Episode 12 is stupid. I had to write this in response.
A Better Tomorrow
He watched.
Through the weeks and the months, he watched, for someone such as him was not supposed to be here. For the people he thought he knew, that he could trust...were just a tad too different, a little bit not what he was expecting.
Somewhere along the way, something massive had diverged from what he was familiar with, and even if he wasn't as he was now, and they were what they were now, it would have still been all kinds of awkward.
So he waited. And he watched. Ozpin let him, for the old man was quite intrigued, and something about him, some inner spark that remained even all these years, made him seem trustworthy.
That, or Ozpin was made and had another scheme in place, either or.
Some things burned at him, frustrating and disappointing, and making him itch to act. Seeing him was a surprise. Seeing him be so pathetic, made him...feel almost indebted to the bastard, if that was what he would have turned out. A bit of a liar, and outright sad.
And he couldn't even send him a backhanded compliment in appreciation. What a pity.
He still made the text though, sent to an address that did not exist.
Red was there, and though at first she seemed the same as he remembered, there was a spark of difference. Some essence of soul that his senses could notice but not define. It made him wary, and he stayed away from what could be a friend.
Besides, as he was now, she'd probably think him a creepy stranger.
There was his sister-in-law, and she was a far colder thing than he expected. As it turned out, she wasn't his sister-in-law, not here anyways. That would explain things.
Black was there, and she was a damaged one, scarred by experiences. Ah, he hadn't been around to help, hadn't he? Poor thing.
Yellow was also there, and still as violent and boisterous as ever. My bike is still better, a world away or no.
And on it went. Though it seemed some things didn't change, considering her interest in him.
The fact that he was so focused on not-sister-in-law however was...
...no. Calm down. Being found out for murder of a juvenile was not a great way to be known.
And so it went.
No. No. Can you not notice her truth, you fool?!
And why are you being browbeaten by this...hooligan? Hit him! Hit him back! That's how men solve such problems!
...I will have to apologize to Ozpin for breaking a wall with my head. I should have gone for the forest, instead.
At least he manned up in the head, through really, I was killing such things as a child.
Wait, hmm...there's an idea.
Ozpin refused my suggestion of leaving him to the forest for a few months.
Come on, it may seem like indirect murder at first, but give it a few weeks and...okay, still no.
Pity.
Time passed, and things changed, divergent fully now, from what I remembered.
More people, and unfamiliar or distant faces that I cared little for. I watched them, and I cared little for them.
There was the criminal father, a man I called sort-of-friend in a different time and world. A point of similarity, and yet not. He wasn't rusty, he was just weak.
Disappointing.
And then there was the Iron Maiden who was not, a tin woman with no sisters. The first of her kind, rather than merely the latest, and there was no dashing rogue to shower her with love.
Another divergence, a massive one full of sorrow. What a world this is. How sad, when the monsters were so weak.
...
Seasons pass, and I watch things come to a head.
Some acts still happen, if atypical because of the different actors. Goodwitch continues to be eternally frustrated, and I am not sure whether amused or proud that she treats me as someone to confide said frustrations in, even if it's in the form of a one-sided rant on her side.
Or perhaps she just thinks of me as an unthinking suit of armor? She does seem to putter off whenever my helmet is off.
That bears thinking.
The tin man almost notices me. Ignore the suit of white armor, please. It's just a suit. Don't try to the study the clearly far more advanced metallurgy and powered armor that you don't have.
Ozpin, you ass, stop talking about me and pretend I'm a worthless husk!
And so there is a foe, in the end.
A breach, as before. Should I, or should I not? The waves that I see are just so...small. Do I need to?
I could. So easily, I could. And I should, as I have done so many times before, a hero come to the rescue. But something holds me back, as if to step into the light...is to break something delicate and important.
A strange feeling. This place is making me weird.
Ah, Goodwitch has it covered, and so does the fashionista.
I step back into place and let them continue.
...
I see the tyrant's remnant, but it is no shattered husk of a city of the sky.
Just...an overly extravagant attempt at seriously, you're running out of Dust and you waste it on a giant floating stadium come on!
I see children, and they are indeed children in mind and temperament, fight. And it is as frustrating as it sounds.
You, boy, the world is mostly covered in water, how can you possibly have such a crippling-you know what fuck it. I'm out.
Well. That was...strange.
Yellow is a violent brute, but to be frank, that is not something she would do.
Something is up.
The world is on fire and it's not my fault. I wish the fox was here.
Let's see, Grimm are everywhere, people are panicking, and the terrorists have gone full sunday morning cartoon villainy. Oh, and Ozpin told me to stay here while he sends Glynda and the blackbird out. Annoying. What can possibly be worse than this?
I miss the Deathwings.
...in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have said that. The world appears to have taken my statement as a challenge.
