Monday, December 11, 2017

A RWBY Christmas Carol: Stave II

A RWBY Christmas Carol is not endorsed by Rooster Teeth in any way. Views, opinions, and thoughts are all my own. Rooster Teeth and RWBY are trade names or registered trademarks of Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC. © Rooster Teeth Productions, LLC.


Ozpin suddenly snapped awake. He had no idea what disturbed him, but he thought it might have been the prospect of meeting the ghost Ironwood had warned him about. He checked his clock and noticed that it was half past midnight. The ghost was supposed to arrive at one, so Ozpin decided to concentrate his efforts on waiting for the ghost just to see if it would actually show.
He lay still in bed, listening to his clock tick. As time went by, as the ticking went on, he became more and more nervous, fearing both that apparition would show and that Ironwood would be wrong. When the great church bell down the street chimed at a quarter to, Ozpin swallowed hard unsure if he could withstand the pressure of waiting for the ghost. He reached next to his bed and grabbed his cane. He pulled it into bed with him ready for any trouble that might befall him.
His breathing grew heavier and faster as the clock ticked on. Finally, the great church bell chimed at the hour. “One o’ clock!” said Ozpin forcefully. He looked around at the curtains surrounding his bed. “And nothing else,” he said, relaxing. But just as he closed his eyes and settled into his bed, the curtains at the end of his bed were drawn apart by some magic or spell, and standing there at the end of the bed was a woman with a stake of holly in her hand, stretched toward the end of the bed.
The woman in question appeared to be middle aged with light blonde hair tied back in a bun. Her eyes were bright green over which she wore thin, ovular glasses. She wore a white, long-sleeved, pleated blouse with a wide keyhole neckline and a black high-waisted pencil skirt with bronze buttons. Though Ozpin couldn’t see them, she also wore a set of black boots with bronze heels, and she had donned a black cape with a purple lining. The cut of the cape was stylized to end in flames and arrows.
Ozpin gulped. “Are you the spirit whose coming was foretold to me?”
“I am,” said the woman in a soft but serious voice.
“Might I inquire more precisely as to what or who you are?”
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
“Long past?”
“No; your past.”
 “What business brought you here?”
“You welfare.”
“A night’s interrupted sleep is hardly conducive to my welfare,” bit Ozpin.
“Your reclamation, then. Take heed. Rise, and walk with me,” she said, pointing the stake of holly at him. Some force tinted violet lifted Ozpin from his bed and dropped him next to the ghost.
“Where are we going?” he asked, bewildered from the experience of levitating from his bed.
As if to answer his question, the same violet force opened his window and the ghost looked outside.
“But, I am mortal,” argued Ozpin. “And liable to fall.”
“Worry not,” said the spirit. “Bear but a touch of my Semblance and you shall be upheld.”
As the spirit spoke, the two of them were lifted up and out through the window. They were lowered to the ground where the night’s mist cleared and Ozpin found himself standing in open country next to a road.
He turned about and laid eyes on an old, red brick schoolhouse. “Good heavens!”
“Do you know this place?” asked the spirit.
“Know it?! I was a boy here!” Ozpin was suddenly aware of a thousand odors, each one connected to a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long forgotten.
“Your lip is trembling,” said the ghost. “And what is that on your cheek?”
“It is nothing,” bit Ozpin, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Lead me where you would.”
The Ghost led him along a road that travelled up to the schoolhouse. “Do you remember this road?”
“Remember it? I could walk it blindfold.”
“How strange then to have forgotten it for so many years.”
Ozpin said nothing, but he felt the sting of the Spirit’s words. But then, the sting was forgotten when joy surged up in his heart as laid eyes upon the faces of several young boys. One in particular caught his attention. “Why! There’s Leo, my best friend! Hello, Leo!”
But the boy did not acknowledge Ozpin.
“These are but shadows of the things that have been,” explained the Spirit. “They can neither see nor hear you. But, can you tell me, why it is that all these boys look so excited?”
“They’re going home for Christmas,” answered Ozpin somberly.
“But the school is not quite deserted. A neglected child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.”
Ozpin knew immediately the boy of whom the spirit spoke and he couldn’t stop a few tears from cascading from his eyes.
The spirit led Ozpin into the schoolhouse where upon entering a class, a single boy with white hair and a white shirt with a black tie and blue vest was sitting at the far end of the room in front of the fireplace, reading. Ozpin stepped closer and found his strength leave him. He was forced to sit at a desk, holding back his tears, as he muttered, “Poor, poor boy.”
