The being let out a gleeful laugh. A moment sooner and the occasion would never have happened, a moment later and it would have been lost. But it had happened in just this infinitesimal moment, the knife cutting through the tie and the heart at the exact same instant the beam had linked the earth and the night sky. And in this fraction of a second, the energy that the teacher's cell had produced until the very end had been released and entered in contact with the one bringing man's judgement from the very heaven. It had searched for such an occasion through an infinity of timelines, looking for the right conditions to be met.
The energetic potential for a Paradoxical Rift had appeared. Without losing any time, It opened the way; bringing the only one close enough to be transported to where he would create a new possibility.
The laugh strained. It could feel the insanity coming forth in its soul from the walls behind which It had sealed the creeping madness.
It had to be fast so It began to dream its gift for its new chosen. It took particularly great with the weapons, weapons he was already familiar with, that he could already use and that he would come to master. Plus some hidden surprises. When It was finished It sent it to the new owner.
Clenching its fangs to fight off insanity, It brought what It had dreamed alongside the gift up to its eye level, inspecting the little thing before sending it to where and when it would serve its purpose. Hopefully this man would understand.
It made sure its alter-ego would stop its rampage before It attained the plane of the real.
And with a grin, It let itself rest. Indulging in the creeping madness.
Nagisa steered awake with the strange feeling that he should not be able to. So before opening his eyes, he tried to remember why. Why should he not be able to stir?
Then memories hit him with the strength of a truck, like one of those you could find in Yoshida's automobile magazine
They are all here, his classmates, blocking the escape way their teacher doesn't have anymore, Karasuma-sensei and B-no- Jelavic-sensei, standing setback, silent support for what's to come.
He raises the knife.
The last words of a great man.
"Indeed, this is goodbye."
The knife begins its way down.
"Congratulation on graduating."
The blade reaches its target and the sky fall.
He opened his eyes.
Ah, so he was really dead. How else could there be so much moon in the night sky? For even if this moon was shattered, there was still more than what was left after Yanagisawa's mouse had died. Strangely enough, it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. The mere presence of an afterlife meant that he could still follow the path he had chosen. And maybe, if he pursued his way, then he would meet his class again when they would pass away. The only true regret he held was not having kept his promise to his mother.
He stayed like this for a few more seconds, musing on how fitting it was for him to wake up under another broken moon, before calmly rising to his feet, noticing that he felt much lighter. It was not that surprising, he was dead after all. What was, though, was not the fact he was in a city, dead people had to live somewhere, but the box standing proudly before him with a letter to his name on top.
Dear Nagisa, you don't know me but I know you.
This, is my gift for you, and you alone. It has be dreamed with you in mind.
The chip is for your phone.
While hoping we will one day meet in person,
The Ancient One
P.S. I hope you will like the liberties I took with your apparel.
Looking down, he noted that his outfit had indeed changed. The black sleeves and legs were now adorned with wisps of royal blue, the same color going in flaming motif on the fingers of his gloves and the base of his boots. The gray parts had become turquoise with, ironically, a night blue crescent moon adorning his heart's emplacement. The buttons and lace had turned to marine blue and the 'E' on the collar, previously white, was now of gold outlined in black.
Fitting, a tribute to both his class and the so peculiar teacher with whom they had lived the year like some kind of true dysfunctional family.
He pressed the small button serving as a lock for the box and it gently opened, offering its content to his view.
The first thing he saw was a change for his attire, his attention lingered on the coiling snake adorning the back.
Alongside it rested four glistening knives, shaped like the ones he had used against Takaoka. They seemed carved in sapphire, adorned by a snake of emerald with eyes of ruby. Taking one in hand, he noted that it fitted exactly in his grip, be it in a reversal one or a normal one.
Under the knives, he found an assault gun like the one he wielded in the class battle and a pistol, adorned just like the blades. On closer inspection, he detected some differences, like the size of the barrels. Opening the chargers he found it full with some kind of cristal bullets. Strange but after all, why not?
What he liked the most, though, were the taser and stun-baton, made in the same way as the rest.
Slowly, he strapped a knife to each leg, placing the two other blades horizontally on his low back. He placed the gun just above, across his back, where it would be easy to take and the pistol in a holster inside his jacket. The stun-baton found its place in a sheath at the left of his hip and the taser in one of his chest-pocket. He must have looked ready for war.
