JADE'D ROSES
CHAPTER ONE: NOT ALL ROSES ARE RED
"Yang, on your left!" Blake called to her partner as she used Gambol Shroud to pull herself up a tree and over an Ursa that charged.
The Faunus girl quickly dropped back down and delivered a strong slash to the Grimm's back; leaving it vanished in a pile of roses. Yang quickly took her partners word of advice and swiftly swung her arm to her left, sending the Alpha beowolf flying through multiple trees.
"Thanks for the heads up." Yang noted, firing Ember Celica at the ground and giving her the momentum to fly up and uppercut an Ursa's jaw, sending it flying even higher than she did.
When she landed, she failed to notice the other Ursa behind her, but her teammate did. The Myrtenaster was through the chest of the Ursa before it could even glance at the golden-haired girl and it disappeared into a pile of petals. Yang didn't have time to thank Weiss before she saw another beowolf come behind the heiress.
Blake acted before she could, swinging down like a wild-girl hanging onto Gambol Shroud like a life-line and kicking the beast straight in the chest, forcing it back before releasing her weapon and flipping down to stand next to Weiss, catching her weapon in her hand as it fell.
"Well… now what?" Yang questioned, putting her hands on her hips.
Nobody had the chance to answer before a familiar golden spear flew past the three girls, impaling another Ursa into petals. Their friend Pyrrah followed moments later, being whacked into the 'arena' of sorts by a Death Stalker.
"Incoming!" She shouted, jumping forward to avoid a painful sting and rolled forward, continuing her run for her weapon.
"That." Blake said simply, charging the large Grimm creature with her weapon drawn.
"Good to know." Yang replied, firing herself to pass Blake in her dash and punching the Death Stalker square on the top of the head.
The head dug into the dirt and the recoil launched Yang high into the air, the girl grinning the whole way. The creature was about to sting at Blake mid-charge but it collided with something in front of her. Blake looked up to see Ren, standing on top of Jaune's shield that the blonde boy held over his head, blocked the attack by coating his weapons in aura.
Without hesitation, Nora shot from the forest and slammed her hammer into the Death Stalker's side, getting it successfully away from Ren, Jaune and Blake.
Nora immediately ran after the Grimm, Blake and Ren following. Jaune turned and ran towards Pyrrah, who was fighting two Ursa at the same time.
Pyrrah used her shield to block one Ursa as she kicked the leg of another, before back flipping out from between them and smiling as one slashed the other, killing it. Out of nowhere, Jaune came and tackled the remaining one shield-first and they both rolled around on the ground. Eventually, Pyrrah whacked the Ursa in the head with her shield, snapping its neck and killing it instantly.
They both smiled at each other but turned around at a sudden rush of wind to see Yang standing on top of a beowolf that melted into petals seconds after. The brawler girl grinned like a maniac.
"Step it up, lovebirds!" She joked before punching left and flying right, intercepting an Ursa claw before it could hit the Ice Queen, who was facing down another beowolf.
Weiss nodded her thanks before sending a glyph at the snarling beowolf, freezing it in place. Next she locked Myrtenaster into yellow dust and stabbed the ice from the top, leaving nothing but petals behind. The heiress quickly switched to red dust before throwing her weapon into the air, ducking under the beowolf that had attempted to attack from her left, caught the falling sword flawlessly and stabbed to her right, killing another Grimm.
After that, the giant stinger from the Death Stalker came from nowhere, killing the Ursa squaring off with Yang. A loud crash followed and Ren, Nora and Blake were thrown into view.
Ren flipped himself around easily, facing the direction he was heading and sticking out his arms. Both the points of his weapons were stuck into two separate tree trunks, holding him harmlessly in place.
Nora back flipped, grinning all the while, and landed perfectly as if she had just done a simple summersault.
Blake didn't even have a chance to save herself before she felt the familiar arms of Yang wrap around her form and tackle her from the air but also saving her from the impact.
Weiss, Blake, Yang and JNPR looked towards the way the three had flown from and saw the Death Stalker, just without its stinger.
"How in the world did you manage that?" Yang questioned. But was met with silence as her friends charged. She sighed. "It's gonna be a long day." She muttered to herself, before launching forward.
They had been fighting for the better part of an hour, now. Everybody was almost exhausted after the constant fighting. Jaune's strikes were getting sloppy-er-, Pyrrah was forgetting to dodge, Ren's aura was running low and even Nora seemed tired.
Weiss' Myrtenaster was running out of dust to attack with, Blake felt like her legs were going to snap in half at a moments notice and if Yang never saw petals again it would be too soon, her hands were killing her!
But there was still Grimm left. Too much Grimm in fact.
