Chapter 1
Precursor
Three Years Ago, Atlesian Mountains
"Hey, Saffron, I found something else out about this...thing we're studying." Lieutenant Chief Researcher Valence motioned to the cylinder of Dust-infused glass that lay in the middle of the roughly circular chamber they occupied. In it sat an obelisk of dull silver crystal, about a half-meter tall.
"If this is another report on how it messes with radio comms, don't worry. We've already sent a message to Central Command about it."
"No, no...not that. Check this out." Valence held up a plaster cast of a hand. "You know that handprint we found on the side of the obelisk? I need you to load this into one of the probe arms - you need to see this."
Saffron raised an eyebrow. "Very well." After inserting the cast into one of the mechanical arms that lined the interior of glass cylinder, he watched as it raised the cast into position in front of a handprint that glowed faintly with violet energy, recessed into the obelisk. His eyebrow raised even further when the cast slid into the handprint perfectly.
Valence grinned. "See? A perfect fit. Wanna know where it came from?"
"The obelisk, I presume? I doubt you could get some plaster in there to begin with."
In response, she raised her hand to show the traces of dried plaster on her left hand. "Nope. It came from yours truly."
"But...but how? Carbon dating estimates that whatever this is, it predates humans on Remnant by at least two thousand years! Whoever placed it here couldn't have possibly known you would come along."
"It's called 'destiny,' man, What, you don't believe in it or something?"
"I...this requires further study. I'll send a report back to Central. And Valence? Thank you for your discovery."
Valence smiled breezily as she walked into the attached break room. "No problem."
Both of the scientists paused as the room shook perceptibly.
"...What was that?"
That was when the alarm klaxons started to ring, followed by a harsh automated voice: All personnel, take up defensive positions. The perimeter has been breached by the White Fang. This is not a drill. We repeat, this is not a drill.
Valence's blood turned to ice. "Saffron!"
"Y-yes? If this is a proposition..."
"No time for that! Give me your sidearm."
"You're part of the research crew, though!"
Valence coolly met his terrified gaze. "I might not have graduated from the Atlas Hunter Academy, but I still received some training. I'll be of more use with that peashooter than anyone else here."
With shaking hands, Saffron handed his weapon over...and the door chose that exact moment to blow off its hinges.
Valence didn't miss a beat, snapping off five shots in the space of two seconds. The first few grunts fell with barely a moment's notice, but the sixth bullet skipped off the oversized riot shields of those in the second wave. She reluctantly lowered her weapon.
No use wasting ammo. This thing has a ten-round magazine, so I have...
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" The gravelly voice carved clean through Valence's thoughts, replacing them with one word: Adam.
The ranks of waiting White Fang shocktroopers parted to reveal none other than the man himself, dressed in the usual tuxedo and mask. He grinned nastily as he looked over the chamber's contents.
"To be honest, I expected something like Project Fireheart to be a bit more well-guarded. But this?" He motioned to the lone figure standing between him and the obelisk's container. "I didn't think that Ironwood would be so foolish as to leave you all exposed."
"Honestly? We weren't expecting to be found." Gotta keep him talking; it's the only way Saffron can escape.
"Well, you're a witty one, hmm? Let me guess...you're trying to buy someone time to run..."
"You know what? Fuck running!" Before anyone could react, Saffron ducked out of the break room, assault rifle in hand.
Oh, you heroic bastard. You should've got away when you had the chance...
To his credit, Saffron did pretty well for about five seconds. With his magazine full of Dust-infused rounds, he tore through the shields of the shocktroops, and even managed to make Adam sneer slightly more as the bullets expended their pent-up energy against his Aura.
"Okay, my turn."
Valence barely had time to avert her eyes before Wilt and Blush earned their keep. Adam whipped them up to vertical over his left shoulder before firing the shotgun in the sheath and bringing the sword down in a crimson blur to slice Saffron in half lengthwise. Seconds later, the two halves of Saffron hit the floor, each bearing half of a surprised expression.
Oh gods. Oh shit, oh...wait. Snap out of it. I have to find some way to...wait.
She looked over to the containment cell. Dust-infused glass. Almost impossible to punch through, but...
Four rounds.
The thought came to her almost out of nowhere. If I shoot in a triangle, it'll weaken the glass enough to break on the fourth shot. Past that...well, it's better than death by White Fang.
"Well, lady? You saw what happened to your friend here. Want to give it a shot?"
"Why not?"