He let out a pleased sigh. It was silly, but the weight of his new arsenal, even if it was strangely light, appeased him; like a promise that all would be alright.
Before continuing to look in the box he took the time to think about the emblem adorning his new possessions: a snake. The class had compared him to one from time to time: small yet deadly, overlooked until it bit you and it already is too late. Always ready to ensnare you in its coil or to sink its fangs into your neck.
A snake, huh? Yeah, he liked it.
The only remaining items in the chest were some kind of map, a scaled leather pouch and the chip mentioned in the letter inside a small glass box.
He took the chip and, delicately opening his phone, placed it in the little device. As soon as he closed it, it began to change in a small blue slab of metal with a sapphire in the center. When he touched the sapphire, it opened to reveal a screen displaying proudly 'download complete at 2%'. Realizing he had some time before anything new would come from it, he put it away in his pocket.
He put the map on the side and choose to examine the pouch. The chest began to shrink as soon as it got out before being gently sucked in the little bag.
Something told him he should have been surprised. But he had seen such strange things... Heck, he was dead and in the afterlife, hard to do stranger and his teacher was weirder. He mused on how unusual his life was for a bag of holding to not even be in his top fifty most outlandish things he ever saw.
As it happened, the map led to a shop, 'From dust till dawn'. And this shop just had to be robbed when he was inside. Yeah, nothing new under the sky. But let's get back a little.
Nagisa opened the door to be greeted by the gentle face of an elderly clerk.
"Good evening. Can I help you?" said the man... In English...
"Ah, yes! I'm a little lost you see." he replied with a slight accent, suddenly really happy for his best subject to be English.
"Now, what would you like to know?"
He noticed the same kind of crystals from his firearms' chargers.
"Could you please tell me what those crystals are?"
The clerk's eyes widened.
"You don't know what Dust is?! But my boy, this is the very resource upon which Remnant is built. Go look at the back, I have a book that will explain it better than me. Its name is 'From dust to Dust'. As long as you stay here you can freely read it all you want." Remnant? A fitting name for the Afterlife.
"Thank you, sir."
He started his way to the back, paying little mind to the five men entering. At first view, the man in white must have been a rich man coming for a late purchase with his bodyguards.
Passing a girl in red he began to search through the book section, listening absentmindedly to the girl's music, until the sound of a blade you unsheathe interrupted him. He let out a long suffering sigh, so much for his hypothesis.
"Hey kids, put your hands where I can see it!"
His hands stayed where they were, this man was a complete amateur. His grip was too tight on the handle and his posture had more hole than he could count. He was definitely not a threat.
Still, he took the poor guy in pity and lightly tapped the girl's shoulder so that she would at least take her headphone off.
"Yes?"
"This man asked us to raise our hands."
"Hey brats! Do you two have a dead-wish or something?"
Nagisa lightly chuckled. This man? Kill them? Taking into account that he was a trained assassin and that the girl stood like an experimented fighter... Yeah, good luck with that. He promptly made his thought know.
"You? Kill us? And yet you don't look as if you've ever killed anybody before." He smiled as he remembered the first time he told this. Maybe he had hanged a little too much with Karma.
The girl sent him an interested look. The man, though, glued his eyes on him with what he guessed was doubt.
"Sh-shut up! Put your hands in the air now." His grip on the short sword tightened even more.
"Are you... Robbing us?" she sounded really amused.
"YES!"
"Ah..." It was the only warning he got before she sent him flying with some kind of red contraption.
"Hello, name's Ruby!" she smiled.
"My name is Nagisa. It's nice to meet you."
As if on cue, another thug, because he could only be a thug, came running before pointing them with his pistol. While he was not the shooter expert in the class, this place going to both Hayami and Chiba, his training let him know that the man had absolutely no idea on how to use his weapon.
He brought his right hand to one of the blades on his back's handle, but Ruby beat him to the punch. Well, to the drop kick to be precise, going as far as passing through the window with her feet firmly planted on the thug's chest.
Taking the time to reassure the kind seller, he joined them out just in time to see Ruby cut a man with the bladed side of the scythe, that must have been the contraption from earlier, without shedding any blood. So you could survive this kind of things in the afterlife. Only to a certain extent, if the small gashes on the man that had gone through the window meant anything, but still. Truly a good new for him, it meant that he would not have to subdue them one by one to not kill them. As soon as the thought hit home, he masked his bloodlust and began to run toward a group of five new thugs coming to their companions' rescue. Marveling at how faster he was here, he grabbed his gun and sent them all to sleep, cutting two of them and shooting the others. All without shedding any blood.