Ozpin then dried his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve. “I wish,” he began, but he didn’t say what he wished. “It’s too late now.”
“What’s the matter?” asked the Ghost.
“Nothing. It’s just, there were two young Faunus at my store front this afternoon singing a Christmas carol. I should’ve given them something. That’s all.”
“Let us see another Christmas in this place,” said the Spirit, waving her stake of holly.
The years went by in an instant and Ozpin’s former self became much older along with the room. Though the room grew darker, weaker, and dirtier, the boy had grown into a fine young man with a presentable bearing. But, he was still alone and pacing the classroom despairingly. Before she could arrive, Ozpin looked at the door and in ran a young girl with long, white hair tied into a pony tail and wearing a long, glittering dress with a color gradation from dark blue at the shoulder to light blue at the hem. She bore a scar over her left eye. Upon seeing the former Ozpin, she smiled.
“Dear brother!” she said, running up to him and embracing him. “I have come to bring you home!”
“Home, Fan?” replied the young man.
“Yes,” said the girl full of glee. “Home, forever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be. Home is like Heaven, now. He spoke so gently to me the other night that I wasn’t afraid to ask him again if you could come home. And he said yes. He sent me in a coach to bring you. And after that, you’ll never have to come back here. Never ever! We’re going to be together all Christmas long! Come on!” she said, pulling her brother from the room.
“Always a delicate creature,” commented the Ghost. “Whom a breath might have withered. But she had a large heart.”
“So she did,” replied Ozpin. “I will not gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid.”
“She died a woman and had children.”
“One child!” corrected Ozpin.
“True. Your nephew, Qrow.”
Ozpin seemed uneasy for a moment. “Yes.”
“Come,” said the Ghost. “There is still much to see.” The Ghost led Ozpin out of the schoolhouse and into the street which had now become the thoroughfares of a city. Within moments, the Ghost and Ozpin found themselves in front of a warehouse door. “Do you recognize this place?” asked the Spirit.
“Recognize it? I was an apprentice here.”
They went in and saw a tall thin man with messy, green hair sitting behind a high desk. His clothes were mildly disheveled, his glasses so thick they obscured his eyes, and he kept sipping on a cup of coffee while writing in a ledger so quickly his hand blurred across the page.
“Why, it’s old Dr. Oozziwig!” exclaimed Ozpin. “Bless his heart. It’s Oozziwig alive again.”
Oozziwig laid down his pen and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He sipped from his coffee mug, sipped from a coffee mug hidden under the desk, and then slurped from a thermos on the floor. Then he spoke in a quick, staccato tone. “Yo ho, gentlemen!” he called into the other room. “Mr. Ozpin! Mr. Wilkins!"
From a side room stepped two, strapping young men. One was Ozpin’s former self now with shaggy blonde hair, a white breastplate, and a black hoodie, while the other had well trimmed blue hair, a red hoodie over a shirt and tie, and he wore orange goggles on his forehead.
“Neptune Wilkins, to be sure!” said Ozpin. “There he is. Looking smoother than a fresh drawn skippy. He was very attached to me, he was.”
“I find it more amazing that your hair went from white to blonde as you grew older,” replied the Spirit. “And why the armor?”
“Oozziwig’s business was renting and leasing huntsmen. We mostly worked the books, but we had to slay our fair share of the Grimm, too.”
“Yo ho, gentlemen!” said Oozziwig, zipping down from his desk. “No more work tonight. It’s Christmas Eve. Yes, yes. It’s Christmas. The jolliest feast of the year. Why, I could go into the history about why this night is so special, but having been born in this country, you gentlemen are already well aware of it. So, get the shutters on the windows, clear away the brick-or-brack, and prepare for the arrival of our guests. There will be another time for the lecture.”
Ozpin was amazed at how quickly his former self and Neptune moved. They charged into the street with the shutters and had them up before one could say King Taijitu. Then they went into the warehouse and cleared away all the crates of weapons, armor, and Dust that littered the floor. They swept and watered, trimmed the lamps, and heaped fuel into the fire. The warehouse was snug, warm, dry, and had become the cheeriest ballroom in all of Vale.
