Cassiel POV
"-ONE FUCKING JOB!!!" I spent a minute catching my breath as the woman looked at me unamused.
"Are you done?" She asked.
"You okay?" Neo looked at me, somewhat concerned.
"I-... I think so." I answered. "Okay... I'm alright."
"Great! This is just great!" Yang struggled pulling her bike out of the snow. "We're stranded, we lost a third of our party, and we've gained a defenseless old lady!" She fell backward as she finished pulling out her bike.
"My name is Maria Calavera! And I am not defenseless! I'm just a little hard of hearing, and blind without my eyes... That are in desperate need of repair... Okay, I'm starting to see your point." The lady tried to refute what Yang said.
"Yang, knock it off will ya'? If we lose our cool now, we'll just be inviting more Grimm." Qrow tried to reason with her.
"Does that even matter? Apparently we've been attracting Grimm since we left Haven!" Blake pointed out.
"Oh, and how could I forget about that? What happened to 'no more lies and half-truths'?" Yang asked Ozpin.
"You really shouldn't expect less from him, Yang." I joined in. "He tried to keep the Maidens and Relics from me, he kept Salem, the Relics, the attack on Beacon from Pyrrha, and he's kept the real reason behind the schools from the world for almost a century. Asking him to be 100% honest is about as likely to happen as a certain Bitch is to tell the truth when it would actually benefit her more than lying."
"We deserve an explanation, Oz." Oscar agreed, letting Ozpin take over.
"I didn't lie to you." Ozpin denied.
"Sometimes, half-truths are worse than lies, especially when the pieces left out are as important as this! Even moreso after I had to find out the hard way that I can't tame Grimm with that Relic nearby!"
"Please? Now is not the time."
"No! We're past that! I wanna know why you're still not telling us everything??!!" Yang demanded.
"It is true that the Grimm are attracted to the Relics, it's faint, but undeniable. Maybe it has to do with their origin, I'm not entirely sure. Regardless, I feared that making you all aware would only add anxiety and negativity. It seemed like the safer option." He tried to justify his reasons behing it.
"You do realize one of the people you're saying this to uses literal Darkness and was a Grimm magnet during the entrance exam, right? Before you brought up the Relic, I thought I might have been attracting Grimm." I said to him.
"That might have been true a while ago, but not anymore."
"You know, I'm getting real tired of other people choosing what's best for me." Weiss said, making no attempt to hide her annoyance.
"Is that why you chose to lie to everyone about Lionheart too?" Yang asked. I still don't like that he shares the same name as my weapon.
"Yes, as a matter of fact!" Ozpin turned around and started walking away. "I believed the people of Mistral deserved better than the truth. And I believed Leonardo deserved to be remembered for his lifetime of service, not the unfortunate missteps he took in his final years."
"'Missteps'??!!" Yang questioned his choice of words.
"What professor Lionheart did was reprehensible, I'm not here to argue differently. But his one lapse in judgement shouldn't negate all of his good! Do we not all have regrets?" He tried to justify himself again.
"'Lapse in judgement'?" I asked in disbelief. "He sacrificed most, if not every Huntsman and Huntress in Anima just to save his on hide! On top of that, he tried to give the Maiden and Relic to Salem, and even was going to let the other White Fang make the Fall happen to Haven!" I moved in front of him. "How many people have lost friends, protectors, and loved ones? How many people was he willing to sacrifice just to save himself??!! 'Coward' and 'traitor' can't even begin to describe him!"
"We're supposed to be in this together! You can trust us! We're not gonna turn our backs on you!" Yang said.
"Do you really think Leo was the first??!!" Ozpin asked before stopping and turning to face us. "That he didn't say those exact same words to me?? I'm sorry, but you have to understand my behaviors are backed by experience. I'm not saying I have reason to think you'll betray me. I'm saying that I have reasons for the things I do, the secrets I keep! The reason I..." He looked around, scared. "Where's the Relic?"
"Right here." Ruby pulled it from under her cloak. "It got scattered in the crash."
"Please, hand it over." He held out his hand. Ruby looked away.
"So all those times you talked about having faith in humanity, that was just for everyone else?" Ruby asked.
"That's not what I meant to suggest. Miss Rose, the Relic is a powerful item and I simply feel it is my burden to bear." He responded. I opened up the SR and pointed Exile at it.
"I thought you said it could only answer three questions every hundred years. That's means it's supposed to be useless right now, nothing more than a decoration. I can throw it through this portal and no one but me will be able to access it, much less use for- assuming it was last used when the schools were founded, about another 20 years, or I can see if the keyblade can unlock it's power. Unless Salem or Grimm can use the Dark Corridors and enter the Shadow Realm, no one will be able to access, much less sense it's presence." He tried to respond, but Blake spoke up.
"Why does it matter who carries it?" She asked.
"I need you to listen to me-" He stopped, Oscar was trying to take back control.
"Hurry! He's trying... To... Stop you!" He struggled.
"Stop her from what?" Yang asked.
"He's afraid... You'll... Find out... What he's... Hiding!" Oscar collapsed. "Her name... Is Jinn... Say her name... To summon her!" He continued, though he sounds like he's about to lose.
