: You saw this coming, didn’t you?

Jaune: Haaa… And, thus my misfortune never ends…

Jeanne: Oh no…

[good-rwbyaus]

Destiny - [ Side Story : Ruby - Pt 1]

[ Part 1: Pyrrha ] [ Part 2: Jaune ] [ Epilogue: Oscar ]

// As usual, this AU haunts me like an evil spectre. So have some of the aftermath of Jaune ends up killing Cinder at Haven AU and the descent of Remnant's third goddess.

Note this was written pre-vol 8.

---

Disconnect:

Fighting Neo who had obtained the Summer Maiden's powers required her to pull out all the stops and more.

She drew the Maiden away from Vacuo while the rest of her team dealt with the hoard of Grimm that Salem attracted over.

And then she fought for her life.

Never had she needed to use her Semblance so many times and in such quick succession before. In hindsight, the brief moments of clarity she received when not being completely corporeal allowed her to see past Neo's lies without her knowing it.

The fight ended when she feigned going for Neo's decoy, only to shoot the real one through the leg and leaving her at her mercy. By that point, she was completely spent - hollow. As if not all of her came back after she used her Semblance so many times.

She had Crescent Rose pointed right at Neo's chest, her finger resting on the trigger.

All she needed to do was pull it. Put an end to the Summer Maiden on Salem's side - and Neo knew it too. But the woman showed no fear. Still defiant. Wasn't going to grovel for her life. She knew the price for losing coming in.

She would've been in the right if she chose to kill her.

...And yet there was a difference between killing someone in the heat of battle and killing someone that was no longer a threat. And as stupid as that thought was - a Maiden without aura is still dangerous, especially one dead set on killing her...

...she couldn't bring herself to take that next step.

She just stared straight into Neo's eyes - feeling the grief, the anger, the rage, the loneliness...

And just walked away.

Walked back in the direction towards Vacuo.

Hoping the choice she made wouldn't come back to bite her.

---

Her team naturally didn’t like her decision.

Uncle Qrow was particularly vocal about it, given that he didn't like the idea of a murderous Maiden nearly killing both his nieces.

But what's done is done.

They didn't like it, but they accepted it.

---

When she woke up the next day, she found a familiar bowler hat on top of her chest.

And the Relic of Destruction stabbed right next to her head.

---

Question:

"So what exactly is a god then?" Ruby asked, "I mean what makes them different from a Hunter with an overpowered semblance or even a Maiden?"

Oscar pondered the question before he grimaced and closed his eyes. It didn't take a genius to know he was conversing with Ozpin. Ozpin was still not particularly trusted, but their relationship was on the mend after that disastrous revelation involving the Relic of Knowledge.

"...A Maiden. A powerful Hunter. They're all still mortal in the end. Limited by Aura. Limited by the Physical. Limited by Death. A god no longer worries about any of those things, " Oscar said - except not quite. The boy's pose was straighter, though a slight gloom lingered on his face, "There is many a tale about the gods and about becoming one, but Remnant has only ever had two gods."

"The Gods of Darkness and Light, the Brothers Grimm," Ruby replied, "But it's not like they didn't come from nowhere, right? They created Remnant, but who created them?"

"Who knows? Maybe they existed from the very start," Oscar leaned back onto the chair he sat on, "Their powers transcend logic. Maybe their origins do too."

Oscar hummed a bit.

"But it is interesting though," Oscar continued, "in Remnant's history, all myths about creating a god always have three common points: Aspect, Worship, and Sacrifice."

Ruby mouthed the words silently - curiously.

"Aspect would be the god's specialty. Worship would be the faith directed towards them. And a Sacrifice to allow them to shed their body. The ingredients to create a god."

"Many sought godhood throughout history," Oscar lectured, "Committed atrocities against their fellow man for just the chance."

"All have failed except for one," Oscar sighed.

"And that one hasn't failed yet simply because she is immortal."

---

Return: 

Ruby quietly placed the last of the white knight pieces onto the shrine, glancing at the rest of her team and the remnants of Jaune’s team. 

It’s funny how life is sometimes. After traveling through Remnant in search of the relics, it was oddly fitting that all of them would return to the beginning, the Emerald Forest, when life was more simpler back then. More innocent times when the titles of Hunter and Huntress were synonymous with hero and not of responsibility and painful decisions. 

Normally, she wouldn’t think about such sentimental things - she’d always been the type to strike first and plan later - but time was all she had during the long flight from Vacuo to Vale. Just her and her thoughts.

Her hand gently pulled out the Black Bishop pieces from her satchel and placed them onto the checkerboard-shaped dais, the empty starting spots nearly filled. Ruby glanced over at Cardin and gave the matured Hunter a nod. Like the rest of them, he too changed after the Fall of Beacon, more empathetic to others and able to trust his life to those he once considered lesser than him. The fact those he hurt could trust him now spoke of his growth as a person. 

Perhaps it was a lesson that team CRDL could’ve only learned in Vacuo, the continent where if one could survive there, they were welcome there. Jaune probably would've been happy to know that his once tormentor matured into someone he could respect. 

She pulled out the Black Queen piece from her satchel. Her gaze turned to Emerald, the Fall Maiden, and Mercury who hovered close beside her like a bodyguard. The small knowing smile she made was something she couldn’t help - and something that the illusionist noticed, for she scowled and turned her head, pushing the boy away.

