A lightning strike startled Ruby awake.
It snowed pretty heavily sometimes on Patch, but the rain and weather in Vale rarely got bad enough for there to be lightning.
Maybe it was just a bad dream that woke her up. Ruby could hear Yang snoring nearby. In the dim moonlight shining through their dorm room window, Ruby could also see Blake tossing and turning in her sleep. The lack of White Fang activity recently must be getting to her, worried that they were planning something big. Beneath Ruby, Weiss was silent and still in her bunk, sleeping serenely, as always.
Yeah, it was probably a dream. Maybe Nora was doing some late-night experimentation with her Semblance with the rest of JNPR on the roof again. Ruby shifted to her side, took a few slow breathes, and tried to close her eyes.
An unnatural flash of green light suddenly shone through the window. Ruby was wide awake now.
She dashed out of bed and stood in front of the window. Raindrops slid down the glass. There was scattered drizzling across Beacon, overhanging clouds spread widely above the campus. A gap in the clouds revealed the broken moon positioned above one particular building opposite Ruby's dorm.
There was a human figure standing at the roof edge of that building. Ruby couldn't see much of him. The one thing she could really make out was the only thing that mattered: those glowing red eyes.
The figure became a blur of green energy, a mass of light that left a trail of sporadic lightning in its wake as it moved. Ruby quickly snatched her cloak and secured her hood before opening the window and jumping out. She left her own trail behind her, with rose petals that would dissipate into the air before too long, signature to her Semblance of speed, as she went after the figure.
Ruby chased the figure down Beacon's main avenue. He stopped abruptly at the end, prompting Ruby to stop a few meters away from him, or else she would've probably crashed into him.
She could make out the figure clearly know. He was a few heads taller than Ruby. He wore an olive-green coat that reached down just below his knees. He also wore his own hood, though he hid his face with a scarf and an expressionless mask. The only hint of a face Ruby could see were those glowing red orbs where his eyes should have been.
Those red eyes, and that green lightning... There was only one possible person this could be.
"It was you," Ruby found herself saying. "You were the one at our house that night."
The figure lifted his head up, like – like what he did that night didn't even matter to him!
"You killed them!" Ruby screamed. "You killed Uncle Qrow. You killed my mom! Why?!"
The cold, inhuman voice that answered Ruby might have normally sent chills down her spine. Right now, she was too angry to care about it. "If you want to know that," taunted the cold-blooded killer, "you're going to have to catch me."
The figure ran off, and Ruby was on his tail in an instant.
She might not have Crescent Rose on her, but she always had her Semblance. No matter how fast the Man in Olive Coat was, he wasn't going to get away. Not this time.
Eventually, Ruby realized that she and the murderer were doing laps around the docking bay. Ruby stopped short and spun around, planning to cut tackle the killer when he came back around, but he blinded her with a burst of lightning that rebounded off her Aura. By the time she could see again, he had thrown his arm out and clotheslined her. Ruby rolled across the ground, winded by the hit. As she tried to catch her breath, the Man in Olive stood over her.
"Not fast enough, Reaper," he remarked.
Reaper? Weird nickname, but Ruby didn't give it a second thought. She spun her leg around in the same way Yang had taught her. While Ruby was shorter than her sister, the leg sweep did manage to catch the Man in Olive off guard. As he lost his footing, Ruby hopped as high as she could into the sky. She didn't have Crescent Rose to fire off to give herself the extra momentum, but her Semblance gave her the extra speed she needed to pack enough force to give the Man in Olive a good punch across the face when she got back down.
She was about to give him a punch, at least, until he pulled out some sort of cane and jabbed the end of it against the floor. A protective dome of green energy appeared around him, deflecting Ruby's punch. Before Ruby could try delivering another punch or backing up, the dome disappeared as the Man in Olive jabbed his cane against Ruby's gut, nearly making her upchuck last night's dinner.
