Divergent Evolution
This is a work of fan fiction, created for entertainment purposes only and with no claim to the characters depicted. Ownership of RWBY characters and concepts belongs to Rooster Teeth. The Descendants and all related characters and concepts belong to Landon Porter and Paradox-Omni Entertainment.
Chapter 1 – A New Kind of Breech
Jaune half-stumbled, half-slid his way down a mossy embankment, ending up at the bottom on his knees. It would have been cool-looking if he hadn't been pinwheeling his arms for balance the whole time. To his credit, he recovered quickly—fast enough that he was on his feet by the time the rest of Team JNPR reached him.
He gave a quick nod, both to mollify the look of concern Pyrrha was giving him and to head off whatever loud comment Nora was going to ask before she bellowed it out into the whole forest. That both women had their weapons in their ranged mode made him feel a tiny bit self aware of the sword and expandable shield he was holding.
This time more than ever, his combat skills would be useless in this mission.
True, it was a joint recon mission with Teams RWBY and CRDL, but if past was prologue... well they'd be fighting their way out of it by the end. With Yang, Nora, Ruby, and Dove all on the same mission, stealth was less an option and more the stuff of miracles. And if they didn't draw attention, Weiss's outrage at their antics would. Or his bungling.
Of course right now it was possible anyone might slip up given how little rest they'd had in the past three weeks.
Just days after the White Fang terror attack that became widely known as The Breech, Professor Ozpin had been given an involuntary leave of absence by the Vale Council and had been temporarily replaced by a man named Dr. Ulric Pinkerton.
As someone who really and truly unqualified to be a Hunter in training, Jaune felt fair in his assessment that Dr. Pinkerton was not just unqualified to be in charge of Vale's Hunters in training, but woefully so. Frighteningly so.
Case in point: the first years hadn't been in class for three weeks. Why? Because Dr. Pinkerton felt their time was better spent gaining 'hands on' experience patrolling the wilderness around Vale and Beacon with an aim toward exterminating the Grimm living there.
It was, granted, a nice thought; the school using the Emerald and Everfall Forests as training grounds had kept the Grimm numbers manageable and with a few notable exceptions relatively young and weak. It was theoretically possible to wipe out the Grimm there given time.
What was less reasonable were the daily patrols and recon missions to that end with only a few hours set aside for rest, sleep and training. The students were getting worn out, stressed and accident prone. And the negative emotions that came with that was drawing more Grimm.
Nora had already been to the infirmary once that week, having overbalanced with Magnhild, leaving herself open to an Ursa. Team CRDL was even down Sky, who was in recovery after having his aura completely shattered.
Even so, Dr. Pinkerton had sent the top three first year teams out yet again to investigate an odd migration pattern one of the other groups had noted during the last day's patrols.
Jaune could see all three of his teammates flagging. Nora hadn't been given time to recover properly before being put back on the team while Ren didn't have a lot of stamina to start with. Pyrrha was trying not to show it as she tended to the others, doing her damnedest to keep morale up, but Jaune could tell she was winding down as well in how forced her smiles were and how, when she thought no one else was looking, she leaned on Milo for support.
When he caught a glimpse of Team RWBY through the brush, he could see it in them too. All but Ruby; she seemed immune to fatigue.
Whatever happened during this mission, Jaune was planning on calling his whole team in sick the next day and suggesting the same to his diminutive friend. He was even starting to hear things.
Aside from the snarling of the Grimm and their crashing through the underbrush somewhere ahead of them, he was starting to hear noises associated with city life: horns honking, traffic, the murmur of people's voices. That was impossible of course: they were deep in the Emerald Forest, far from anything like civilization.
There was something else as well: a low-level crackling hum he couldn't place. Possibly his brain slowly shutting down from lack of proper sleep. He was about to dismiss the whole thing when Pyrrha tilted her head and spoke up.
"Does anyone else hear that?"
Ren frowned. "Like Vale during rush hour? I was waiting to be sure of what I was hearing before I said anything."
"You guys-" Nora started loudly only to find Ren's finger over her lips, forcing her to quiet down. "to?" she continued in a whisper. "I thought I was going crazy. How're there people out here and no one told us?"
"Not a hallucination then if we're all hearing it," said Jaune, fishing out his scroll. "He opened it and chose Ruby from his contact list. "Hey Rubes? Are you guys hearing... Vale? Did we get turned around out here?"
The diminutive scythe-wielder's face appeared on the screen. Somehow, despite the routine nature of the mission and the grinding pace at which their teams had been working, she was still bright-eyed and looking excited to be on the job. "Nope! That's what I thought, but Blake's on map duty and she says we're twenty miles out. That means there's a whole town out here no one's ever discovered! Isn't that so cool?"
It kind of was, Jaune thought. Except for the Grimm congregating around it. Nomads struck out all the time with minds set on founding new settlements. Everyone assumed they all disappeared because they'd fallen victim to the Grimm, but maybe this was proof that some didn't. It would be a huge boost in the world's morale to know there was another bastion for human and faunus kind out there—that expansion was possible.
