A/N: This is a side-story of sorts to Little Red and her Big Bad Wolf, in that it follows, instead of Ruby, a team of OCs. Only necessary information from that fic is that Ruby has a domesticated Beowolf. That is all.
Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own RWBY.
Somewhere, in the Emerald Forest, a woman with black hair walked, a large bowie knife held in her hand. Idly, she tossed it in the air as she walked; catching it by the hilt each time it came down. Her fox tail streamed behind her in a straight line and occasionally drifted from side to side. She was wearing a black jacket that clung to her body, black pants and a belt filled with knives, much smaller than the one in her hand. Her name was Vixen Sevyas.
As Vixen walked, heading north to retrieve a relic, as directed by Ozpin, she kept her eyes and ears open for any signs of Grimm activity, or for a potential partner. For the most part, she had avoided anybody she believed would not work well with her, or anyone that was not as skilled as she wanted. She gave a brief laugh as she remembered that blonde boy pinned to the tree. 'God help that man's partner.' she thought.
She heard a distant roar, her orange eyes flicked over in it direction, and she waited, tail completely still. The roar came again, this time more angry, and she darted in its direction. As she ran, she heard more and more roars ring out, each one angrier than the last, and as she neared the source, she focused on her Aura, and vanished.
Invisibly, she slowed down, edging closer to the source. Without warning, a white blur shot past her and slammed into a tree behind her. The girl was wearing a white cardigan over a grey shirt, grey pants and sandals, and she slowly pried herself off the tree, groaning. "Why won't you just stay down…" she said, her bright green eyes staring at the thing that had flung her. There came another roar, and a massive Ursa barreled through the trees. Vixen's eyes widened as she took in the wounded Grimm. It had nearly a dozen arrows stuck in various parts of its body, and each one looked strangely crystalline. As the Ursa lumbered towards the new girl, she sighed and raised the bow that she held in one hand. It had the same crystalline composition of the arrows, and was a light blue. The girl reached a gloved hand behind her head to an empty quiver and pulled out a red arrow-'Wait what?'
Vixen looked closer. The quiver was indeed empty. 'Then where did she get that arrow from?' she asked herself. She watched as the girl strung the arrow to her bow, pulled back and fired at the oncoming Ursa. The arrow impacted the bone mask on its face, and detonated in a fiery explosion. The Ursa stumbled back with a pain filled roar, a crack forming in its mask. Vixen smirked as she realized just what the other girl's weapon was. 'Dust. She makes arrows out of Dust.' She turned her attention to the heavily wounded Ursa and began creeping forward.
The girl reached into her most likely Dust filled quiver and drew two arrows, one a light blue and the other a bright yellow. She fired both of them, both hitting a different leg. The leg hit by the yellow abruptly slouched, useless. The blue arrow sunk into the other leg a bit deeper, and ice began to spread from the point of impact. The Ursa growled and flung itself forward at the girl, whose eyes widened as she reached into her quiver again. Before she could string the arrow, however, there was a quiet shnnk and the Grimm stopped. The girl stared at it, and noticed that the crack in its mask had suddenly grown wider. Suddenly Vixen appeared in front of the girl, both hands on her knife, which was plunged hilt-deep in the Grimm's skull. She jerked the knife out of the motionless Grimm with a grunt, and it collapsed. She turned around with a smirk to look at the girl she had saved. Green eyes met orange.
"I had that handled." said the new girl, looking away.
"Sure you did. And that Ursa wasn't about to tear you a new one, despite all the Dust you shot him full of. What's your name, partner?" Vixen asked as she sheathed her blade.
The girl seemed to shrink in on herself. "I'm Nellie. Nellie Mellian."
Vixen's ever-present smirk grew wider. "Vixen Sevyas. Pleasure to meet you. Is that bow made of Dust like the arrows are?" she asked.
Nellie looked down at the bow in her hand, as if she had forgotten its presence. "Oh. Yeah, it is." She brought the bow to her back, and placed it in the quiver, where it quickly dissolved back into powdered Dust. "Dust is my weapon."
Vixen stared at her for a moment. "Are you going to elaborate, or…?"
"Oh! Of course. My Semblance allows me to control Dust, and make it take various shapes. I use it to make a bow and arrows for long-ranged combat, and knives for close-range."
"Hmm. Interesting Semblance. Mine helps me take a more stealthy approach to combat." Vixen said. She began walking again, heading north again. "Although, it is a bit draining to keep up for a long time."