Ehehe. Even someone as dense as herself could tell Mercury’s feelings for Emerald, though what would come of it was a different story. Hopefully, their ending would be happy. They risked a lot to steal this piece from Salem’s clutches. It’s only right they’d have a good ending.

Ruby turned her away from the pair, drawing the last piece from her Satchel. The White King piece. Her gaze turned to Oscar who only nodded his head quietly, his presence filled with a wizened air. Hard to believe that this boy was, a year and a half ago, just a farmer - now he fought like the best of them, gave them advice like Professor Ozpin did.

With him and the rest - Weiss, Yang, Blake, Nora, and Ren....her best friends, her family, the ones she could leave her back to - she could find the courage to walk towards the future.  

Was it Destiny that allowed them to return here?  

The ground she stood on glowed with a brilliant light. 

----

A darkness surrounded her, speckled with orbs of light.

She was alone.

“Welcome. I have been waiting a long time for you," said a voice directly ahead of her. A familiar young-sounding voice.

“...Who are you?”

“I am the instant where Will becomes Action. I am the progenitor of both Regret and Satisfaction. You know who I am."

“The Relic of Choice. Do you have a name?”

“Choice does not exist without the Will, just as I cannot exist without you. My name is yours.”

“Ruby?”

The darkness and light in the room seemed to meld into one shadowed figure, a silhouette barely visible in the dim light of the Shrine. It was her - back when she was fourteen and begging Ozpin to enter Beacon - maybe even a little younger than that. The only difference was a shining crown on her head - the Relic of Choice.

“Correct. Why have you come?”

“I wish to obtain the Relic of Choice, reunite the four relics, and defeat Salem once and for all.”

“That’s possible. But first...” her figure said hesitantly, “May I hold her?” Her hands pointed towards Crescent Rose. The question shocked her for a moment; Crescent Rose was her most trusted companion, something more than just a weapon to her. She instinctively wanted to say no.

But the look in the Relic's eyes...they were familiar. Like a kindred spirit.

With a bit of reluctance, she held the top of Crescent Rose's folded form and allowed the Relic to grab onto the grip.

The relic smiled as she hugged and nuzzled her weapon with her cheek. A moment later, she sighed before giggling, “Thank you. Though I am not you, I still feel your sentiments. For us, Crescent Rose is like...”

“An old friend,” she understood. Not the whole having a weird clone thing, but she couldn’t really be wary of someone who clearly loved Crescent Rose so much.

“I can allow you to have the Relic of Choice, the heart of the Relics,” the relic said, “It can lead you to victory, but you should know the consequence of using it.”

“I know. I asked Jinn of what I can do to defeat Salem. I know the cost of the relics’ power is my life,” Ruby quietly said, “I’m willing to do it.”

“You shouldn’t sacrifice your life so readily," the Relic said sadly.

"But I will respect it," continued the Relic, "I sense the day that the future will be decided.”

“You can defeat Salem at the price of your life but everyone around you will die. Or you can save everyone at the cost of your life but you will no longer be able to kill Salem with the Relics.”

What?

“I...”

“You don’t have to make a decision now. I just wanted to inform you of the choice you will need to make,” the shadowed figure said as she flickered and appeared in front of her. Taking off the crown from her head, the child that looked like a younger her placed it upon her head. 

It was heavier than it looked, shining with a white glow.

“You look good with it,” she said with a sad smile, “Now go. All that’s left for you is the Staff of Creation.”

She felt the world turned dark around her, the young girl in front of her was slowly moving further and further away as if she were being repulsed.

“Wait! What about you!?” she screamed. 

The young girl smiled, “Do not worry about me. I’ve been waiting here for a long time. Now I’ll finally get to rest.”

“Come with me!” she yelled out.

“Sorry, Ruby Rose.”

She reached out to the younger girl's fading form.

“But if I may give some advice...”

“I hope you’ll allow yourself to follow your heart this time around.”

“Goodbye.”

----

“Ruby, are you okay?’

“Huh?” Ruby managed to exclaim as she shook her head. She was back at the Abandoned Shrine, surrounded by worried faces both new and old. 

“Are we missing something? No, all the pieces are here.”

“Hey, Oscar. Was something supposed to happen?”

Several teams started whispering in confusion.

“...I have it,” Ruby interrupted the growing commotion and closing her eyes.

The Relic of Choice appeared over her head, its heavy weight settling down onto her.

Her gaze slowly glanced in the direction of Atlas, feeling the pulse of the final piece needed for the Relics to be complete. 

[wishingeel]

Another one for the RWBYia AU! Ozma starts out the same as in RWBY, but in one of his first few lives, he falls out of Remnant and into Amphibia. Long story short, he becomes linked to Amphibian royalty, invents something he shouldn't have, and the royal line becomes the Core. He turns evil along the way (for reasons) and Ozpin is the current king of Amphibia, next in line to join the Core. I imagine that this is what the corrupted Ozma would look like inside the Core.

(I changed the color scheme of the eyes but the second one is the canon Core's color scheme, which I started with.)

[Oscar, Ozpin, and Ozcar reference designs]

[RWBYia Oscar screenshot redraws]

Original Ozma sketch beneath the cut:

I kind of gave up on the armor because angles are not my strong-suit. I'll draw his armor eventually though!