But the opposite would be true if the place were destroyed. And along with the negative emotions generated by that event? More Grimm attacks.
"Really cool," he assured Ruby, not wanting to dampen the girl's excitement. "Is that where the Grimm are headed?"
Ruby shook her head. "Not sure." She manipulated her scroll and popped up a map on Jaune's screen along with a blinking red guidance dot indicating a spot a quarter mile from their position. "We're heading to this ridge to get a better view of what's out here. Maybe you guys and CRDL should meet us there?"
"Sounds like a good idea. We'll see you in a bit."
He turned back to his team, seeing that they'd heard the whole thing. They all looked like they could use a week or two of sleep, but none of them were complaining. Even Nora, which said volumes about just how tired she was.
Together, they circled around toward the marked ridge. It took just over a quarter of an hour for them to finally rendezvous with Team RWBY and when they got there, they had to stop and stare in awe.
Below the ridge, a natural rill valley had been cleared some time earlier that year by a tree over a century old finally toppling and rolling over its neighbors until partially sinking into a pond. Near the pond, on the eastern edge of the clearing, something extraordinarily strange sat.
It looked as if someone had taken a video of an enormous bonfire there, chromakeyed the fire itself out and replaced it with the image of a city. Or like there was a wildly flickering hole in the world with a city on the other side. The visual did uncomfortable things to their eyes.
"What the heck is that?!" Nora only just managed to force herself to whisper.
"I know, right?" Yang was having the same problem.
"It's like nothing I've ever seen before." Weiss said, still kneeling and watching the bizarre sight. "We've been here for a good ten minutes and I can't make heads or tails of it. All I can say is, the Grimm are definitely heading here." She nodded to the rest of the clearing where small clusters of Beowulfs, Boarbatusks and Ursae were milling about. More were joining them by the moment, new arrivals snarling and snapping at the ones already there to win better positioning.
Blake was lying on her belly, almost completely concealed in the glass as she surveyed the site through binoculars. "Actually there's more. I wasn't completely certain because you can't see it all the time, but if you look at the base of... that thing... there's a pad of metal mesh under it. I think whatever this thing is, it's man made."
Ruby, leaning against a tree near her sister, looked to Team Juniper. "Any ideas what it is? 'Cause we're stumped."
"Maybe it's something that was keeping that city hidden and now it's failing," Ren suggested. "That would explain why the Grimm of congregating."
"A cloak that can cover an entire city? That's some pretty heavy duty technology, don't you think?" Jaune mused, though he had no explanation himself.
Pyrrha shrugged. "It doesn't have to be technology. This could be the product of someone's Semblance or direct Dust manipulation."
Nora opened her mouth to chime in, but Blake shushed everyone. "Hold on. Something's happening."
All eyes turned toward the—for lack of a better word—anomaly. The flickering had slowed and the edges of the thing, becoming more defined and flaring a crackling silver. It slowly took on an oval shape before stretching into a square pane around thirty feet tall and just as wide across.
The city beyond similarly changed—it came more into focus, like an image projected on the screen as the 'scene' seemed to pan down the street level. All of a sudden the city sounds grew more frenetic. There were screams, the screeching of tires, and the general sound of panic.
The image settled exactly even with the street just as a car, tired screaming, drove partially past the threshold and into the clearing.
It was as if a switch had been thrown and where the Grimm had previously seemed to barely notice the settlement that was so near them, every bone-masked head turned toward the fully resolved portal and the monsters of Grimm roared out their blood-lust the annihilate humanity.
A black tide began to stampede toward the portal and the poor driver whose car had crossed over.
The eight hunters in training saw what was happening and it was as if all the weariness melted away when they saw a person in danger.
"Weiss!" Ruby shouted as she expanded Crescent Rose into it's scythe mode. Without any further prompting, the Schnee heiress rose and drew Myrtlenaster. With a flourish of the weapon, she conjured a line of glyphs from the top of the ridge in a gentle slope down toward the stranded motorist.
Giving a nod, Ruby mounted the first glyph and was off in a burst of rose petals. She got there just as the first Beowulf dug its claws into the driver's side door. Crescent Rose claimed both it's paws before Ruby reversed her swing and stove the monster's head in with the butt of her weapon. She then stabilized the blade against the hood of the car and opened fire on the incoming horde.
"Welp." Yang pulled out her aviators and donned them before extending the Ember Celica over her arms. "We know what to do now, don't we?" With a whoop, she took a flying leap which she extended with twin shotgun blasts. She struck a glyph some two hundred feet away and bounded off it with another blast. This time she came down on the back of an Ursa, dealing it a double-tap to the back of the head which subsequently landed her on the top of the car behind her sister where she began firing away with wild abandon.
Blake wasn't far behind, keeping low. At the end of the glyph road, she struck the ground in a roll and threw the ribbon of the Gambol Shroud around the legs a trio of Beowolves, yanking off their feet where they couldn't avoid being gunned down in turn.