Ruby can do this. She can do this. She's fought Roman Torchwick before. He uses a cane as his main weapon, and he was just some flunkie Beacon dropout who became a petty criminal. Ruby was an up and coming huntress-in-training, who was admitted into Beacon Academy two years early. The Man in Olive was some deranged killer with weird a lightning-esque Semblance and Grimm-like eyes. If she could handle her own against Torchwick, then the Man in Olive should be –
The jabs and punches from the psycho never stopped coming. Ruby barely dodged and blocked any of them. It only ended when the Man in Olive picked her up and tossed her away. Ruby pressed her forehead against the floor, turning to glare at the red-eyed killer. She could feel her Aura dropping deeper into the yellow. He had even landed a good cross on her nose to bypass her Aura long enough for blood to start dripping. The blood mixed with the rain slipped into her mouth and tasted awful.
When she made eye contact with the Man in Olive, he kicked her side. She rolled across the ground before getting kicked again from him. His speed was just unreal.
"Who are you?" Ruby demanded when the Man in Olive finally let up and gave her a chance to somewhat recompose herself.
"You know who I am, Ruby."
The Man in Olive moved again, almost too fast for Ruby to keep up. He left behind brief afterimages of himself as he stood Ruby up and peppered her with more jabs and hits. He was just toying with her at this point.
Whacking his cane against Ruby's skull, he backed off and watched as Ruby nurtured her head and gasped for air. "I don't know who you are," she said.
"But you do, Ruby. We've been at this a long time, you and I, but I'm always one step ahead."
Evil monologue. Ruby has to take advantage of the evil monologue and charge him, just like how Dad taught –
The Man in Olive sidestepped Ruby's lunge and pinned her to the floor. "It is your destiny to lose to me, Reaper, just as it was your mother's and uncle's destinies to die that night." The killer paused. The red glow of his eyes along with the green energy that seemed to spark around his body was like a blinding light show. "You may be able to defy death, but always remember that you can never defy destiny, Reaper."
Then, in another flash of light that usually accompanied the Man in Olive's bursts of speed, he vanished.
Ruby will get him next time. She will get him next time. She has to. She has to get faster, stronger. He can't just get away with what he did!
But he was right. She wasn't fast enough. Not yet.
Knowing that he was long gone, Ruby dragged her broken body back to her dorm. It looked like Blake was awake. The noise of the storm from the open window must have woken her up. The window was closed when Ruby got back to their room. Ruby ignored Blake's stare and her questions as she plopped down on her bunk. Her Aura will hear her injuries by the time morning came. Probably. Hopefully.
She had to get faster. She just had to. If she can't even keep up, if every time she got close enough to touch him and he would just pull away, then she would never catch him and make him pay for what he did to Uncle Qrow. To Dad. To Mom.
She just had to get faster. She just had to.
X
"Look what he did to her!" Yang shrieked with an intensity Ruby rarely heard from her. Ruby instinctively shied away, leaning closer to Weiss. Blake hovered near Yang, ready to pull her back if she got too aggressive, but she otherwise let Yang vent. Ruby once felt intimidated at being in Headmaster Ozpin's large and ornate office, but it was Yang with her fiery hair drawing everyone's attention at the moment. "What are you going to do about this?"
"A few cuts to her cloak," Headmaster Ozpin observed from where he sat at his desk, "and a few nicks and bruises that Ruby's Aura has yet to heal."
Ruby unconsciously swallowed, the motion making her wince. Her neck had received a few more hits than she had remembered. The adrenaline had finally worn off when Ruby woke up this morning. The bandages helped, as did the support of her teammates, but without the painkillers, Ruby wouldn't be standing right now.
"That's the problem," Yang continued. "The Man in the Olive Coat got pass Beacon security and beat Ruby into a bloody pulp, and her Aura's barely kicked in at all to patch her up. What's going to happen the next time the he comes around? Are you just gonna let him walk in like he owns the place? Let him hurt Ruby again?"
