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He is intimately familiar with the feeling of fighting a losing battle.
In his prime, he would have reduced this girl to a bloody smear on the floor in a matter of minutes, and then charged out to spend the rest of his surging energy smiting every last Grimm that dared threaten his students.
But Ozpin is millennia past his prime, and his power has long since been torn into shreds to give away to others, and what remained left to weaken with age and incompletion. So here he is, stuck beneath the earth, feeling his strength beginning to fail him far too quickly.
On the other hand, the girl – Cinder Fall, of Mistral, of Haven, how did she get past Leo?! – seems to be just getting started. Sweat runs down her forehead, and the sound of her heavy breathing comes in time with his own, but she shows no signs of tiring like he is. Her eyes are alight with malice and bloodlust, like a hunting predator, and she bares her teeth like one, too. Sensing weakness and the end, her lips spread into a hungry grin.
“All your fame, all your power, all your pretense, and this is the best you can do. I don’t like to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I was expecting bigger and better from the man who drives my master to distraction. You really are just a sham, aren’t you?”
Ozpin can’t quite stand straight anymore, leaning hard on his cane, but he can still glare icy fury at her.
“Do you know?” His voice rattles from his mouth, while blood trickles from its corners. “Do you know what she plans to do to you? To the world?”
To that, Cinder just laughs. Fire envelops her hands again, and runs across the vault floor towards him in four serpentine surges, hot enough to melt trails into the metal. The shimmer in her eyes as she dives into the air and races with it to finish him off is one he recognizes. The girl is high on her own newly complete power, allowing herself to be moved by the magic coursing so fiercely through her veins. Thought is not something she needs right now, only this raw strength.
Ozpin does not allow himself to be bowled over, of course he doesn’t. He shifts his cane to a defensive stance, tries to bring forth another rippling shield. But it’s broken almost the second he casts it, and his hands are seared as Cinder’s body slams into his again. They grapple like lions for another few moments, trying to get at each other’s heads, throats, eyes, but only managing to clash cane against sword again and again…until one ferocious, molten swing sends his cane flying from his hands.
It lands with a sharp clatter over thirty feet away from them, and, heart jumping, he reflexively jerks towards it, reaching out –
Cinder body-checks him, with one flare at her feet to propel her lunge forward and another to arc forward and burn him from chest to face. He’s blinded for a second, and he hears himself cry out in pain before the back of his head cracks against the floor and cuts his voice off.
Once again, it’s over for him before he’s actually killed. He hears a thin rush through the air a split second before he’s impaled in every limb, through his kneecaps and elbows, by spikes of superheated black glass. His flesh and blood sizzle, and a scream is ripped from his throat. Before he can try to move again, there’s a click of glass on metal, and then the breath is forced from him with a hard stomp to the chest. His glasses were knocked askew when he hit the floor, so he looks up to see Cinder leering down at him in a dizzying blur.
“She told me that you would be afraid.” He can’t tell whether the girl sounds more satisfied or fascinated. “If I did it like this.”
His body is different but his soul still remembers: lying sprawled on the ruined earth covered in dirt, ash, and his own blood; home and family in ruins around him; his ribs cracked under Salem’s heel. Even in the haze of pain he’d been in then – also not so different from the one he was in now – some part of him had been startled to see no pain or hurt at all in his partner’s eyes. Only loathing, contempt, and rage.
We finally had freedom.
Even if this girl hadn’t been flinging fire around for their entire battle, he would have known exactly how she plans to finish him.
Cinder can see the shadow of fear pass over his face, and she laughs at it. “I never thought very highly of you, but I didn’t know you were a coward. Could I convince you to tell me where the Relic is, in exchange for a painless death? I doubt you’ve had very many of those.”
He narrows his eyes in disgust. “Do you have any idea why Salem is collecting them? What their true purpose is?”
“The same purpose as mine, Ozpin. We are going to burn this worthless world to ashes,” she says, eyes blazing bright as the sun.
A bitter laugh bubbles up from his throat. Foolish girl, he wants to snarl at her, foolish, egotistical girl, there’s no we when it comes to Salem, she’ll use you up and throw you away, there’s no new world waiting for you even if you survive…
But he knows it would be a waste of last breaths. For as long as Salem has brought her forces to bear against him, he’s never been able to decide which was worse: the ones that were clearly misled about her true intentions, or the ones that are perfectly aware and perfectly happy to follow her to oblivion with the rest of the world, their own lives worth far less to them than vengeance and destruction.
“Find the Relic yourself,” he spits. “If you can. And when you return aboveground empty-handed…I only hope I’ve taught my children enough to kill you.”
Cinder laughs once more. “I’d say they’ll all be with you soon, but…well. You get to keep going no matter how many of them die for you, don’t you?”
A final shot of fire is building up in her hand. A piece of his own inborn magic – a piece of his daughter’s soul – stolen by this monster and twisted into a murder weapon. Just one of endless things he will never forgive Salem for.
“Do us all a favor and just stay dead this time, won’t you? Everyone would be better off.”
Oh, how he would if he could.
Spent and shattered, Ozpin has nothing more to say to this girl. He knows when his time is up. He tries to close his eyes and simply wait for the end to come; Cinder has a more important job to do and she’ll want to make this quick if not painless. But it does him no good. The few moments it takes for the massive stream of fire to engulf and incinerate his body feel like an eternity, and his dying screams are lost in the roar of the flames.