Chapter 1

Warning: If you have not read Eric Nylund's Ghosts of Onyx there is a slight spoiler of the end of the book.

Disclaimer: The RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth and Halo belongs to 343 industries, and Bungie Studios, and Eric Nylund's Ghosts of Onyx. I don't own any of these characters.

3rd person

A garble of alien screeches, squawks, yells, and screams echoed throughout the Forerunner room as hundreds of Elites, Grunts, Jackals, and Hunters teleported into the Core Room antechamber. They raised their weapons in victory upon reclaiming their gods' chambers and seeing the dead bodies of three demons. One was riddled with holes that looked to be from the exploding needles, one laid on the ground with its chest armor half melted off, and the last one was surrounded by what was left of two Hunters. A few officer-class Sangheili bowed their heads slightly in respect towards the latter demon who took on two Hunters at once in unarmed combat. Unknown to the present Covenant army, those demons accomplished their mission in rigging two FENRIS nuclear warheads in the room already counting down in their detonation sequence.

A Fleet Master in golden armor, flanked by two Mgalekgolo, stood proudly at the top of the ramp, staring at a lone figure. A Spartan-II, clad in advanced SPI armor of the Spartan-IIIs, guarded the rapidly shrinking entrance to a Slipspace bubble located in the center of the Shield World codenamed "Onyx." Lieutenant Commander Kurt Ambrose, Spartan-II designation Kurt-051, struggled to rise. Blood seeped through his armor from a major laceration to his stomach as blood slowly slid down his armor onto the metallic floor. Biofoam was the only thing holding his insides in place. His vision tunneled... as he got to his feet... and raised both hands into a fighting stance.

There were hundreds of missing-in-action Spartans with him on the platform— from the Spartan-III's Alpha and Beta Companies, Dante, Holly, and to even some of his own brothers, Will-043 and Sam-034... all ready to fight and win this last battle with him.

Hallucination? Maybe. It was nonetheless welcome. The ghostly Spartans nodded, and gave him the thumbs-up signal.

Kurt wouldn't let them down. All he had to do was single-handedly stop a Covenant army. One last impossible mission... the short definition of any Spartan. It was the least he owed them.

The Fleet Master snarled at Kurt, and the translation filtered through his helmet's speaker: "One last fight, demon. You will die and we shall reopen the silver path."

"Die?" Kurt laughed. "Didn't you know?" he told the Elite. "... Spartans never die." Kurt turned his gauntlet face-up and pressed the detonator.

The last thing he saw was a blinding flash of light, then darkness took him.

A soft breeze traveled through the forest, scattering the blood-red leaves from their parent trees and allowing them to join so many others of their kind on the forest floor. Birds chirped and sang their trilly songs, little furred mammals scampered from tree to tree, and Rapier Wasps buzzed around their nests.

The serene picture was disrupted by the sound of over a dozen footfalls echoing throughout the environment. Upon hearing this, some of the more skittish critters fled the area as fast as they could, not wanting to risk being in the same location as a potential predator.

The footsteps grew closer, finally revealing themselves to belong to a group of aspiring Huntsmen and Huntresses, clad in combat gear and looking around in wonder like the children they were. Among them was a young red reaper, looking about herself in awe.

The leader of the group, a blonde middle-aged woman, addressed the teens.

"Yes students, the Forest of Forever Fall is indeed beautiful. But we are not here to sightsee. Professor Peach asked all of you to collect samples from the trees deep inside this forest. And I'm here to make sure that none of you die while doing so.

"However, this forest is filled with the creatures of Grimm, so be sure to stay with your teammates. We will rendezvous back here at four o'clock," her bright green eyes narrowed behind her glasses.

"Be sure not to tarry."

1hour later...

"Phew! Well, we finally filled up all twelve jars," Weiss tiredly stated after placing down their final jar. "Good job team! We completed our assignment, but I'm wondering why there have been so few Grimm in the area." Ruby said, twirling her scythe in her fingers as it folded in on itself and closed as she quickly stored it away on her lower back. Yang strolled over to the cat faunus who was lying beneath a tree. "Man, I wanted to fight a few Beowulf's or an Ursa; I'm itching for a fight. Hey Blake, you want to spar when we get back?" Blake peeked up from the book she was reading. "Sure, need to get some practice in anyways." The four girls grabbed three jars each of them and started walking towards Beacon.

A loud explosion rocked the forest, followed by a powerful shock wave swept them off their feet. They all jumped up to their feet in a fighting stance with their weapons drawn, aimed towards the source of the unexpected explosion.