Valence smirked and raised her weapon...and fired four shots in quick succession directly to her left. The fourth round broke the glass, spraying shards of it everywhere as she sprinted for the narrow hole directly in front of the handprint.
"Stop her!"
Tracer fire tore through the air around Valence as she thrust her left hand through the opening, disregarding the remaining glass shards that cut into her arm as her palm made contact with the handprint, making a perfect fit...
And everything ceased to exist around her.
The world slowly reformed in patches, painting a scene that definitely wasn't real. She stood on the surface of a dead world, reduced to ash and glass. In the distance, two massive towers loomed...wait.
Those weren't towers.
As her gaze wandered upwards, she realized that those "towers" were actually the legs of some massive crystalline figure. Where humans bore a face, this creature merely had a blank plate of crystal, with two burning slits angled to look like angry eyes. Rested on its right shoulder was a gigantic two-handed sword, easily five kilometers long.
"Are you worthy?"
The voice shook the ground with its intensity. It took Valence a second to realize that the figure was the one speaking.
"I-I don't know what you're..."
With the speed that only something that large could pull off, it raised its sword overhead and heaved it downwards. Valence could faintly make out the orange halo of a reentry flare around the titanic blade as it fell.
"ARE YOU WORTHY?!"
For the second time that day, Valence successfully staved off shock.
There's no way this is real. This is just-just a trauma-induced hallucination, right? Maybe if I play along, I'll get through this quicker!
Valence did the only thing she could as the descending sword filled her ears with a keening bass howl.
"Damn straight, I'm worthy!" She punched upwards, feeling the ground ripple as the tip of the blade touched down a few hundred meters behind her...
The rest of the sword came crashing down, too, but much more softly...and on Valence's left shoulder, so gently that it didn't even rip the fabric of her uniform.
"Then by the Tenets of Honorable Conquest, I name thee Ambassador."
The sword lifted, and repeated the process on her other shoulder. Valence realized that she had seen this done before, when Ironwood had knighted one of her classmates. What the Hell is going on?
"Do you have any objections to this transfer of power?"
Valence looked up, startled. "Wh-what? No, no...wait, what power?"
The colossal figure that had once stood before her was now only about two meters tall, and its eye slits had angled again to emulate a more genial expression. "Just a gift from my first son, Illien. He was very...insistent that you receive it. Here." It (He? She? Whatever?) tossed its sword in the air...but when it caught it by the blade and offered the hilt to Valence, it was a different weapon entirely.
Gone was the bulky straight-bladed broadsword. Instead, she was offered a sword that, while still easily a meter and a half long, had a blade only five centimeters or so wide. The handguard was also different; instead of a simple crossguard, it jutted out then forward in a geometric arrangement that encased a small bit of the lower blade. The entire weapon was made of the same matte crystal as everything else, but iridescent purple energy crawled over the weapon in a flowering pattern.
Take me in hand, it seemed to whisper, and we will burn our foes to less than ashes.
"He called it Marethyu. The rest of the Adamantics, however, saw fit to dub it the Flames of Illien." Only, the figure didn't say he. Whatever the word was, it slipped through Valence's mind before she could process it.
"As long as it helps me avenge my friends." She grabbed the sword in her left hand...
Nothing could have prepared her for the surge of power that washed through her as she took the blade. It was like she had stuck a fork in a light socket while being set on fire simultaneously...but it didn't hurt. It felt good. Really good.
Through the haze, she heard the figure begin speaking again. "Truly, a noble cause. You shall be called upon when finished; seek out those named Lucant and Yriel when you arrive. They will train you for what is to come."
The illusion started to dissolve around her. "Wait! I never got your name!"
The figure chuckled - if that was even possible with physiology like that. "My people call me the Architect. A fitting name, don't you think?"
Then Valence was back in the here and now. Around the fringes of the room, the remaining White Fang soldiers stared in awe as she arose from the circle glassed into the ground around her. Gone was the obelisk and its container; in its place, a gently gleaming crystal spire lay. The men recoiled further as she opened her eyes and looked them over with twin irises of purple flame.
"I believe the last thing you said was something to the effect of 'wanna give it a shot?' I'm game."
She didn't even give them time to respond before she whipped Marethyu around like a conductor's baton with her left hand, and a rippling sheet of violet fire roared from the tip, engulfing the first few soldiers that rushed her.
They died screaming.