Finally came Weiss. While the others were holding back the attackers, she instead ran to the edge of the glyphs and landed beside the passenger door, pulling it open to assist the trapped driver.
Back on the ridge, Jaune looked back at his team. While Team RWBY seemed to operate on an almost telepathic level, JNPR still needed verbal commands to assemble their strategy. Luckily, their leader was a quick thinker. He quickly surmised on problem with RWBY's strategy: The Grimm weren't just after the driver.
The corrupted bodies broke around the impenetrable shield of gunfire protecting the car, charging through the portal and into the city beyond. Even if Team RWBY could save the driver, they were now surrounded and the only relatively safe path... led through the portal.
So that's where they were going to have to go.
"Nora, thin the herd behind them at the gate! Ren, covering fire. Pyrrha, once Weiss clears the car, use it as a mobile bulwark. I'll help guard the flank." He took another look at the city beyond the portal. It was unfamiliar an familiar at the same time. The architecture as off, nothing had the telltale glow of Dust circuits. It felt... alien. He swallowed hard at the thought. "We're going to have to go through that if we want us and our friends to survive guys."
Again, none of them argued. They trusted him. Leadership had always hung heavy on his shoulders, but never so heavy as it was doing right then. If everything he learned from comic books was true, they were about to stumble not just into a new settlement, but a whole other world.
Yet, as he leapt onto the first glyph, he heard the familiar thud of Pyrrha's boots not even a full second behind him and an explosion told him Nora was using Magnahild to get to that uncertain fate he'd laid out even faster. Though he couldn't hear him, he knew Ren was on the move too.
All thought of being thankful for how fortunate he was to have them had to take a back seat as he reached the end of the glyph road. Dropping down in front of the car, he raised his shield to block an incoming Boarbatusk. The creature's weight and momentum pushed him back a good two feet until the backs of his knees hit the bumper, but through force of Aura, he pushed the beast back and buried Croacea Mors in its belly as it unrolled. The squealing beast dropped to the dirt, its form subliming into black smoke.
A Beowulf came and he caught its claws on his sword before shield bashing it away. Then he had to slash at another across the chest and ducked under the powerful paw of an Ursa. He didn't know how long he'd been at it before Pyrrha's voice cut through the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears.
"Jaune! Down!"
He dropped. Despite her misgivings about relying too much on her Semblance, there was one place where Jaune had insisted on a training regiment for Pyrrha: weight training. And it was all specifically for this maneuver. As soon as he was flattened to the ground, the car came swinging in right over his head like a two-ton wrecking ball.
Two Ursae and who knew how many lesser Grimm were crushed in the onslaught and Jaune rolled to his feet to see a mangled heap of metal and whatever Grimm bodies were made of floating a few inches off the ground, suspended in a black haze.
Just as he'd hoped, the charging monsters were forced to detour around the obstruction, breaking their momentum and putting them in prime position for the two teams' ranged fighters to pick them off.
That let him fall back to where the group had formed up at the threshold of the portal. He fell in beside Pyrrha and locked his shield with hers, forming cover for Nora, Ren, Yang and Blake to keep up a steady patter of fire from behind.
The problem was that one car and the two teams were not enough to cover the breadth of the portal. The smarter—and by extension stronger—Grimm were quickly realizing they could just bypass the hunters entirely to get at the city beyond and its more vulnerable citizens.
"It's no good! They're getting through!" Ruby shouted. "We need to block the portal! Everyone fall back! Weiss, ice wall!"
Beacon didn't officially have sister teams, but RWBY and JNPR might as well have been for how often they shared training and missions. This meant they'd come to work together with one another almost as well as they did with their own team. Both groups began a fighting retreat.
"Watch your step!" Blake warned. She'd been left helping the driver, who was having a major panic attack, and as she was in the rear, she was the first to notice the narrow gap in the ground delineating the line between one side of the portal and the other. About two inches below that gap, the roiling silver energy shimmered. She didn't know what would happen if anything touched it, but she didn't want to find out.
Both teams were careful to avoid the gap as they backed into the other world.
The first obvious change was the temperature. They'd been in the cool of autumn, but on the other side it was mild and warm; late spring or early summer. The other thing was that Jaune had been right: the buildings around them were like nothing they'd ever seen. They towered over them, five times taller than even the Emerald Tower at Beacon. The cars were similarly different; more sleek and less bulky; as if they didn't have Dust chambers or circuits in them at all.
No one had time to focus on that though, as there was still a tide of Grimm to fight and citizens behind them under attack.
"Pyrrha, Nora, clear the portal so Weiss can make her wall!" Jaune ordered. The two women complied. Pyrrha pulled the wreck of the car through and slammed it down on top of a pack of Beowolves that were coming through while Nora opened up the muzzle of Magnahild and fired a full salvo, blowing away all the minor Grimm In front of the gate.
Weiss then leapt in, plunging Myrtlenaster into the asphalt and conjuring a six-foot thick iceberg that filled the open space of the portal. Where it touched the silvery edges, it crackled and burned away like melting film. She watched those spots warily, but the damage didn't seem to spread even as the Grimm on the other side pounded on the frozen bulwark.