"Your Semblance is invisibility, right?" Nellie asked as she fell in step.
"Well, technically it's more of a chameleon sort of thing, or maybe active camouflage, but that's close enough. I can do it for separate parts of my body as well," she looked over at Nellie, her eyes twinkling with mischief. "Makes for great fun at parties." As she said this, she caused half her face to vanish completely, causing Nellie to lean back in surprise. She laughed, loud and quick, and her face reappeared. Her tail twitched and she looked down at it. "But I almost always forget to cloak this thing." she said as she grabbed the bushy red appendage.
Nellie looked at the tail in surprise. "Oh! You're a Faunus?" she asked.
Her smirk dropped from her face. "Yeah. Got a problem with that?"
"O-oh no, not at all."
"Good." she said, her smirk coming back full force
They continued north and soon found a trail of felled trees. They followed the strange path until they reached a clearing, where they discovered bullet casings, rose petals and a single, slowly dissolving Deathstalker corpse. "Looks like we missed one hell of a fight." She said, staring at the corpse. It had been killed rather creatively, with its own stinger lodged deep in its head.
"Hey, do you think that's the temple?" asked Nellie.
Vixen looked away from the Deathstalker to the building in question. It was a small, ruined thing, with crumbling rock and moss all over, and it had several pedestals set up. "Seems like it is, those look like relics on the pedestals." With that, they ran over to the temple, and grabbed a Black Knight piece. "Cute little pony. This should do for our relic."
A new voice sounded from the clearing. "Aw come on sis! You always beat me to the objective."
Vixen's smirk turned to a scowl as she turned around with a groan. "Hayle. So I see you made it this far…" Walking towards the duo were two people, both of whom she was familiar with. The first was Hayle Sevyas, her sister. She looked very similar to Vixen, but she was wearing a blue jacket, blue heels and grey jeans, a belt filled with large bullets rapped around her waist, and in her hands was a large blue spear with a trigger and a bolt on the side. Her face was kinder than Vixen's, she held less of a sly smirk and more of a genuine smile, and she was taller. The chief difference between the two, however, was in their Faunus trait. Whereas Vixen had the tail of a fox, Hayle had the ears of one.
The other girl was Sulian Haysh, known to most as Rose, a friend of Vixen's. She had black hair, which was shaved on one side and pushed up over the other, and was wearing a leather jacket over a grey shirt, jeans and combat boots, all of which were black, and she walked with a black SMG strapped to her hip. "And let me guess, you're her partner Rose?" The girl nodded with a sheepish grin. Vixen sighed. "Of course…"
"Aw, don't be like that sis!" Hayle said as she walked up towards her. She wrapped her in a crushing hug. "It's been so long since I last saw you!"
"Not long enough, if you ask me." Vixen muttered. "Yeah, it's good to see you too, sis" she said, pulling away from her sister. "Now, if you'll excuse us, my partner and I need to return this relic." She held up the Knight piece and began walking away.
"But Vix, you never introduced us to your partner!" exclaimed Hayle. She reached out and grabbed Nellie by the shoulder. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
Nellie jolted at the sudden contact. "N-Nellie Mellian."
"Nice to meet you Nellie! Name's Hayle, I'm little Vix' sister." She pointed to Rose. "And this is Rose, my partner and an old family friend." The girl in question quietly raised her hand with a small smile and waved.
"Ok, now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, we really have to get going. I don't want to lose points or anything for taking too much time getting this back to school." Vixen said. She grabbed Nellie's hand and began dragging her away.
"Now Vix…" began Hayle, reaching out to her sister.
"Don't call me that." snapped Vixen, her tail flitting about in anger.
Hayle recoiled, her ears lying flat against her head. "C'mon sis…" she pleaded. "Can we please go five minutes without you snapping at me?" she asked, looking at her with tears in her eyes.
Vixen stared up at her sister's expression, those damned ears completing her pitiful appearance. She sighed. "Sorry sis, it's just been a while. I had a lot of stressful encounters before I reached Beacon."
Her sister gave a sympathetic look. "Bad jobs?" she asked.
"More than a few."
"Uh, I get the feeling I'm missing out on something here." Rose said. "Wanna explain, or is it family stuff?"