"We can't fight them all away. We have to get out of here." Pyrrah said what they were all thinking, stabbing an Ursa with her spear.
"We'll be dead on the spot if we try and run, you know that!" Weiss called back, sidestepping a beowolf. Again.
"Well we have to do something!" Blake answered, using her duel weapons to hold off a King Taijiu. Which unexpectedly fell limp so suddenly, she almost fell forward without the force of the Grimm pushing back.
Everyone looked at what made the snake collapse; even the Grimm seemed to stand still. Imbedded in the back of the King Taijiu's head was a very familiar weapon; Crescent Rose.
They all looked up to see a familiar figure falling down from the retreating form of a Nevermore, leaving rose petals in her wake. The figure eventually landed with surprising force and pulled the weapon from the snakes' head, grinning at everyone else.
"I can't leave you guys alone for twelve minutes, can I?"
They were all staring at the familiar form of Ruby Rose, her trusty weapon Crescent Rose in her hand once more.
What happened next was all a blur. Ruby shot forward, through the wall of her friends, and sliced down two Ursa. She continued by shooting herself up and came down to land on top of another King Taijiu.
From the top of the large Grimm she activated Crescent Rose's sniper function and began picking off beowolf after beowolf and Ursa after Ursa. When she deemed appropriate, Ruby fired at the snake' head and jumped into the air as the giant Grimm fell and dispersed into petals.
The Scythe-wielder came down full-force onto the Death Stalker's top, killing that too, before she pulled it out and chopped off its tail. She kicked into the air and spun around, positioning herself behind the tail and kicked it forward and killed even more Ursa. Ruby, still in the air, slashed her scythe under her form to stick it into the ground. She landed on the handle of the weapon and jumped high into the air, leaving her weapon behind.
She came down moments later, thanks to gravity, and landed forcefully on her scythe, tearing it roughly from the ground and multiple Grimm around the sight the weapon was forced into the ground.
Crescent Rose flipped into the air but came down easily into Ruby's hand, ready to be used again. Ruby got back into a fighting stance, Crescent Rose placed between herself and the hoard of Grimm.
Ruby launched first and swung Crescent Rose to-and-fro chopping down and Grimm stupid enough to enter her strike zone. Suddenly she dropped and hugged herself around her weapon, going with it as it shot itself back from recoil and under the legs of an Ursa. The petite girl unwrapped herself from the scythe and skidded to a stop, using her weapon of choice to help slow her movement. She followed by jumping up high and bringing down the scythe to cut the Ursa clean in half, petals in its place.
She jabbed a beowolf in the gut with the handle-part of the weapon but followed by jumping up and swinging the scythe under her, killing that Grimm too before she landed and tossed her weapon into the air. Ruby sprang into the air, using a beowolf as a springboard, and grabbed her scythe and began to unload rapid-fire during her decent to not only kill Grimm but also slow her fall.
Ruby landed with a bang, Crescent Rose drawn, and she smashed the tip of her scythe into the ground for an added effect. The few remaining Grimm got the message and disappeared into the forest.
Now with the danger gone, the scythe-wielder sighed and retracted her weapon, almost regrettably.
"I still had some features I wanted to try." She pouted.
"Ruby!" Said girl turned at the familiar voice, to be pulled into a familiar embrace. "That was awesome, sis! My baby sister, taking out more Grimm than seven other people! I'm so proud!" Yang praised, failing to realize she was almost choking her sister.
"Yang, even awesome people need air." Blake reminded, Gambol Shroud tucked safely away once more. Yang blushed and released the girl who, thanks to the lack of air, was looking more like a sapphire than a ruby.
"Sorry. I got a little carried away. But you would too if your sister just-" Yang was cut off by an angry heiress.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? All seven of us couldn't handle that many Grimm and then you show up making this look like a simple obstacle course! It takes a real dunce to just show up and-" Weiss started to lecture the young leader, but was instead cut off by Yang.
"Save all of our asses. You failed to mention that part." The golden-haired girl reminded strictly, glaring at her sisters partner.
"Yes, it appears we owe you a thank you." Ren noted as he came forward, letting Nora lean on him even though he was leaning just as much on her. Ruby waved her hand in an attempt to dismiss it.
"Don't mention it. Anybody else would've done the same thing." She insisted, blushing as red as her namesake.
"But not everybody could've, Miss Rose." A new voice entered the conversation.
Teams RWBY and JNPR turned to the source of the voice to see the familiar form of Headmaster Ozpin standing there, sipping his coffee as if they were sitting in his office.
"Ozpin? What are you doing here?" Jaune asked, utterly confused after sitting up against a tree. "Are we back at Beacon?"