"I used up nearly all my Freeze Dust for that, but it's not going to last forever," she informed her leader.
Ruby nodded. "Okay guys, we need to take this time to get all the civilians out of here! Find someplace safe to put them! Block off the side streets so the Grimm don't spread out!"
A groaning noise seemed to reply to her and the nearest poles supporting street lights began to warp and lower. Their transformation turned them into tangled messes of twisted metal that fell upon the Grimm pursuing fleeing citizens, entangling them.
"Great job, Pyrrha!" Ruby praised.
The spartan, however only looked confused as she watched more metal implements; from car doors to railings; lurching into motion to obstruct, hinder or trap Grimm that got too close to them. "This... isn't me." In fact, not only was there no telltale black energy signature, but the way the metal was being manipulated was entirely different from her style. She could lift and bend it as if with her own hand (albeit with more range and strength and less dexterity), but the metal around the grim was reshaping itself like clay—and never being lifted unless by its own motion.
Jaune ducked under the swing from a Beowolf, countering it with a slash to the back of its knees as he ran past. "Who is it then?"
"What about that guy?" Nora pointed while at the same time swinging her hammer into a whirling Boarbatusk, launching it into a swarm of creeps, utterly crushing them. In the direction she was pointing came a figure dressed in black—not unlike a ninja from one of Blake's books: a form-fitting long sleeved top, fitted pants, soft boots and a cowl. However, that wasn't the remarkable part. That honor was a tie between the fact that they were swinging down from ten stories high—or by the fact that they were swinging from a set of gold-colored metallic tendrils emerging from his upper arms that writhed like living things as they lashed out and sought purchase.
As the two teams fought and watched, the figure dropped down toward where a pack of five Beowolves had knocked down a man in a suit. The Alpha was looming over the screaming man as the pack toyed with him, lifting him in their jaws by his arms and legs and worrying him like dogs playing with chew toys.
Just as the Alpha roared in exaltation at its pack's viciousness, the figure in black slammed into it feet first, sending it flying over its pack's victim and rolling down the street. Its attacker landed standing over the man, the metal tentacles whipping out to swiftly knock back the remaining pack.
"You're alright, buddy." they heard the newcomer say as he helped the terrified civilian to his feet. "I've got you." As he slung the man's arm over his shoulder, the hunters in training could see that the 'ninja' with the metal tentacles was significantly shorter than the person they were rescuing.
Victim secure, the figure pointed to a window three stories above and one of the tentacles snapped out, its leading edge forming a harpoon that anchored into the concrete structure before reeling both savior and saved up to said window. Before they could reach it, the second tentacle smashed in the window, allowing them to pass through without harm.
Yang launched herself over the head of an Ursa chasing down a mother and her two small children and force-fed the monster a one-two combination of shotgun blasts, blowing its head off. "Well, at least we know there's hunters here."
"At least the one." Blake agreed. She used her Semblance to lure in a charging Beowolf Alpha, and wrap the ribbon of Gambol Shroud around it's over-extended claw, holding it in place so it couldn't dodge being gunned down.
The fight had become focused on fighting spot fires: taking out the Grimm who were actively attacking civilians. Without even conferring, they'd split up into their partner groups to do so. Jaune and Pyrrha had found a concrete block of a building with a readily defensible entrance and were protecting it as the others brought rescued citizenry to shelter there.
"Oh my goodness," said one elderly lady who like many of the victims seemed entirely to used to this kind of thing to Jaune's eyes. She was looking at him and Pyrrha and Weiss (who had ferried her over by glyph) with excited curiosity. "Are you new? I try to keep up with PrelateWatch, but there's so many new ones these days. Are you members of the Descendants?"
While Jaune just looked at her in confusion, and Weiss just left to go find more people in need of help, Pyrrha managed to be diplomatic, gently taking the old lady by the arm and leading her to the door even as Jaune was forced to strike down a few invading immature Creeps.
That would have been all well and good if the next wave of creeps hadn't been accompanied by an Ursa. And not just any Ursa, but an incredibly old and powerful one if its nearly twelve-foot height and nearly all-bone white body were any indicator.
The titan lumbered forward all too slowly, looking as if it were wading through its retinue of attendant creeps.
Jaune knew there was nothing for it. He wasn't a match for the old Ursa Alpha, but until Pyrrha got the elderly woman to safety, he was the only line of defense between it and the blocky building they were extracting the civilians to.
So he took one of the defensive stances Pyrrha had taught him and raised his shield, fending off and slaying the first of the creeps easily. All he could hope for was the one of his friends got to him before the Alpha tore him to shreds.
More Creeps met their end on his blade and the suddenly there were far fewer between him and the Ursa. Sweat started trickling down the back of his neck. All he could think of was how it would really be a great time for Pyrrha to come to his rescue. Sure, he'd been a little indignant during initiation when she speared him to a tree to keep him from dying before even entering Beacon. And he'd been a straight up ass when she offered to help him train the first time.