Vixen opened her mouth to clarify only to be cut off by a nearby howl. The girls turned towards the noise, to see a small pack of Beowolves running into the clearing. "Stragglers from the fight earlier?" asked Hayle.
"Probably." Vixen's sly grin returned as she pulled a knife from her belt and held it by the blade. "This should make for a good pick-me-up."
She dashed ahead, drawing her bowie knife from its sheathe. As she hit the oncoming group of Grimm, she vanished, the only sign of her presence being the small knives suddenly appearing on a few of the Beowolves' chest. She reappeared behind the pack, while the Grimm she had tagged paused at the sudden appearance of the blades in their body. Her smirk widened as she brought her hand up to her face and snapped.
At the sound, the explosives in the knives, which had been activated by the impact, triggered causing a large explosion that quickly engulfed the Grimm the knives had hit. She turned around and dashed towards the back of the pack, bowie knife and throwing daggers at the ready.
Hayle shook her head at her with a grin. "Show-off." She quickly jumped back, dropped to the ground, and unfolded a stand from the underside of her spear. The spear began transforming, the point pulling back to reveal a large barrel. She planted it against the stone of the temple, and aimed it at the nearest Grimm. After a moment of adjustment, she pulled the trigger, and the gun fired with a loud boom. The Beowolf she had been aiming at split in half, a large hole in its chest. The bolt on her weapon automatically pulled back, ejecting the round, and she reached down to her belt, pulling a new bullet from it and chambering it. She repeated this process three more times, until the Beowolves finally reached the temple. She leapt up, twirling her weapon over her shoulder as it transformed back into its spear form and ramming it through the chest of a Grimm. She pulled it back with a fierce grin, and rushed into the battle.
Nellies sighed. "Man, that Ursa made me use too much Dust. Guess it's time for close combat…" She reached into her quiver, and drew two small blades of blue Dust from it, attaching them to small slots on the underside of her gloves. She leapt forward, running at the pack of Grimm, her palms out. One Beowolf leapt at her, snarling, and she dodged to the left, reaching under its head and slamming her right knife up through its jaw, stabbing through its head and breaking through the mask. She pulled the blade out, and slammed it back into the top of the beast's head, and it slumped quickly. Another Beowolf rushed her, swinging its right claw. She ducked and plunged her left knife into the creature's chest.
Rose followed her, drawing her SMG. She fired a few quick bursts at nearby Beowolves, killing a few and wounding others, before pulling back her weapon. As she flung it behind her, it extended into a whip, blades popping out of the sides. She whipped it forwards, catching a Beowolf in the shoulder and cutting it deeply. As the whip cracked, she pulled the trigger, firing off a burst of gunfire, and she used the momentum to pull back and swing again, inflicting more wounds on the Beowolf. One Beowolf came up behind her, and she reached back and quickly wrapped her whip around its neck. She tugged on the whip and fired, the weapon tightening around the creature's neck and decapitating it.
The remaining Grimm fled, as they had recognized the girls as too large of a threat to handle at their number. Vixen stood in the middle of a small circle of dissolving corpses at the tree line, smirking and sheathing her bowie knife as the girls walked back over to her. "Well, that was a fun distraction." she said.
Hayle smiled, but her expression quickly changed to one of fear and shock as she saw a strange silhouette looming over her sister. She rushed forward as the creature's mouth opened wide. "Sis, behind you!" she shouted. In the corner of her eye she could see Nellie reaching up to her quiver for Dust, but her bow was not formed, and she would not fire in time. Rose reached at her belt for a new magazine for her SMG, but could not find one.
Vixen turned her head, spotting a massive, crocodile-like Grimm behind her. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in shock as she looked at it. She reached for her knife, but she was too late. The Grimm lunged down, seeking to bite her head from her shoulders. She stood as everything seemed to go in slow motion as the beast's mouth grew closer and closer. She closed her eyes, and awaited the oncoming pain. It never came.
Instead, she was roughly shoved out of the way, and her eyes flew open. She looked to see her sister, diving where she had recently been standing, and the Grimm's mouth was right above her. The Grimm's jaws snapped shut. There was a loud scream that was cut off by a sickening snap.
She stared at her sister in disbelief, as she hung there, limp, blood streaming from her sides. The Grimm was hit by a small blue arrow, but it impacted its large mask, and the resulting ice was small. The hit did, however, cause it to drop Hayle in surprise, and it reared its head back and gave a gurgling growl.