"Her name?" Ruby asked. Everyone looked at each other as she looked down at the Relic. "Jinn." She called out. Time stopped around us, snow was no longer falling, I summoned Nightfall as everyone looked around, confused by what was happening. The Relic glowed and floated out of Ruby's hands, moving a short distance away as a light blue mist poured out of it. After a few seconds, the mist formed a humanoid body. A light blue skinned woman, wrapped in golden chains stretched herself out.
"Wonderful!" She leaned towards us. "Tell me, what knowledge do you seek?" She asked. "I am Jinn, a being created by the God of Light to aid humanity in it's pursuit of knowledge. I've been graced with the ability to answer three questions every one hundred years. You're in luck, as I'm still able to answer-"
"That's enough!" Ozpin interrupted.
"Two questions this era." Djinn continued. "Heh, it's a pleasure to see you again, old man." She greeted.
"Ruby, please... Don't." Did he just beg?
"Hey-" Qrow took a step forward and almost everyone pointed their weapons at him. "Do whatever you think is right, kiddo." He said to Ruby as he held up his hands.
"Before we get to that,-" Djinn floated towards me. "I know all there is to currently know about Remnant and it's people, but I don't know the future, and I don't know about you. Rather, I know nothing that others don't already know about you... You claim to be from another world, you possess magic, a lost art on Remnant, you can tame Grimm, and you possess powerful, living weapons... You are an anomaly."
"If you're going to ask me questions you want answers to, it's only fair you answer more of our questions." She raised a brow in amusement.
"My Creator's restrictions are absolute, but He did say I can only answer Remnant's questions three times every century. I think you specifically are the luckiest here as you're not from Remnant." She emphasized.
"It's times like this that I love loop holes! We are going to get along just fine!" I desummoned my keyblades.
"Cassiel, what's going on? What does she mean by 'you're not from Remnant'?" Yang asked.
"I come from the planet Earth, possibly another solar system, maybe even another dimension. That world had no magic, no Grimm, no Dust, and God's exist solely on faith alone. Or at least, that last part I believed true until I met the supposed creator of everything in existence because I accidentally passed a test which basically required I do nothing on the day the world was supposed to end according to an ancient civilization. I died thanks to a stray bullet bouncing off a wall and hitting my head. As my reward for doing nothing wrong that day, I demanded to be sent somewhere without humans, my mask, weapons that would best suit me, and to never see one of His humans again or I would kill them on sight. I'm pretty sure I've explained this to at least one of you." I answered.
"You-... You were serious about that?" Blake asked, her voice cracked as she asked. I turned towards her and the others.
"I was. You've been talking to a guy who's supposed to be dead right now and in an unmarked grave that no one visits at best. Rather, if I failed that test or if I chose to stay, He would've basically wiped everyone's memories and rewrote that day so the 'end of the world' was literally nothing more than a calendar no longer having a purpose and I would still be living in an abusive household that could only be worse if my 'guardians' drugged me or sexually abused me." No one was sure how to react. Their guard stayed up even as I turned towards Jinn. "Just to clarify, if you answer all three questions, can you just not be summoned for a hundred years, or can you just not answer anyone for that time?" I asked her, taking advantage of mine not counting.
"I won't be able to be summoned again for a century." She answered. I looked back towards Ozpin, who was less than happy about the situation.
"Good to know. Before I let Ruby ask what we all want to know, I would like to know how to make Light and Dark Dust." She looked at me surprised, but also looked like she wanted to answer that.
"I was wondering when someone would ask a question like that. Normally, one would need to combine unrefined Dust with the powers of the Pools of Creation and Destruction to make those kinds of Dust in their purest forms. Otherwise, you would need to quickly use the essence of a sufficiently powerful Grimm such as the Dragon at Beacon, or the eyes of someone like your friend there." She answered, pointing at Ruby, angering everyone.
"I'm not stealing her eyes just so I can kill things easier!!!" I shouted.
"I wasn't finished. You can use Light and Dark, yes? I'm sure you can figure something out, especially after what a certain someone gave to you at Haven." She continued.
"I don't even know what she gave me besides a few messages that I haven't found a good time to give." I told her.
"Look in a mirror." She told me before looking at Ruby. "Your question?" Ruby hesitated for a moment.
"Jinn? What is Ozpin hiding from us?" She asked.
"NOOOOOO!!!" Ozpin shouted before he rushed at her as fast as he could. My first reaction was to draw Lionheart and intercept him, but everyone disappeared before I could stop him, the world was replaced with a white void. I stowed Lionheart and was just seconds away from panicking.
"Ruby???" I began calling out names. "Weiss??? Blake??? Yang??? Neo??? Qrow??? Oscar??? Anyone???" The world change, the white void was replaced with a walkway leading to a castle and grassy fields to the sides, weapons were everywhere, indicating this was a battlefield.
"Once upon a time, there stood a lonely tower-" The blue mist rushed past me. "that sheltered a lonely girl-" The mist quickly formed a woman with blonde hair, reaching her hips, sitting in front of a mirror. "named, Salem..."
She looks depressed, that's all I have to say right now.