But this time, he promised the universe, this time she would be ever so grateful of she could just show up right now behind him and stab the thing through the eye or something.
Then he didn't have time to think about anything because two tons of deadly Grimm was looming over him. He took what advantage he could, stepping in under the first claw swipe and deflecting its angle with his shield while at the same time stabbing for all he was worth at a narrow space between two of the beast's bone plates.
The blow was fouled by the Grimm's motion grinding the two plates together at the exact wrong time, causing a telling stab to only manage to drive two inches into the corrupted thing's flesh. There would be no time for another. The Ursa looked down and parted its jaws in a ferocious roar even as it raised its other paw.
Something flexible and made of something that looked like gold wrapped that paw and arrested its movement. The Ursa paused in clear confusion at this, testing its strength against a bond that managed to hold it fast.
"Move!" An unfamiliar male voice shouted.
Jaune didn't need to be told twice, diving aside just as the restraint went slack. The unexpected release made the Ursa unintentionally follow up on its swing with no target, burying its claws in the concrete sidewalk.
Then the black-clad figure from before came sailing over its back, their metallic tentacles (one of which Jaune now realized had been the thing restraining the Ursa's paw) coming around to strike the ground first and gently lower them to the ground.
Up close, Jaune could say definitively that this strange otherworld Hunter was, in fact a ninja. He was dressed in all black training togs and only two things ruined the ninja look: One, instead of a ninja mask, he wore a bandanna tied over his head and eyes with holes cut into it so he could see out of it like an extra in a Pearl Flynn movie. Two, he had on a brown leather carpenter's belt with a bright red buckle in the shape of a stylized 'D'.
It was a strange get-up to say the least.
The tentacles whipped at the Ursa's face, aiming for its exposed eye and forcing the monster to shy back to protect them.
"...like Dia de los Muertos at the Logan Zoo," the ninja was saying, though apparently not to Jaune. "Just get here was quickly as they can. There's some people with powers and weapons here who seem like they know what they're doing fighting these things, but there's just so damn many!"
One of the tentacles ceased its whipping attacks and rebounded from the Ursa to press part of its mass against the wall of the blockhouse and then drove forward with its leading edge splitting into a thick 'X' shape. The concrete of the blockhouse cracked as it took the equal and opposite force of an impact that actually lifted the Alpha off the ground and hurled it into the side of a now-abandoned box truck.
The metal sides of the truck crushed in like an empty soda can around the monster, trapping it. It was only a temporary measure as the beast was already straining and flexing, forcing the metal form its body.
"Shit. And some of these things are insanely bad ass," said the ninja. "Better armor up."
There was a grinding sound from above and Jaune ducked away as what appeared to be train tracks came rolling down from the top of the blockhouse. The twisted metal looked like it was going to land on the ninja, but moments before ti did so, it twisted and stretched so violently that Jaune's eye couldn't fully track what happened; only that a few hundred pounds of rail had become a suit of bulky medieval armor around the ninja, turning him into the very image of a knight.
That image was furthered as excess metal slithered across the armor to the former ninja's arms to become and arming sword and tower shield.
"I'm going to try and get some info. Hope to see you as soon as possible. Tenth and Excelsior." His odd conversation over, the armored hero turned to Jaune. "Hey, you happen to know what these things are?"
Jaune blinked. He'd been pretty uneducated when he came to Beacon, but was it even possible to exist on Remnant without knowing a Grimm on sight? Of course it was then that it struck home to him that they had stepped through a portal and could very well have been on another world.
But a world without the threat of Grimm? Was there really such a paradise?
"Uh... Grimm." Yes, that was incredibly helpful. He kicked himself for that. "They're... like anti-souls or something. Monsters attracted to negative emotion that pretty much exist to destroy humanity? Look, I'm kind of failing Grimm Anatomy—Professor Port's class is the most boring thing in the universe."
"So I'm gathering... not sentient?" asked the newcomer, not sounding surprised or off-put at all about the rest of what Jaune had to say.
Jaune shrugged. He'd never thought about it and the Ursa was close to fighting its way out of the truck. "No?"
"Good. Boys?" The tentacles made a sound like the soft rasping of iron filings over one another and then their leading edges became visibly sharp.
"Wait." Jaune tried to get into a ready stance, but this display was getting to him. "Have you been fighting non-lethal? Against Grimm?"
"Until I knew they were mindless monsters? Hell yeah. For all I knew they were just criminal protomorphs. Or werewolves and werebears are a thing now. Can't take this kind of thing for granted."
Jaune settled into his ready stance, prepared to once more stand sentinel against the monstrous creature as it lumbered forward again. "Sorry, but... protomorph?"
"Oh right. Judging by the fact that there's a giant portal in the middle of the street and you know things about the monsters that came out of it, I'm going to guess you're not from this world."