Professor Goodwitch, standing at Ozpin's side, looked sharply at Yang. "Your anger is understandable, Miss Xiao-Long, but watch your tone." Then she looked sharply at Ozpin. "Her passion is not without merit, however. The rumors of the Man in the Olive Coat being capable of rendering a Huntsman's Aura null and void appear to have some truth to them. Is the device James sent fully operational?"
"It should be completed tonight." Ozpin regarded Weiss with an expectant look.
Standing tall, at attention, looking a lot like some of the pictures Ruby has seen of Winter Schnee, Weiss confidently said, "I will assist Professor Oobleck and make sure the calibrations are completed before nightfall."
Ozpin nodded proudly. Weiss was one Ozpin's favorite students, after all, what with him investing in Weiss' studies as a huntress when Weiss' dad had cut her off her from the Schnee family fortune. "The Materia prototype will be the perfect lure for the Man in Olive," Ozpin said, "but ensure you make use of the diluted Dust crystals Bartholomew and I had synthesized. The Man in Olive will not realize the radiation the prototype will emit is false until it's too late. By then, the force field will be active, and we will have him within our grasp."
Yang looked about ready to go on another tirade, but Professor Goodwitch cut her off before she could. "And our seasoned huntsmen that we have recalled will apprehend this fugitive." She glared pointedly at each member of Team RWBY. "The Grimm's increased ferocity against our borders and the need to send more of our veteran huntsmen and huntresses to the front lines does not justify your vigilante actions. You are students; capable, intelligent, but young and inexperienced. It is only luck that Roman Torchwick or a White Fang extremist hasn't yet killed any of you."
Blake's ears perked up. Her cat ears, that is, but those were of course hidden by her bow. "The police can deal with common criminals, but the White Fang are too organized for them to handle. It can't be helped that the White Fang are the only meaningful force for change for the Faunus, even if the White Fang are going about it the wrong way. I know that the man who killed Ruby and Yang's family has to stopped, but you can't just keep ignoring –"
"We are not ignoring the civil unrest and domestic terrorism going on within Vale, Miss Belladonna," Ozpin interrupted coolly. "We are merely prioritizing the current obstacles to the path to peace accordingly to their threat levels. We have agents dealing with the White Fang, regardless of your own independent activities against the organization. We have lobbied for the changes in social policy you and many others have put forth. The elimination of a man seemingly capable of disrupting humanity's key advantage against Grimm – a person's Aura, the extension of one's very soul – requires our upmost attention."
"Then maybe improve campus security while you're at it," Yang muttered through gritted teeth. She was calming down a bit, but she was still warm with simmering rage. "He almost killed Ruby!"
She was right. "Just almost, though," Ruby pointed out. Everyone's eyes turned to her. Ruby averted their looks, glancing at her boots. "He could have killed me if he wanted to. It was pretty obvious. He wants me alive for some reason. He seemed to know me, and he seemed to think that I knew him. 'For a long time,' he said."
"Curious questions that we will have answered once we have apprehended him," Ozpin said with an air of finality. "Miss Rose, I would like to speak to you in private for a moment. The rest of Team RWBY may wait outside and escort Miss Rose to the infirmary afterward. Glynda, please speak with Port about last night's security team." Ozpin gestured to the door.
Team RWBY stood their ground. Ruby was flattered at their willingness to stand with her, but she gave her teammates her best smile and nudged them to the door. "I can still stand on my own. Don't worry guys."
Like the awesome partner Weiss was, she offered a rare smile that was earnest, trusting, without her typical haughty attitude. Giving Ruby a one-armed hug, she left the room. Blake glanced between Ruby and Yang hesitantly, but she soon followed after Weiss.
Yang hadn't moved an inch, but when Professor Goodwitch walked by her and Ruby, Goodwitch whispered, "I'll schedule another appointment between you two and your father. today"
There weren't supposed to be any visiting hours for the prison today, but being the right-hand for the Headmaster of Beacon Academy gave Professor Goodwitch a lot of pull in the government. Yang's red eyes finally faded back to their normal purple as she whispered back, "Thanks, Glynda."