Because, you know, giant dragon.
...on further analysis, it's just a wyvern. The fact that it drips lesser Grimm is new, though.
Can I go out and kill things now?
...what do you meanyou need me here? And why are you getting Pyrrha? Okay, some desperate plan with something involving maidenhood and do you know how creepy this sounds right now?!
But whatever, sure, follow you guys at a short distance back, protect you until the...operation is done. Okay. Sure. Shouldn't be too hard.
Then I'm slaying a dragon.
Hahaha, I am apparently lost.
This is not funny. Goddammit Ozpin, why didn't you tell me about your extensive secret underground network sooner?! I'm not familiar with this place!
Aaand there goes that scream of pain and horror and a burst of energy that is definitely not Aura.
Oops?
I am still lost and this has lost all sense of novelty. I can feel the dragon above, waiting to be slain. And possibly whoever's causing all those explosions that do not feel of Aura Sorcery.
Fuck you, Ozpin, and your stupid underground maze.
.../
There is no point to it, so I break the earth.
Stone and concrete and earth buckle as I erupt from the ground, torn apart by sword and spirit.
The courtyard is empty. Empty of life and soul.
But not the tower.
Two lives, two souls, burn fiercely in mortal combat.
I see the dragon, but I feel them.
I feel her.
BREAK THE BARRIER OF MIND
Oh no. No. What foolishness.
AWAKEN TRUE, KNIGHT OF HONOR
I turn my back on the dragon destroying an empty city. There are things of far greater import now.
Every step makes everything, and more, return.
Something has changed, and a dam has been broken.
Memories come back, or at least, color is returned to memories. Times with friends, times with foes. Peace and conflict both, and my body thrums with sensation.
Everything pent up returns in a flood. What had been dull disinterest becomes worry. What had been annoyance becomes gut-wrenching frustration. What had been minor affection becomes a bond forged through fire that lasts through time. What had been faint nostalgia becomes sorrow and despair at being torn away from everything I have known and loved. So many emotions, a mountain of it, dropped upon a starving man.
Emotions, and knowledge. Knowledge that is not mine.
"There is no victory in strength."
"The maidens...their power goes...to the last woman they think of..."
"A power beyond imagining..."
"The queen has pawns."
I could drownin them.
What have I done? Why did I not act? What madness made me wait for so long, be naught but a still watcher for so much, when I could have helped?!
I have been dulled.
Made as like a statue, with a heart of coal and flesh of stone. How could I have not noticed it, when flesh that should have pumped blood and functioned did not. When I was, for all intents and purposes, an unfeeling thing of ignorance, who took no sustenance, yet persisted. Who thought, yet did not feel, and spread such numbness to others. What else explained how easily I was forgotten, how little Ozpin and Glynda considered my existence?
Rage burns, and tears flow. People have died, so very many people, when I know I could have stopped it all. Power to slay armies, and it was not lifted up in the defense of nations, in the upholding of justice, in the unleashment of righteous wrath.
There will be judgment, by the end of this.
A walk becomes a run, and I scale the tower in a dead sprint.
Separated by a world and time or no, it doesn't matter now that my heart beats true, now that my mind is clear.
The woman I love is in danger. What man would not run to her and fight at her side?
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The arrow flies. This close, with Cinder's foe crippled, her Aura gone, it could not have possibly missed. Pyrrha would die.
Except she didn't.
The ground broke apart, a golden blade erupting forth and cleaving up.
The air blurred around it, and the arrow shattered, not even the powers of a Maiden could make it reform, something of a peer destroyed it completely, reduced it to nothing and less than nothing.
A knight crawled forth.
Armor in silver so pale it was almost white, veined in bloodred. A mantle of velvety amethyst, flickering with pink petals. From his visored helmet, a tassel of prismatic energy shimmered and crackled.
In one hand, a shield. In the other, a sword. Both in hues of starry gold.
"No. No victory for you, you foulsome bitch." The knight snarled, his modulated voice rife with ominous static.
A dozen arrows fired in an instant as Cinder did not hesitate in unleashing violence upon the newcomer.
His sword flickered, a radiant length so quick it was in a dozen places at once. For an second, her eyes were tricked into seeing twelve blades smashing apart her arrows.
Fire came next, roaring and searing, looping like aerial snakes as they struck at unexpected quarters.
The knight merely stood there, unmoved, unaffected, even as heat as to melt titanium shrouded him.
"Bah." He spat as he walked towards her. "Colder than the fox. I've seen greater, suffered from greater. Your fire is weak. I expected more from you." His armor opened up at the hip, a gun the length of the arm sliding out, pulled out by his shield arm and aimed at her.
For a fraction of a second, there was a giant superimposed over him, a transparent image visibly only the flames that licked ineffectively over its form. A giant with a cannon for an arm.