Then a group of men wearing red ties and glasses soldiered in, carrying great big pieces of audio equipment and a turn table. One placed a large, novelty bear’s head upon his shoulders and began spinning records.
In short order then followed all the young men and women, huntsmen and huntresses, old men and older women, and even one balding old man wearing an apron. He couldn’t speak well, but he was very emphatic with his approval of the ballroom. “Yoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” he cheered.
It didn’t take long for dancing to begin as twenty couples at once hit the floor with hands half around and back again the other way, down the middle and up again, round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping. There was even an old couple always turning up in the wrong place.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of cold roast, and there was a great piece of cold boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of Strawberry Sunrises.
Ozpin smiled with glee to watch the party.
“Tis a small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make these silly folks so happy.”
“Small?” echoed Ozpin.
“Why? Is it not? Oozziwig has spent but a few lien of your mortal money: three or four hundred perhaps. Is that so that so deserving of praise?'
“It isn't about the money,” said Ozpin, heated by the remark and speaking unconsciously like his younger self. “He had the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our work light or small; a pleasure or a punishment. His power was so remarkable, it was found in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them. The happiness he gave us was no small fortune.”
The Spirit grunted. “You look very happy,” said the Spirit, indicating his younger self across the room.
“I was.”
“How come you didn’t join in?”
“Because I couldn’t dance.”
“Ah, but wasn’t there a Christmas where one could make you?”
Ozpin looked up at the front door where in stepped a beautiful young woman with long red hair, wearing a bronze circlet on her head and a long, backless, scarlet gown.
“Pyrrha…” breathed Ozpin.
At the young woman’s entrance, she garnered looks from dozens of admirers, but no one approached her. The only one who didn’t flee from her was Ozpin’s former self, and with a little bit of coaxing, she was able to lure him out into the open and dance with him.
“And what was so remarkable about her?” asked the Ghost. “She was beautiful, true, but how fleeting beauty is.”
“She was the greatest huntress of her generation. She was talented beyond them all. She was loved and admired by all, but she was utterly lonely. When I met her, I didn’t even know her name, thus I treated her like anyone else. She was taken with my honesty.”
“There was another Christmas that involved this young lady, I think.”
“Oh no,” said Ozpin, turning to the Ghost. “Please. No!”
The Ghost waved her bough of holly.
Ozpin and the Ghost were transported to a scene that was merely a year later. Ozpin saw himself, a man in his prime, sitting behind a desk. He didn’t have the harsh rigid lines of age, but he had begun to show the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in his eye that betrayed a dark passion that had taken place.
Ozpin was not alone as near him sat Pyrrha in a mourning dress. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “It matters little,” she said. “To you, very little. Another idol has replaced me. And if it can cheer and comfort you, as I would have, I have no reason to grieve.”
“What idol has replaced you?” rejoined Ozpin’s former self.
“A plastic one,” she said in reference to a stack of lien.
“This is the even-handed dealing of the world. There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty, and yet there is nothing it condemns so severely as the pursuit of wealth.”
“You fear the world too much,” she answered gently. “All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen all your nobler aspirations die off one by one until the master passion greed has engrossed you.”
“What of it?” he retorted. “I have grown wiser. And I have not become changed toward you, have I?”
“Our proposal is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our fortune by our industry. You are changed. When you proposed, you were another man.”
“I was a boy,” he said sternly.
“Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,” she returned. “I am still what I was, that which promised happiness when we were one in heart is now fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and keenly I have thought this, I cannot say, but it is damaging enough that I have thought it, and because of it, I can release you.”
“Have I ever sought release?”
“In words, no. But in a changed nature, in an altered spirit, in another atmosphere of life, another hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any value to you. If you met me today, you would not love me.
“I would gladly think otherwise if I could. Gods know I would. When I have learned a truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free today, I can’t even believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who weigh everything by gain. And so, with a full heart, full of the love for him you once were, I can release you,” she said, turning her head from him.
He was about to speak, but with her head turned from him, she resumed.
“You may have some pain in this. For a very, very brief time, but you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream from which you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen.” She then left.
“Spirit,” said Ozpin, like a man beaten. “Show me no more. Why do you delight in torturing me?”
“I told you, these are shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “They are what they are, do not blame me.”
“Remove me! I cannot bear it.”
The Ghost waved her bough of holly and purple light struck Ozpin. He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness and finding himself in his own bedroom. He barely had time to reel to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep.
 ***
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