A slow clapping made him raise his head toward the man in white standing in the store's doorway.
"And to think I have already paid for them." The man cleared his throat. "Well, Red, Blue, while you two are truly interesting, that we all had an eventful evening and that I'd love to stick around..." He pointed his cane at them and all sorts of alarms, sounding suspiciously like Koro-sensei, rang in Nagisa's head; the trigger on it was proof enough that the cane was dangerous.
"This is where we part way." The shot was more akin to an explosion and forced them to leap out of the way. But while Ruby let their enemy out of her view, Nagisa was already pursuing him. An escaped target was a hazard for any and all involved with the assassin, he had learned his lesson with Takaoka and the second God of Death. This man would go into a cell or he would cause too much damage.
The target was just finishing to climb a ladder to a nearby building's rooftop so he sprinted toward the construction and jumped between it and the one next to it, rapidly making his way to the top, all the while enjoying how high his new lightness combined with his gym boots let him go in only one jump.
He silently landed on the roof, before following the target in Nanba.
All his effort for discretion were utterly crushed when Ruby joined them and called out the enemy. So she was not an assassin. Probably the equivalent of some kind of martial artist.
"Persistent brats."
As if on cue, some kind of aircraft aligned itself with their level to let the bad guy enter. If Nagisa had not already lived through something like this, he would have thought himself in a movie.
"End of the line kids!" shouted the man before throwing some kind of red crystal at them and taking aim. He immediately understood what the red jewel was, the class had used the exact same tactic from time to time: an explosive.
The assassin launched in his fastest run, snatched the bomb in flight and threw it back in the shot's trajectory. It exploded before he could touch the ground again and he was thrown on the roof's hard floor. A second shot resounded and he closed his eyes, readying himself for the pain.
The pain never came and when he opened his eyes again, it was to see a blond woman sending purple rays toward the aircraft. Okay, this was not the strangest thing he had ever seen, but it still managed to amaze him a little. The ensuing fight between her and some fire using woman, conveniently hidden in the shadow, was truly a sight to behold: the like of which he had only witnessed in the battle between Koro-sensei, Number Two and Yanagisawa.
He raised an eyebrow when Ruby's scythe transformed into a gun she used to shoot at the fire woman before taking back his rifle and joining the fray. While he was not the best shooter in class 3E, this place once more going to Chiba with Hayami as a close second, he still was seventh. Plus, the target was human sized, almost motionless and less than twenty meters away; anybody in the class could hit something like this, especially with a real gun.
Sadly, his history with superhuman being was to last because the fire woman simply stopped Ruby's bullets from one hand and raised some fire wall to block his strangely glowing ones.
He suddenly heard a whistle and, upon recognizing the light on the ground from the previous fight, he jumped back, feeling strangely pushed.
And obviously, the aircraft's pilot took the opportunity to flee. Nagisa sighed, he would have to find them again and... Get rid of the problem. He would have liked not having to kill them, but he made himself no illusion: these peoples were skilled and there was little likelihood of an ideal situation.
"You are a Huntress!" Ruby's shout brought his attention to the two other people with him on the roof.
"Can I have your autograph?!" The glare she got from the 'Huntress' woman told him an autograph was not what they would get tonight.
And to say it was only his first hour in the afterlife.
Red like roses bring me to the place you rest
White is cold and always yearning, burdened by a royal test
Black the beast descend from shadows
Yellow beauty burn gold
Blue calmly walk with death in the eyes
Finally, it his much harder to rewrite something than simply do it a first time believe me.
So, I searched for a way to not having Nagisa as a dead weight for the RWBY cast and I found it! Gravity is weaker on Remnant, you can observe it by the object's slower falls. As to why? Your answer is in the sky: the moon, still having the same general weight keep the same attraction's strength but the smaller chunks are attracted to the earth and cause a lower orbit to apply. So, Nagisa is lighter for the same physical strength making it so he run faster and jump higher. Much more.
For the ones who reviewed me to tell me I had accidentally suppressed this chapter with the next one: thanks to the first one, phoque you to the others, I already knew it.
While hoping you liked it.
Review! Follow! Favorite! Come back again! And have a good read.