The gun boomed like the roar of a cannon, and Cinder gasped as the projectile smashed through a Maiden's shield and shattered against her chest, breaking ribs and pulping flesh. She staggered back, and the flames faded.
His armor wasn't even warped. Not even soot stained it.
"P-Pyrrha?!" A voice shouted. The helm turned. Ruby Rose, staring in shock and amazement.
He holstered his gun in one smooth motion and grasped the stunned redhead. He threw her into the youth's arms and shouted, "Run! Flee! Take her to safety! This foe is beyond you!"
Then he blurred, rapid movement so unbelievable that it was a snapshot in motion. One image in his original position, the next, already at their side, shield raised up, blocking the needle-thin spines of crystal that would have pierced them.
"But not to me." He declared. "Go, Ruby. Her aura's gone. Save her."
Something in his voice convinced her, and the young Rose left, running back down the tower.
Leaving the knight and the Maiden to themselves.
"Who are you?" Cinder whispered. Blades formed in her grasp, their edges lined with volcanic heat.
The knight chuckled. It was a sad, hollow thing. "A man torn away from his home, but not from friends, and not from duty. You have proven yourself evil beyond any hope for redemption or consideration. I will kill you."
"Evil?" She arched one delicate eyebrow as she paced around him, circling the still warrior. "What you believe may-"
"Cease your fucking bullshit." The knight interrupted with a forceful snarl. "You've killed without remorse and brought heavens be damned grimmto an innocent city. You are evil and you will die today. Bah, and to think that in a different time, we dated." He sighed at the end.
For a moment, the Fall Maiden ceased, her mind jarring to a halt at his revelation.
...dated? They had dated? Her mind tried to remember, to collate past colleagues, but there was no one she recalled that-
The gun roared once more, and she threw herself out of the way of the unblockable projectile. She abandoned the line of thought. It was probably just a distraction.
And so they fought.
Her blades flashed, crescents of sunfire and obsidian, heated to volcanic levels even if the edges weren't sharp enough to slice steel. She struck in bursts, in a flurry of blows that fell like rain, a monsoon of slashes and thrusts that would have left the knight as smoldering gore if they had connected.
If they had connected.
The knight was solid, immovable, and untouchable. Wherever her blades were, his shield and sword were there, blocking with perfect precision, with absurd timing. One moment, positioned to parry a blade that would cleave his hips, the next, snapshot-shifted to turn away a decapitating crescent, with no progression in-between. His weapons were just there.
She was faster. She knew this. She was faster and yet somehow she wasn't, could not strike faster than he could block or parry. It was a paradox that made her battle instinctsscream.
Something was wrong. Something about him did not make any lick of sense.
Fire shrouded her, ice struck at him, the ground turned to magma and the wind buffeted him. None worked. He endured, or merely did not care, or blocked and parried ever more attacks with seemingly no regard for the sheer mass of what he was overcoming and disregarding.
He was a juggernaut. Terrifyingly unstoppable.
"Pyrrha's great, you know." He said suddenly, his voice no longer rife with static, but she grit her teeth and ignored it. A blast of fire that could core a mountain engulfed him, and hestood there with his weapons unguarded. "Absolutely greaaat. Wonderful, winning personality. Kind and compassionate, yet filled with strength and willing to use it if need be. Some might say that she's only like that because she's sad and wants to put her best foot forward, but fuck 'em. They don't know her like I do. She's a saint that Sarah respects. Honey isn't some bitch in sheep's clothing."
As the ground he was on started to sag and break, he moved, appearing in front of her, his head leaning forward until his helm was an inch from her face. "Unlike you." He whispered hoarsely.
She split away from him, her spine shuddering as she flinched from a blow that never came.
"But enough about you!" He chirped cheerfully. "Let's talk more about Pyrrha. Did you know she moves a lot around in bed? Well, a lot unless she gets someone warm to hold on to, but then she clamps on like a limpet and she's just so adorable in the morning that you can't wake her up even if your arms are so tightly pinned they feel like needles are being stabbed into them. Just so cute. I'd pull out pictures if I didn't know you wouldn't comprehend her cuteness. Plebeian." He growled at the end.
He paused, tilted his head, and snapped his fingers as if arriving at an ingenious solution. "Or we could talk about her when she's working out. Or fighting. Both are more or less the same, with Pyrrha. But really, her outfits are just great then. Corsets, short skirts and thigh-highs, mm-hmm, I'd shake the hand of whoever got that habit into her if they were a girl. Punch them if they were a guy. But yeah, totally better looks than you, because really, cheongsam is kind of out of fashion these days. Sally says so, and best onee-chan isn't wrong in such matters. Basically, Pyrrha looks perfect. But if you're trying for a traditional look, hehe, well, you just look stale."