"What the hell was that?" Yang yelled.

"I don't know but we should go check it out, someone could have gotten hurt." Ruby said, ready to launch herself with Crescent Rose.

"What about our assignment?" Weiss angrily asked, "Whoever is out there can probably handle themselves if they're in these parts of the woods." Blake sniffed the air then looked at Weiss and said, "It's better to know what's happening than to ignore something of this magnitude plus I smell an unfamiliar scent and human blood." Ruby glowed a steady red and shot her rifle, launching herself into the air with blinding speed, leaving rose petals behind her.

Somewhere nearby with Team JNPR

"WHAT THE HECK!?" yelled Jaune as an strong blast of air threw him into a nearby tree. Pyrrha reached behind her and dropped into a fighting stance with her shield and spear at the ready. Ren acrobatically flipped into a tree, flicked out his dual machine pistols from his sleeves, and began searching for the source of explosion. "Hey! Ren! What do you see?" Nora asked while holding her giant grenade launcher in hammer form. Ren squinted his eyes, "There's a pretty wide clearing about two miles south. A bunch of trees got blown to the edges of a clearing." Jaune fell down from the tree and shakily got up and pulled out his scroll from his back pocket, "I'm going to contact Goodwitch, and then we run back to Beacon. Sound good?" "Aw..., I want to see how big that explosion was..." the crazed demolition expert sadly replied. Ren dropped down from his perch and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, "I think we should check it out anyways, Ruby and her team might be in trouble." Nora's face lit up with a huge grin, "Yeah! That's it! One of them might be hurt." "I agree. We should head down there as fast as we can, someone might be wounded. Right, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked. Team JNPR's leader hesitatingly contemplated their situation, "Fine. But I would hate to be responsible if you guys got hurt." "Don't worry. We can take care of ourselves I mean, what's the worse that can happen?" Nora replied with a smile.

Meanwhile with Ruby in the clearing

Ruby crouched on the soft grass and slowly crept towards a low-lying red bush on the edge of the cone-shaped clearing. Whoa, she thought, What happened here? A few trees lay around the edge of the clearing but as they moved towards the center the trees quickly gave way to piles of ash and dust (not the elemental kind). She skirted around the left side of the blast area for a minute or two, checking for any signs of Grimm in the treeline. She looked farther down, and she wished she hadn't.

Everything was burned to ashes. The destruction of this beautiful forest horrified her. At the end of the clearing, she stared at the full scope of the damage of the clearing until small glints of reflecting metal caught her attention in the middle of the circle. She turned to look at the source and saw a prone figure lying unmoving in the center of the clearing. She looked around one last time to check for Grimm, and when she thought it was safe, she carefully walked to the center. She immediately noticed a sniper rifle amongst other weapons on the ground, and drooled a little bit, then she quickly remembered the robot looking thing on the ground.

She gasped at how large the faced down figure was, which she thought could easily be taller than Yatsuhashi of team CFVY. She quickly walked up to its right side to what she now thought was a person and tried to remove the helmet, but it wouldn't budge, "Hello? Anybody in there? Hellooo?" she said. A hand slid forward from her attempts of trying to remove the helmet, which signaled that the person was still alive, but barely. Ruby reached into her pocket, trying to grab her scroll so that she could contact Professor Goodwitch, when she suddenly stopped.

She started clutching her throat when something began to choke her, her silver eyes widening suddenly as she steadily rose into the air and came to a stop about a few feet off the ground. She felt her Aura levels start to drain from the immensely strong grip.

Her body slightly turned away from the person's helmet and towards its feet. A sudden appearance doubled her heart rate. A creature clad in golden armor materialized out of thin air, standing over the wounded person, as it grabbed what appeared to be some sort of handle near its thigh. She noticed that its armor was scorched and the creature itself was burned and bleeding a dark purple. Its mouth split into four mandibles as it roared at the downed figure, the mandibles moving to articulate what was saying. Ruby didn't understand a word of it. Then its gaze turned towards her. The creature gave another snarl, this time directed at the red-garbed teen.

It squeezed the handle and blue, two pronged blades made of some sort of energy crackled to life. Where did it come from? Oh no. I can't reach Crescent Rose in time. I'm going to die! Ruby feared as she frantically clawed the creature's arm. She couldn't even focus enough to use her Semblance.

The gold-armored monster brought its weapon-wielding arm back, preparing to end her life in one fell swoop.


Images of a red forest with a light blue sky faded into his blurry vision. He couldn't quite see out of his helmet as it was buried partly in the dirt. His vision swam, and a dull, throbbing pain was threatening to pull him back into unconsciousness.