Well there was confirmation. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure." Not that he was an expert or anything, but Jaune noticed that the stranger was in a very sloppy stance, making the same kinds of mistakes he had before starting training with Pyrrha—mostly copying what he'd seen in movies.
"Okay, so let's just keep the culture shock to a minimum until this is over. Anything else I need to know about these things?"
"Yeah: the white parts are basically bone and really strong. The rest is still tough unless you put your aura behind the strike."
This time the stranger faltered, sword raised as he prepared to meet the Ursa's charge. "Aura?"
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"Ma'am, I really don't have time for a picture. There are other people in danger." Pyrrha sometimes hated herself for her unfailing politeness. Her father was very strict when it came to that sort of thing and that had been reinforced throughout all her various training and modeling deals: polite and obedient and docile—except in the arena. She hoped to eventually train herself out of those habits because she feared they might one day get her into trouble.
And the day that happened... was not this day.
The old lady—Miss (and she stressed 'miss') Mueller was just a fountain of strange questions. Did she have something called a 'Quintessence', what kind of name was 'Juniper' for a team of 'prelates', and on and on about getting a picture for her Quintessence. Pyrrha was starting to get worried about having left Jaune alone outside to stand guard, but she just couldn't get away from Miss Mueller.
"Well at the very least you have to tell me the URL for your site. You do blog your exploits don't you?"
Pyrrha was just about to admit that she had no idea what a 'blog' was and possibly comment on how unpleasant that word sounded when the front doors of the building they were in exploded and something man-sized and metallic came sailing through straight toward her and Miss Mueller.
Instinct took over and she threw her Semblance against the incoming missile, lifting it so it went flying over them instead of striking. To he shock, the thing didn't just continue on to the far wall were little enclosures with flat screen monitors on them housed what looked like enclosed Ferris-wheel cars.
Instead, two golden metal harpoons shot out of it, spearing into the floor and bringing the thing—which she could now see was an armored man to a halt. He cast aside a broken sword as he collapsed on his back, holding his side.
Everyone on the building, including Pyrrha and Miss Mueller gasped as they saw why: there were four deep claw marks gouged into the man's armor—and one of them was leaking a trickle of blood. Miss Mueller used a device that looked like a scroll if the screen was built into the housing to take a picture.
"Are you alright?" Pyrrha asked, rushing toward the stricken man. She didn't end up getting very close though because what she'd thought was harpoons disconnected from the floor and rose up like metallic cobras, warding her off with a metallic hiss.
"I'm alright," he said, strained. "Except for the fact that a bear cosplaying as Death just cut through my armor." With effort, he reached up to the claw marks in his side and caused the metal there to peel back like the lid of a sardine can. The wound wasn't as bad as it first looked: his armor had done an excellent job protecting him from all but a few shallow scratches and a deeper cut that cause the black shirt he wore under it to stick to his skin wetly.
One of the tentacles, moving with incredible deftness, came over and sliced away part of the shirt, leaving the slash wound open to the air.
"Thanks," the armored stranger muttered, then reached to his waist and somehow (Pyrrha could have sworn he put his hand through the segmented armor at his waist) took out a long, rolled piece of cloth or paper. He deftly pealed the backing off what Pyrrha took to be an adhesive bandage and pressed it to the wound with a sigh of relief.
Then the gap in the armor closed all on its own and he started to stand.
Pyrrha didn't had time to as what happened because a familiar scream came from the destroyed doorway. She turned in time to see Jaune Arc, her partner and best friend come flying in, surrounded by a nimbus of diffuse white light. It seemed that his Aura had protected him from a rather powerful blow.
To his credit, Jaune managed to twist his body in midair so that when he struck the ground, it was on his feet, skidding back a few feet to bleed off the remaining energy of the hit. Pyrrha felt a swell of pride: her training was paying off and at least now Jaune had a landing strategy.
The stranger gave Jaune what could have only been a rueful look even behind his heavy visor. "So judging by how I broke my sword instead of that thing's skin that 'Aura' is super strength."
"Super strength, speed, durability, healing and a personal force field." Jaune said, beaming back at him if only because now he knew the answer to that question.
"And you just assumed I had all those powers?"
"...don't all Hunters?" Jaune looked to Pyrrha for confirmation.
She blinked and looked at the stranger. "You... don't have your Aura unlocked?"
"Lady, I don't even know what exactly this 'Aura' thing is. Here it's like the colors of your soul or something, but you're saying it's a power set."
Something behind Pyrrha's usual polite facade sighed. How was it that she kept running into people who didn't know the basic workings of the world? Jaune had an excuse thanks to growing up in an isolated village, but this person was living in a huge city and... "But you have a Semblance."
"Um... no I don't. I have powers, but whatever a Semblance is, I think that's unique to your world."
"My...world?" she felt like she was sinking into a mire of confusion.
Thankfully Jaune came to his rescue—a bit panicked because the Ursa was coming through the hole in the doors it had made with the stranger. "Long story short, Pyrrha? We crossed into another world. One where they don't seem to have Grimm or Semblances—probably no Dust either."