"Guess that Ursa did more than I thought." Pyrrah muttered. "No, Jaune we're still in the forest. Ozpin is just with us." She told him.
"Must've been gone a long time for the boss-man to come find us." Yang joked, everybody except for Weiss chuckled and Ruby and Nora broke into a long session of snickering.
"Don't worry, I knew where you were the whole time. I just wanted to see how you would fair against the Grimm. I did it to all the other teams at Beacon as well, but none of them lasted as long as you and certainly no others drove them away." Ozpin told them, much to their shock and some anger.
"Well why did you send us without our leader?" Weiss asked angrily. "Isn't it her job to watch out for us in cases like this?"
"If I remember correctly, Miss Schnee, it was you who sent her away in the first place." Ozpin reminded. Yang scowled.
"Remember? You're the one who told her to go back and study and that we could handle a simple back of Ursa." Yang said bitterly.
"Who was that student that told us there were Ursa nearby anyway?" Blake questioned, giving that matter some thought.
"And where did he go when we chased them out here?" Nora followed, equally interested.
"That was just my secretary. That's how we got everybody else into the forest too, but we we're expecting two teams at once. I admire you're courage Mr. Arc, it took a lot of it to go back for Team RWBY instead of charging into the forest." Ozpin praised. Jaune nodded his thanks. "Now I would like to have a word with Miss Ruby Rose, if you may. Alone."
Everybody gave the little red girl questioning looks that she waved off with a grin.
"Go on ahead back to Beacon and rest, guys. I'll be right behind you." Ruby told them.
JNPR left first, Jaune's arm draped over Pyrrah as he favored one leg and the warrior girl trying to keep her hands from automatically curling into fists. Nora was using the Magnhild as a crutch and Ren walked, slumped over next to her.
"Are you sure, sis? I don't mind staying." Yang said, glaring at Ozpin for almost forcing her to leave her baby sister alone in a forest full of Grimm. Just because she could take care of herself didn't make up for an entire childhood of watching over and protecting Ruby.
"It's fine, Yang. I'll see you when I get back." Ruby sent her sister on her way before turning back to her headmaster. "What'd you want to talk to me about?"
"I merely wanted to ask you if you would do me a small favor." Ozpin informed her.
"Sure thing, Professor, what do you need?" Ruby questioned. Ozpin smiled gratefully.
"I need you and your team to scale that mountain-" Ozpin pointed to the mountain range behind him "-and tell me if its safe enough to use for a future training ground." He requested.
Ruby failed to see the logic behind that. What would the point be in sending them up the mountain if he thought it wasn't safe already? As crazy as he was, he wouldn't endanger his students. Right?
"I have a condition." Ruby stated, practically already agreeing.
"Which is?" He asked, curiously.
"Have JNPR come too." She reasoned hopefully.
"May I ask why?" Ozpin questioned the scythe-wielder.
"Climbing mountains can be boring." Ruby told him, hoping he'd agree.
"Very well, Miss Rose. Next week you're team, along with JNPR, will climb a mountain." Ozpin agreed, sipping his coffee again. "Now then, onto the second matter."
"There's a second matter?" Ruby questioned, halting her attempts to leave.
"Yes. And this second matter is arguably more important, as it will begin tomorrow." Ozpin stated, peaking Ruby's interest. "Tomorrow, we'll be getting some transfer students that have been attending another school that trains hunters and huntresses and I'd like for you and your team to show them around. You'll meet them tomorrow morning in the Beacon courtyard at nine o' clock."
"Not that I'm not flattered, but why me?" Ruby questioned.
"Because you are one of the only students I can be assured won't be hostile towards them." Ozpin explained. While Ruby liked the compliment, she felt compelled to point out the obvious issue.
"Weiss is on my team, Professor, and I don't think she'll bite her tongue as much as Blake or even Yang. If she doesn't like them, she'll say so." Ruby told Ozpin worriedly. Ozpin didn't seem as concerned with the matter and waved off her concerns.
"Worry about that when tomorrow comes. But I doubt there will be much to hold them at fault for." Ozpin assured her. "That will be all, Miss Rose. You may show yourself back to Beacon."
"You're not coming?" Ruby asked, half turning around.
"Afraid I can't return just yet. I have other matters I must attend to." Ozpin waved her off.
Ruby didn't reply verbally but nodded her understanding and drew Crescent Rose, ready for any Grimm that might come back as she made her way through Emerald Forest.
Ozpin's gaze lingered on the young leader for a minute longer, muttering to himself as he turned around and headed in the opposite direction deeper into the forest.
"You'll do great things, Ruby Rose, even if you don't know if yet."
I don't own RWBY; it's a RoosterTeeth production. I do, however, own the OC's.
Next update will be soon, reviews are much appreciated.