Wait, how am I still alive?

The last thing he remembered was facing an Elite and two Hunters, then the blinding light of two nuclear warheads going off. His thoughts were interrupted as he felt something pulling on his helmet and glanced up. He couldn't see the person's face, just a blurry image of a girl with short black hair with red highlights and a red cape. He saw her reach to her back pocket for something, but she just stopped. Kurt's eyes widened when she started moving off the ground clutching her throat. He stared in anger as a faint crackling sound entered through the helmet's speakers.

The same golden Fleet Master that had tried to kill him stood a few feet away from his prone body, slowly choking the life out of the girl. It roared at him, its words loud enough to increase his headache. His helmet's translators still worked.

"I am Voro Nar 'Mantakree, Shipmaster of the Incorruptible, and Fleet Master of the Second Fleet of Homogenous Clarity. You have not bested me, Demon! I am the one who claims victory!"

With that declaration, 'Voro' raised his Energy Sword, aiming the blade tips at the girl's throat.

Kurt's battle-hardened instincts took over. Grimacing through the pain, he stood up and grabbed his eight-inch combat knife sheathed in his left shoulder and lunged, using the last of his strength to knock the girl out of the way, and slam into the Covenant Fleet Master. He grimaced as the energy sword glanced off his hip as he drove his combat knife through the base of the Fleet Master's head, earning a startled, strangled gasp from the alien. Evidently, the Sangheili's shields had been deactivated; Kurt didn't know if it was because of the transition to this new area, from the proximity to the exploding nukes, or something else, but frankly, he didn't care. The both of them toppled to the ground. Kurt rolled off the mortally-wounded Elite, and, with his last reserves of adrenaline drained, soon fell back into unconsciousness.

Voro's fingers slowly uncurled from the Energy Sword's hilt, the plasma blades dispersing soon afterwards. Voro Nar 'Mantakree was no more.


Ruby stared in horror at what just happened, when she looked at her savior she saw that it had a large bloody gash in its stomach. She quickly grabbed her scroll and called the Beacon's emergency services, "Hello?Hello?MynameisRubyRoseI'maHuntress-in-training.-" The image of a young blond woman with a headset popped up on her screen, "Whoa, slow down," the medical dispatcher said in a calming voice, "Take a deep breath and tell me what happened, slowly." Ruby stopped gulped down a huge amount of air. "There's a person with a huge gash on his stomach and we're about eight miles north of Beacon in Forever Falls. We're in the middle of a giant field covered in ash. He needs help now!"

"Okay, I understand, we're sending a medical VTOL to your location. It'll be about 6 minutes until it arrives," the video call ended.


"HOW THE HELL DID THIS HAPPEN!?" Jaune shouted as Team JNPR and three members of Team RWBY stood at the edge of the blast radius looking around in horror.

"Ruby's got to be around here somewhere!" Weiss said.

"Over there! It's Ruby!" Yang shouted to the group pointing to a small red figure crouched in the middle of the blast zone.

"Come on guys we need to see if she's ok." Jaune said quickly after seeing where Yang was pointing.

Ruby stood up and looked around upon hearing her name, leaning on Crescent Rose for support as she was a little light headed from almost being dying and then talking so fast, yelping suddenly as she was picked up by her sister after being quickly followed by Weiss, Blake, and team JNPR.

"Uh, Ruby what's that?" Jaune asked as he visibly gulped pointing to the alien's corpse.

"I don't know, but it's dead now," the young reaper said.

"Wait. You killed it?" Yang asked, looking at Ruby very seriously.

"No. That thing did," she replied, looking somewhat fearful while pointing to a humanoid figure lying on the ground next to the alien.

As Weiss was about to ask a question, she was suddenly interrupted by the helicopter blades from a VTOL kicking up dirt, ashes, and leaves as it slowly landed near the wounded man. Two EMT's jumped out of the VTOL and immediately saw the severity of the man's wounds.

"Blonde, redhead, and Ginger, come here and help," one of the EMTs told them. Pyrrha walked over with glowing black hands, "I have a polarity Semblance. I'll be able to lift him." She concentrated and lifted him… a foot off the ground, "Wow. This guy's really heavy." She started straining until she felt the burden lighten.

"Hey, he asked all three of us, remember? No need to do it by yourself." Yang said as she and Nora began helping the other two EMTs lift the body. All five people were straining themselves when carrying the severely wounded man into the VTOL, placing him on the metal carriage. "Damn, how much does that guy weigh?" Yang breathed after she dropped to the floor with the other two girls.