Suddenly, a loud battle cry filled the area, and a girl with red hair and a dress leapt out of the bushes and shoved the Grimm's jaws apart, freeing Hayle. She landed in front of Hayle, and drew a large, glowing, blue battle-axe.
The Grimm growled at this new girl, and quickly snapped its jaws shut around her. Vixen stared at it in shock, until a new scream came from inside it. The Grimm stared at its own belly as it began to glow blue, and then it exploded. Limbs flew everywhere, and there stood the girl, her skin a metallic gray in some places, covered in saliva. As she stood there, axe in hand, huffing slightly, the metallic areas of her skin began to quickly reform, restoring itself to normal. As Vixen stared at her in awe, a boy dashed into the area, most likely attracted by the explosion. He had a sickle in his hand, and quickly took area. He looked down at the motionless Hayle and his eyes widened. The boy looked up at Vixen, opening his mouth to say something, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by loud series of gurgling roars. There were more croco-Grimm nearby. He quickly pointed at the downed student and shouted, "Get her out of here! We'll handle the Grimm."
Vixen shook herself from her shock, and dashed over to her wounded sister. She picked her up, turned tail and ran.
After a few more minutes of running, an emergency airship had arrived, and taken them back to the cliff. Hayle had been rushed into the school's medical center, and Vixen sat in the waiting room with her new teammates. She sat there, anxiously tapping her foot against the ground. The door opened, and a nurse walked out. Vixen leapt up, and the nurse raised a hand, silencing her questions. "Your sister is stable, miss Sevyas." Vixen sighed in relief. Hayle was alive. "That's the good news." The nurse continued.
Vixen frowned, looking at the nurse apprehensively. "What's the bad news?"
The nurse sighed. "I'm afraid that Grimm…snapped your sister's spinal cord."
Vixen's shook her head slightly in disbelief. "No." she sobbed.
"Now, we have yet to see if her Aura can heal her nervous system, but even if it can, we doubt your sister will ever walk unaided again. We're deeply sorry." And with that, she left.
Vixen slowly sank back into her seat, her expression one of disbelief and shock. She felt a hand lay on her shoulder, and turned to see Rose staring at her with concern and sympathy in her eyes. "Hey. I know this is bad, but it will get better. I promise."
Vixen stared at her, and the tears that had been welling up finally poured out. She leaned into Rose's shoulder, wrapped her arms around her, and cried.
Eventually, Vixen had calmed down, and they had left the infirmary to go to the team creation ceremony. Vixen stood on the stage, the sun beaming down on her from the open roof, holding back tears as Ozpin listed the names of her teammates. "Vixen Sevyas, Nellie Mellian, and Sulian Haysh. You retrieved the Black Knight piece." Ozpin paused, and turned to Vixen. "I am deeply sorry for the injury your sister suffered, and I am afraid to say that your team is incomplete. If she ever recovers, she can rejoin, but for now, we must find you someone to replace her." Vixen nodded, struggling to maintain her composure. She was startled from her struggle when a drop of something landed on her nose. She reached up and poked the substance on her nose, drawing her finger back and looking at the red liquid on it. Blood. She looked around to see more droplets of blood landing in the auditorium, and other students were starting to take notice of it. Confused, she looked up through the open roof, and screamed at what she saw. Falling from the sky was a person. It was too distant to make out any of their features, but it was clear that he was unconscious from the limp way he fell. As the person fell closer, a loud whistle rang throughout the auditorium and a black blur leapt up and grabbed the person. A Beowolf, but one unmasked. Vixen turned to see that strange girl, Ruby, pointing at the boy, one hand still at her mouth.
The Beowolf, named Fenris, if she remembered correctly, landed and set the boy down. Many of the students and teachers rushed over, and Ozpin reached the boy, for it was clear once he had been lowered that he was male, and checked his pulse. "He's alive. Somebody bring in a stretcher!" he snapped. His command was quickly followed, and two medics charged in bearing a stretcher. As they lifted him up to place him on it, the students saw blood leaking from two large wounds on his back. They set him on the stretcher and the quickly marched off, heading to the infirmary to treat his wounds. As the boy was wheeled away, there were two loud cracks followed by surprised shouts as two objects hit the ground, landing behind the crowd. Vixen pushed through the mumbling crowd and saw something very odd.
Sticking out of the ground, were two bloodied wings with spears on the tips.