"Well, we've got Grimm right now." The stranger got to his feet with the aid of one of the tentacles. He then shook the broken sword until it reformed into a short pickax. He then readied himself as the Ursa finally forced its way through the ruined door. "I'm Alloy by the way."
"Jaune. And this is Pyrrha."
"Hello."
Alloy nodded to them both, then refocused on the incoming Grimm. "Okay, so level with me: is there a way to hurt these things without 'Aura'?"
Pyrrha nodded as she drew her weapon Milo and unslung her shield Akouo. "Grimm aren't impervious; just highly resistant to physical damage. Aura helps us generate the force to overcome that resistance."
"Super strength. Got it." Then, to the confusion of the two Hunters, he looked to the tentacles. "Alright boys, maximum violence." To even greater confusion, it looked as if the two tentacles nodded... before their leading edges transformed into serrated blades.
For her part, Pyrrha decided that the day was strange enough without asking what that was all about when there was a monster to be fought. Jaune on the other hand couldn't leave well enough alone. "Um... are those things..?"
"Long story. Bear monster now."
"Oh. Right."
Jaune and Pyrrha leapt into action immediately, meeting the charging beast with their shields raised to ward off its claws. Pyrrha went high, stabbing at its eyes with Milo while Jaune went low, hacking at the spaces between the bones plates.
The sad truth though was that a pair of first year Hunters in training were just out of their pay grade against a Grimm as old as the one they were fighting. The Ursa shrugged off the injuries they inflicted and roared, slamming its heavy paws against their shields and forcing them to brace lest they be crushed against the floor.
The partners delved deep into their Auras to both enhance both their strength and their physical toughness, as it felt like every tendon in their bodies were strained almost to the point of snapping from the incredible force the beast generated pressing down on them. It felt like there was no use though: they couldn't hold out forever and once they were forced down or ran out of Aura, that would be the end.
Except it wasn't. With a sound like sheet metal being torn asunder, the tentacles lashed up from below, their edges transformed again into harpoons with wide flanges about three feet down from their blades. Braced against the floor, they managed to stab cleanly through the Ursa's wrists, the flanges keeping them from passing all the way through so they could push against the thing's claws, relieving the pressure bearing down on the two Hunters.
Pyrrha shot a grateful look back at Alloy, then looked past him. An idea formed in her head. "Jaune? When I say so, dive to your right, okay?" Her partner nodded his agreement through a grimace at continuing to hold back the Ursa even with the help of Alloy's tentacles. Then she looked to Alloy. "And if you could just... hit the deck at the same time?"
"Got it." Alloy nodded. There was some frustration in his voice since he was unable to help in the fight directly.
Giving a nod, Pyrrha chanced dropping Milos and shifting her footing so she could reach her now free hand back behind her toward one of the enclosed carts. She was never so happy for the 'weight training' Jaune had her do with her powers than when the cart became rimed in the black energy signature of her Semblance and tore through the glass and aluminum enclosure and started picking up momentum in her direction.
Years of mastering throwing both javelin and shield gave her an excellent sense of speed and angles, so she was able to judge just the correct moment to say, "Now!" Trusting Jaune to follow through with what she'd asked and hoping Alloy would as well, she gave one last heave to clear a precious inch beneath the Ursa's claw and rolled to her left.
Less than a second later, the cart came screaming back, trailing a line of sparking electrical components and slammed into the Ursa with a booming hollow clang and the racket of metal twisting and deforming. The tangle of cart and Grimm crashed, rolled and skidded halfway back to the door.
"Yes!" Jaune cheered as he picked himself up from the ground.
"We can't celebrate yet," Pyrrha warned him, using her Polarity to retrieve Milos from where she dropped it and going back into a combat stance.
Sure enough, the sound of more tearing metal started coming from inside and beneath the cart. The Ursa was breaking out.
"Oh come on!" Jaune moaned, readying his sword and shield. "That thing's still alive?"
Then the wreckage of the cart imploded, crushing in hard around the Ursa. "That's just temporary," Alloy said with an air of determination as he stood. "Hey—Pyrrha, was it?" She nodded, "Use your power to hold that thing still, okay?" Another nod and the Champion of Mistral sheathed Milos to her back and raised her hand, once more bearing down on what remained of the cart with her Semblance.
Alloy took a few steps forward and took a stand, thrusting his arms down to his sides and settling his feet about shoulders' width apart. The tentacles looped lazily around them, their harpoon-tips softening to resemble something like snake heads.
"Don't worry boys, I've got this," he nodded to them, then directed his attention to the Ursa. The monster had gotten its head and hind claws free and was struggling to stand against both the bulk of the wreckage and Pyrrha's power. "Hey Yogi. I know you're smarter than the average bear, but what do you know about chemistry?"
Sparks started to leap from the metal surrounding the Ursa, tiny stars flashing in the air around it. Alloy's voice gave the idea that that he was smirking under his visor. "Let's start the lesson with a little engineering: All commuter pods—like the one you're wearing—have a steel roll cage for safety. Steel is carbon and iron—element 26."