All the while as he ranted, he continued to persevere through her attacks, through everything she threw at him, with such a saccharine voice that it made her head throb.
If this was somekind of psychological warfare he was pulling, it was working.
"Are you thinking of Pyrrha yet? You should. She's a wonderful person. Unlike you, you horrible old hag, you." He called out. "Seriously! Trying to pass off as a student, did you know there were a ton of rumors about how many years you must have been held back? Not cool at all for your rep. At least Glynda knows how to pull off the mature type image, if you only know how many bootleg pictures of her are around...wait, no we're getting off track. Back to Pyrrha. Give me a number between three and nine. I know so much about Pyrrha I could fill a book with them. I could talk about her all day, and I'm planning on it, too. Help me pick topics, okay?"
"Shut. UP!" Cinder shouted, her frustration building as the tower collapsed all around them, as she pummeled him with a storm, with magma, with frost, with all her wrath unleashed, and he just prattled on and on and on about Pyrrha this, Pyrrha that. How she was useless compared to Pyrrha, how her housework skills paled compared to Pyrrha, how Pyrrha was better with children and crowds and had such a wonderful singing voice and how Sarah never liked her anyway but she did Pyrrha.
Pyrrha Pyrrha Pyrrha.
She was fed up with him, because it was working. The redhead was stuck in her mind now, meaningless facts rambling in her head, the champion's visage a constant thorn.
She called the dragon to strike as she paused in her attacks and the crazy knight started describing Pyrrha's features in flowery language.
And then the atmosphere changed.
There was no visible shift, but it changed all the same as a weight settled upon her shoulders. He disappeared, and the diving dragon's roars cut off.
She saw the gargantuan Grimm fall apart, saw a thing of soul and wrath splattered in blood, and then found the knight before her.
Blood stained the armor, running in rivulets across the vein-marks, until it looked like a pulsing network of brackish blood across a living suit of armor.
"Are you thinking of Pyrrha yet?" He chirped.
At the word, at the name, she was.
And then her world ended as a blade of starmetal split her in half, drive by force to sunder mountains, with speed to outrun thought.
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Pyrrha gasped as she felt the energy, that foreign presence heavy with the weight of eons and the spirit of the earth, drive into her body.
It came weak though, but not because it was incomplete, but because it had been expended. It was tired, a force of nature with its strength used up. It would recover in time, would eventually infuse her with power beyond imagining, but right now...it was a pitiful thing compared to what it could be.
"Pyrrha!" She heard her name shouted as she limped into view with Ruby.
It was Jaune.
He all but crushed her to his chest, weeping unabashedly as he embraced her tightly. "I thought...oh god...thank god you're alive."
"There was a...knight, in white." Ruby helpfully pointed out. "He was fighting that woman!"
"And I beatthe bitch. Like a drum."
He was just there. The knight, in armor more silver than white, like a hero out of song and myth. His cape fluttered majestically (and flapped right at Ruby's spluttering face), and his armor gleamed and shone with a perfect polish. He even wielded a shield and sword, archaic weapons for the current times, yet they fit so well on one such as him.
Then he pointed an accusing finger at Jaune. "You." He growled.
"M-me?" He stuttered.
"Yes!" He roared. "You! When your hot wife escapes from certain death, you don't just hug her. Kiss her, tell her how much you love her and would have been absolutely hurt if she had died. Better yet, go get a room! You're eighteen, aren't you?!" His voice boomed, enhanced by speakers, and Jaune's face grew red at the attention from the remaining refugees.
"I-bwuh-"
Thankfully, Pyrrha took the choice out of his hands. God, the boy was such a limp noodle.
"Who are you?" Ruby asked as the red-faced couple hobbled away from them.
"A figment." The knight sighed. He raised his hand towards the rising sun, and Ruby gasped as she saw his armor fizzle, particulates breaking apart and drifting away as the rays caught upon them. "A mighty dream to stand against the nightmares in the night, but in the end...just a dream. And morning wipes away all such things."
"W-wait! Don't go!" Ruby pleaded, grabbing his arm, but even that was fading away, cracking apart, disintegrating. His helm burned and his cape turned to ash.
"I will. I have to. Duty has been fulfilled. Evil slain, monsters slaughtered, innocents saved. The rest falls upon you now, for day awaits and I cannot remain in such wakeful times." The knight murmured softly.
"Will we see you again?" Ruby asked. If he appeared in the night, maybe...this goodbye wasn't forever?
His helm melted away, and in the instant before his head was wiped away, she saw his face.
Older, with smile lines and crow's feet, with longer hair and not a few scars. But the eyes were the same, as was that curved grin of a smile, so much more confident and true.
"Take a guess, Crater Face."
And Jaune Arc of another world faded away. A pleasant dream, a herald of a brighter tomorrow.
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Oh Jaune, you troll.