"You're welcome, Yang."
Yang was always the rebellious type, but it was nice to know that she still recognized how much of a good guardian Glynda Goodwitch was to them all these years.
Still, it was too bad there wasn't enough political favors in the world to get Dad outright freed from prison. Ruby barely understood all the politics that went on between the Huntsmen Academies and the Vale Council, but at the end of the day, the garbage lawyers and judges still believed that the "ironclad" evidence pointed to Taiyang Xiao-Long killing Mom and Uncle Qrow. Why they haven't let up and just believe that the Man in the Olive Coat killed them and framed Dad, Ruby still hasn't figured out. Like a lot of things related to that monster, it irked her to no end.
After an obligatory hug and a stern warning to watch herself from Yang, and a supportive pat on the back from Goodwitch, Ruby was left alone with Ozpin.
"I'll spare you the obligatory advice to take care of yourself," Ozpin said with a good-humored smile. Ruby smiled back, though she was too weary to put much energy into it. "I suppose I'll leave the lecturing for not reporting the Man in the Olive Coat's presence immediately for Glynda and your father." Ruby lost her smile. "What I will give you, Miss Rose, is a simple question: Why did this mysterious figure call you 'Reaper'?"
Ruby shrugged. "I don't know. He also called me by my real name, but I don't where 'Reaper came from."
"I believe it is a challenge," Ozpin said. He leaned back against his seat. "How far are you in your historical studies, Miss Rose? Does the name, the Grimm Reaper, ring any bells?"
Ruby thought on it. "One of the best Huntresses in recent history," she vaguely recalled. "No one knew her real name or face since she always wore a mask, but plenty of people knew how skilled she was at killing Grimm. She cleared out a lot of infested territory in Sanus and Anima for people to set up villages, but then she disappeared. A lot of those villages got wiped out in the end, too."
"I may not look like it, but I'm old enough to have met and personally known the famous Grimm Reaper in her prime," Ozpin said. He approached Ruby, guiding his wheelchair to move himself around his desk. "As the unofficial overseer for all Huntsman Academies, I make it a point to become familiar with all of my potential allies. Of course, thanks to the inherent nature to a hunter's lifelong goal, of protecting humanity from the forces of darkness, I have sent a great many of those allies to their deaths."
Shuffling her feet, Ruby wasn't sure what to say. "Is that, uh, what happened to the Grimm Reaper?"
"No," Ozpin said flatly as he wheeled himself directly in front of Ruby. Ozpin was still slightly taller than Ruby at this height, but even without factoring in size, Ozpin looked pretty intimidating with that cold, wrinkled, almost sorrowful expression on his face. "For a great many of my allies, students, and friends, they did not lose their lives while ensuring the safety and prosperity of their fellow man, or while eliminating the everlasting threat of Grimm that have always threatened to overwhelm and consume all that we love and cherish. They did not lose their lives while on missions I had assigned them. Instead, they lost their lives needlessly. In meaningless executions."
Now, Ruby had a good idea what Ozpin was talking about. "The Man in the Olive Coat killed them," she said.
"Yes. Many fell by his hands. The Grimm Reaper. South Dakota. Leonard Lionheart. David Washington... Qrow Branwen. Summer Rose."
Ruby's family wasn't the first. She knew about the rumors, but she hadn't realized that murderer had been active for so long. "How long has the Man in Olive been killing hunters?" Ruby asked.
"The Grimm Reaper was the first we know of. Why kill them? What are his motives? I can't say. I can say that this man, a man with eyes like Grimm and abilities that rival some of the greatest Huntsmen of the recent generations, has slain many people." Ozpin paused. "He has also slain a great many Grimm. He appears to be a superb killer who relishes in drawing blood, regardless of the species or inclusion of a soul."
"He's killed Grimm?" Ruby asked in surprise.