Even through Pyrrha's Semblance, it was clear to everyone watching that the metal was starting to turn black. The civilians started clamoring for a better look, their strange scrolls raised to get pictures and video.
"Part of my powers? To turn one metal into another. Back in the day, they called it alchemy. Everyone wanted to turn lead into gold. But you know what's a lot more fun? Iron to lithium. You want to know something fun about lithium?"
The metal was nearly all black now. Pyrrha's Semblance failed as the metal ceased being something her Polarity could affect. Parts were starting to crack and flake off, revealing bluish metal—which then burst into flame.
"It burns in air."
The flames spread rapidly, covering the breadth of the affected metal. The Ursa started to roar, but it became an animal scream as the burning lithium started to squeeze in on it. The heat made the bone armor covering the beast's body crack and split.
With a supreme effort, the Ursa flexed, putting all its strength into it, shattering the rapidly depleting lithium shell around it, sending tiny meteors flying from its body. Even more of its armor flew off as well, fused to the lithium. The Ursa let out a moan from the agony of losing so much of itself. Swaying from the pain, the Ursa stood there a moment.
The damage to its person was evident: gaping holes in its armor revealed inky black flesh that bled dark smoke.
Pyrrha saw the opening immediately and glanced to her partner. "Jaune."
The leader of Team Juniper nodded—he'd seen it too. The partners charged as one. Again, Jaune went low, dropping to his knees and sliding under a powerful claw swipe, then hacking at the exposed back of its knee, causing it to buckle and the Ursa to start toppling.
And then Pyrrha was there, flipping Milo around underhand and triggering a mechanism to shift in into its javelin form. The shaft slammed into the floor, bracing while she directed its tip toward an exposed place under the creature's jaw. Then she triggered the Dust charge in its butt, sending it leaping into that cavity and the skull beyond.
The Ursa's head snapped back as the javelin caught on the skull plate on the other side of its head. Then the monster's weight took over, tearing its own head off by dent of gravity alone. The decapitated corpse stuck the ground with a heavy thump seconds before Milo fell over as well, Grimm head still impaled upon it.
Everyone—the hunters, the civilians and Alloy as well—were quiet for a long moment. They didn't dare breath, half expecting the monster to rise again.
It didn't. Instead its body slowly began to sublime in the way dead Grimm did.
Jaune gave a nervous laugh. That seemed to break the tension and the civilians started applauding.
"Heh," Alloy said, using his power to snuff out the bits of burning lithium. "Teamwork. Nice."
Pyrrha nodded. "You were a great help in that. Can we ask you to help us defend to place? There're still more Grimm out there and and now the door there is destroyed."
"Sure," Alloy nodded, "That's my job after all. As for the Grimm, your friends are going to get some help with that soon—my friends."
RWBYRWBYRWBY
AN: So this is the next in my All the Myriad Ways project to do pilots for various fanfics I'd like to do. See also: Chemical Soldier and Shattered Stars.
This one is a request from a fan of my original published work, the Descendants series who then started reading my fanfics. It's an actual honest attempt at a crossover between The Descendants and RWBY (sadly there is no category for The Descendants because I'm not that well known. It's Arkos of course because it's me.
The conceit here is to try and do a crossover that treats both series with care and the characters with respect without making any of them better than the others. We start here with the Descendants Universe as seen from the perspective of the RWBY characters.
It was weird writing this as I couldn't just call the commuter pods what they were, or Warrick's (Alloy's) tentacle pals Isp and Osp because the RWBY characters don't know those things.
To give an idea of where this is going if there's enough interest to continue it, the RWBY characters will have to spend some time in the DU learning the differences between Hunters and Superheroes. Then we'll head over the Remnant where the DU characters will learn about the Deathworld that is Remnant and the plight of Humanity and Faunus there.
And of course with any good crossover, we'll have a villain team-up. For those of you who have read The Descendants, let's just say I've given Salem a better arachnid to work with than Tyrian.
Oh yeah and to nip this in the bud because it is going to come up next chapter and be a theme: Alloy—Warrick Kaine—is a physically weak nerd with a knight complex and typically fights with a sword whose love interest is a physically stronger and more competent redhead. And Warrick has metal-influencing powers.
I created him in late 2007 and introduced his girlfriend Tink in early 2009. This isn't a ripoff, just—I assume a case of parallel inspiration. I've got a special place in my heart for the Action Girlfriend trope thanks to Kim Possible among others, and am a nerd with a knight complex and a fondness for swords. I suspect Jaune and Pyrrha have similar origins.
I'm not sure how this will be received since from one perspective, this is going to be a story with a lot of Ocs. Even if they were from an established published work, its my work so it might still come off as the kind of self indulgence a lot of OC fall into. Perhaps I should have done a fusion or just put RWBY characters into the world, but I did kind of want especially Jaune to interact with Warrick.
Anyway, review if you want to see more of this one. Shattered Stars especially has already earned itself a future space in the rotation, so we'll see what people think of this.