As the flames receded, the rest of the soldiers surged forward at some prodding from Adam. Valence smiled benevolently, an expression slightly offset by her burning eyes, before she swung Marethyu in a sweeping arc. It sheared through Aura, metal and flesh with ease - and where they would have normally reeled away spouting blood from such wounds, more lilac fire fountained from these lacerations. This fire burned through anything it touched, adding to the chaos as Valence danced through their ranks.
Danced is the proper term here; she moved so gracefully, with such a large weapon, that one couldn't think she wasn't dancing to some unheard tune. She only nicked one of the last soldiers - but that was enough. As his comrades watched, he fell to his knees, screaming in agony, before exploding into flame. The stuff seemed to almost respond to Marethyu's movements, and it flowed like water through the air like an extension of the blade as she brought it around and cleaved through the last two soldiers in a dazzling wash of violet flame.
Silence reigned as the last of the bodies hit the floor and the fires crackled. Above it all, a slow clap echoed through the chamber.
"Well, you really did a number on them. Shame. But you can't make an omelette-"
He was forced to flip backwards as Marethyu carved downwards, slicing a purple-glowing rift in the floor.
"Tenet Number Fourteen: Never send your soldiers to do something if you can go in their stead!"
"What's this? Grown a moral compass now, have we?"
Valence looked down at her sword, and the glowing pattern of runes that now spread across her left arm. "No. Just the power to do what's right."
Adam was once again on the defensive as Valence pressed forward with a blazing series of slashes.
"You don't get it, do you, Adam?" The shining blade missed his throat by a hair's breadth. "Now I'm the one fighting for justice! The boots are on the other feet now!"
As Valence wound up for another strike, Adam saw an opening. Wilt snaked forward, but was repelled mere millimeters from her unprotected midriff.
"Not happening. Not today. Not in your life!"
The runes exploded off of Marethyu's blade in a blast of heat and light as she thrust it forward. Even Adam couldn't dodge it, and was thrown backwards into a wall. The last vestiges of his Aura flickered over skin skin faintly as Valence stalked forwards. Backlit by the raging inferno their fight had created, she cut an imposing figure.
"Any last words?"
"Y-yes...what's up with your arm?"
Valence looked down, an her composure slipped as she beheld what was happening. The runes that used to simply overlay her skin had completely enveloped her arm, and it was beginning to...
To ignite.
With barely a sound, Valence's left arm was gone, streaming away into the inferno. Marethyu clattered to the ground.
"Oh. Oh gods. I-I..."
Gone was the Valence that had singlehandedly bested Adam Taurus. All that was left was a wide-eyed, shaking mess.
Suddenly, the flames found a new order, arranging themselves in a wide ring around the central crystal; Adam was fortunate enough to be left outside it, but Valence was trapped within.
"Th-this isn't over. I'll come back, and when I do, you'll-"
Sadly, that was the last anyone would ever hear of Valence for the next three years. With a sucking sound, the flames pulled inwards, compressing everything inside the ring to a monomolecular point. This point flared with impossible brilliance, before phasing through the roof at multiple times the speed of light.
Adam was left alone, with only the sound of crackling flames as company. With a shaky hand, he retrieved his Scroll from his pocket and jabbed a finger at the contact named "Cinder."
She picked up on the first ring.
"Your report is late, Taurus. Explain."
"I...we never expected Project Fireheart to be functional." And it was barely five minutes late. Damn humans, with their pretentious timekeeping...
"And was it?"
"Barely. But that was more than enough to kill my entire assault squad."
Cinder's voice was thick with sarcasm. "Oh, I shudder to think what would happen if Atlas actually got it to work..."
There was a slight pause.
"Well, aren't you going to ask?"
"Ask what, Taurus? I know everything there is to know about this."
"Don't play smart with me, lady. You have no idea what we're up against. If Atlas has any more of these Projects, we're finished."
"Our mistress will deal with them when they arise. Until then, we'll just have to watch and wait, hmm?"
Adam was sure she could hear his teeth grinding together. "Fine. Don't forget that my men hate dying for a human's cause, though."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a promise."
Adam hung up before she could say anything else. He was going to pay for that later...but first, he had to get past the crisis response teams.
If Cinder had to go on just one of these, she'd understand how much shit we're in...
Alright, that's a wrap. If this seemed a little short, that's because it was done on the spirit of the RWBY character trailers - a short bit that explains a character's backstory and motives while showcasing their abilities.
Also, just give a holler if I wrote Taurus a little out of character. I tried to go for edgy, but I ended up with sardonic. Can't have everything you want in a story, it seems.
Peace, y'all.
-Defender