"Yes, though I doubt it was for the benefit of humanity, seeing how he has just as easily killed decent, good huntsmen." Ozpin held up something wrapped in a black cloth. "Qrow Branwen and Summer Rose were more than decent hunters. They and the rest of Team STRQ were the best of the best. I oversaw their training personally, and until the unfortunate drama that came with Raven's desertion, they were truly the deadliest huntsmen and huntresses I had ever known. Even more so than the Grimm Reaper."
Ozpin handed Ruby the cloth. Opening it up, she saw that it was a greyish skull mask. A human skull, not like a skull or a bone design resembling a Grimm's like how the White Fang or lawless raiders used. "This looks like the Grimm Reaper's mask," Ruby said, vaguely recalling a drawing of it from her history textbook. There were no known surviving photographs of the Grimm Reaper.
"It was indeed hers," Ozpin said as he rolled back, "and it is now yours."
"What?" Ruby was taken off guard. "Why?"
"The world of Remnant requires a new Reaper," Ozpin said proudly, "one capable of overcoming not only the Grimm, not only the malcontents and parasitic bandits sabotaging our pursuit for peace, but also the monsters that appear to transcend all those threats. Namely, this Slayer of Men and Grimm."
"Wait a second. Is that why the Man in Olive called me Reaper? He thinks I can actually beat him?"
"As I said, Team STRQ was the deadliest, superior in their speed, strength, and determination compared to all of their peers and seniors. Summer's and Taiyang's blood runs through you, and you have partially adopted Qrow's fighting style and aspects of your father's. I can't say why this Slayer has not targeted your sister, but he appears to think you, Miss Rose, will one day become a Reaper capable of defeating him."
Ruby wasn't sure how to feel about this. "Do you really think that? I mean, I want to see him go down. I want him to pay for what he did. He has to be caught, admit that he killed Uncle Qrow and mom, and get Dad out of jail. But he's too fast for me to even catch up. Besides, you already have a plan to capture him tonight. Right?"
"A man in my position must plan for all eventualities. While I am confident in Miss Schnee's and Doctor Oobleck's technical prowess, this Slayer is not the only threat out there." Ozpin smirked. "I've seen the Grimm Reaper at work. I taught Team STRQ. Now, I wish to personally train you, Miss Rose, to become a new Reaper of the Soulless, leading Team RWBY and the rest of your generation in a new age of justice and heroism to suppress and ultimately destroy the forces of darkness."
Personal training, huh? By the Headmaster of Beacon, too. Ruby knew that Ozpin played favorites with RWBY in general, but now with this offer... "I need to get faster. And stronger. I'll do whatever I have to." Ruby stared at the mask in her hands. "I won't let the Slayer or anyone else hurt my family again."
"Of course," Ozpin agreed. "I always believed you were destined for great things. I am only accelerating the process."
Destined? Ruby rarely thought about destiny all that much. "It is your destiny to lose to me, Reaper," the Slayer had said last night. "You can never defy destiny, Reaper."
There's no such thing as destiny. There are decisions. Choices. The Slayer has done horrible things, made unforgivable choices. Ruby's going to make the right choices to take him down. His talk about her and her family's destiny was total garbage. She's going to feel so happy when he gets proven wrong.
Ruby tried on the mask. She could see through the eye slits surprisingly clearly.
Reaper of the Soulless, huh? Slayer of Men and Grimm. Everyone knew you had to have a decently creative mind to come up with good team names out of the team members' initials, but Ruby guessed Headmaster Ozpin had a particular flair for the dramatic when he came up with these titles.
"Thank you, Headmaster Ozpin," Ruby said through the mask. "For helping me. Letting me into Beacon. Supporting my team. You and Glynda doing your best to help out my dad while he's stuck in prison. Making a plan to get the Slayer once and for all." Ruby took a deep breath. The material of the mask felt cool on her skin, but she's grown pretty numb to the cold. "For everything. I wouldn't be where I am today without the help of a lot of people, and those people include you, so... Thanks."
"You're welcome, Ruby," Ozpin said with a smile. "I have to say that I feel the same way about you." Ozpin turned away. "Don't disappoint."