The EMTs jumped into the VTOL while one of them banged on the side door, signaling to lift off. Nine pairs of eyes watched the vehicle disappear in the direction of the academy.

Professor Goodwitch rubbed her eyes, " , please explain the situation to me as to why there was a fully armored man with a hole in his stomach, and some type of creature with a knife in it's head?" Everyone had gathered around Ruby to hear the story while some of the more competent students kept watch for Grimm.

As Ruby's adrenaline rush died down, her small body began to shiver, "I-I-Idon'tknowwheretheycamefrom. Inearlywaskilledbythatweirdm-m-monsterontheground—."

"Ruby, calm down. We're here with you," Yang hugged her little sister, "Now, how did you 'almost get killed'?" she asked in a soothing voice.

She recounted what happened and what she saw when she approached the dying man, "...then it raised some weird two-prong sword and that man saved me."

"You said that man saved you. How? He had a fucking hole in his stomach!" Yang exaggerated.

"Language, Ms. Xiao Long," Goodwitch glared at her. Yang shrank back a little, "Sorry, but still!"

"Well, he got up and lunged at it and smashed his knife through the base of it skull." Ruby said with glazed eyes shivering as she briefly re-lived her near death experience.

"Oh Ruby!" Yang said in a sing song voice, "I know what will cheer you up." She waved a five foot long sniper rifle, scorched black, in front of her.

"OH MY GOD! GIMME!" she yelled, momentarily forgetting everything that just happened.

She caressed the rifle. "Don't worry baby, I'll take care of you."

She held the weapon close to her body; it was almost as tall as her.

Weiss rolled her eyes at her partner's antics, "You have an unhealthy obsession of weapons, Ruby."

"I wouldn't be surprised if she had a sticky gun barrel lying around our room," Yang joked, which in turn made Blake and Weiss snicker. Ruby either didn't get the joke, or wasn't paying attention. She was still ogling the sniper.

"Everyone, grab what you can around here, but leave the creature. A recovery team will retrieve the corpse for study." Miss Goodwitch ordered.

"We'll ask our 'guest' questions about his weapons when he fully recovers."

Blake glanced around the clearing. "Hey, there's some more weapons over there." She walked to the edge of the clearing and picked up to what looked like some kind of automatic rifle. She noticed an ammo counter which read 0, "Guess I can't test fire this."

Weiss went toward where the dying man was lying and saw a stainless-steel pistol, This is a very large pistol. Who needs this powerful of a handgun? She aimed it at the forest and fired. Click. Hmm... guess there's no ammo, she thought.

Ren and Jaune looked for any weapons around the dead alien. "Hey Jaune, I found something," Ren said as he grasped the handle. Jaune stood about five feet in front of Ren, "Who fights with a handle?" Ren said as he squeezed the handle and a huge, blue two-prong blade came to life.

Jaune jumped back, "WHOA! Watch where you point that thing! You nearly killed me."

"Whoops, sorry," Ren apologized and eased the pressure off the handle, turning it off. After nearly having a heart attack, Jaune dropped down to the dead alien and saw a hilt sticking out of the base of it's skull. He grabbed it and pulled out an 8 inch metal knife from the alien's head, "Wow, this is a big knife."

Nora came scampering up to the alien's body, captivated by all the interesting stuff it had. She peered down at it, searching for anything that hadn't been taken yet. Finally, her gaze landed on a sidearm - she assumed it was a sidearm - attached to the creature's hip armor. She snatched it up, looking at it with a giddy expression. This one appeared to have ammunition in it, if the few pink needles sticking out of it were anything to go by.

She aimed the weapon at a nearby tree, and squeezed the trigger. One of the needles shot towards her target, impacting the tree and lodging itself in its bark. After a few seconds, the needle exploded into several minute shards, gouging a chunk out of the tree.

The gun became shrouded in an energy field, earning a startled gasp from Nora, before shooting off towards Glynda, her crop raised and a look off annoyance painted on her face. The orange-haired girl gave a beaming smile in return.

Professor Goodwitch pulled out her Scroll, dialed a number, and spoke to someone on the other end. Soon, a Bullhead appeared and touched down. The students all climbed aboard the VTOL.

The Bullhead doors closed, and the airship set a course for Beacon.

A/N:This is my first story (I wrote this before I took on zadro's story), no OCs at the moment there will be some later, and possibly references to other Spartans or other Spartans no more than 2.

Feel free to leave reviews of whatever sort you want be it help or criticism, pointers or help.

Special Thanks to my friend Slow and Steady Turtle who beta-read this for me