AN: This was difficult to piece together, but all-in-all it was pretty rad to write and comb over a few times. I'm still winging it, though. Mostly. I've more or less figured out where I want to take the story. It's just a matter of getting there. Guess we'll see how it goes. Don't own Naruto and RWBY, by the way.
Qrow eyed the blonde, ten-tailed horned faunus over rather critically while he set his feet somewhat lazily along the reinforced floor of their little arena. His crimson eyes flickered between the boy and the projected measure of their auras; each bar bolstered by a picture of the two. One of his scruffy face, and the other of his adorable, horned and whiskered opponent's pudgy countenance. The boy's eyes made the man stare just a little longer, before he eventually flashed a wink towards one of the many observing cameras hidden above and turned his full attention towards Naruto. Frankly, the huntsman didn't know what to expect here, not after what he and Ozpin found. The headmaster was hiding something from him again, the huntsman knew. Secretive and enigmatic as the professor was, this felt a lot more obvious than ever before.
It was just a damn shame that Qrow didn't have it in him to question the guy yet, either way.
"Alright, kid. Whenever you're ready, eh?"
The blonde in question was slow to nod as his eyes flickered back and forth across the stage. Anxiously, he rubbed a hand against the side of his cargo shorts, the other hand occupied in just the same manner with his far simpler dark hoodie. They were probably the softest things he'd ever worn, if he were honest. Actually, the little faunus couldn't even remember exactly what he wore before, only that whatever it was had a lot more orange. He was craving the color now, himself.
The thought past him by quickly enough, though, the flicker of different people taking his full attention instead. Something sharp bit him from inside his head and made him cringe slightly, the blur hogging his eyes fading just in time for a row of children on each side of the arena to appear. It was a little foggy, their faces vague, but they were familiar. Naruto groaned and felt his stomach clench then, but he shook away the weird sensation of sweat that wasn't there when someone else appeared. Someone far more crisp, and far more familiar. It was a little boy, almost a mirror image of Qrow if the man were younger. He stood across from Naruto, in front of the huntsman, and all he did was meet his glare; his hand stuck fast in the seal of confrontation. It clicked in then and the blonde scrambled to do just the same when the ghosts disappeared.
The background almost seemed to fade to black, leaving Naruto to stare at the seemingly older warrior, eerily silent until a voice spoke in the back of his head. So you are Naruto Uzumaki. Rippled lavender eyes stared back, Qrow replaced by the image of a man wrapped in red clouds and crowned by a head of orange hair. Someone else stepped out of him, someone larger, someone different. Blonde hair much like his own, but not a tail in sight. He came clad in a crimson coat, hem tipped in black flame with a massive scroll on his back. The images flickered to something greater, something heavier; a battlefield stretched across a ruined, scarred landscape. There a man gone insane waged war while on high, from something pure, another stared down. Both the embodiment of greater extremes, and more importantly, both with the same eyes.
The Rinnegan.
Naruto felt it surge from his own eyes, too, the faint image of a woman bathed in white blinking out of his eyesight, before he was back in reality. Qrow, a man who looked unsettled and uncertain, had his own hand in a show of Naruto's odd, and a little awkward seal of confrontation. The man frowned a bit and had to wonder what the odd gesture was for, before he combed his free-hand through his hair. Better to get it out of his face for whatever the hell was about to go down. He tried to focus on the kid's forehead, somewhere between those hypnotic lines, and just… Somewhere else.
The ten-tailed faunus was doing something, though, so he decidedly pulled Harbinger from its place on his back; the weapon easily mechashifted into the full form of its great sword mode. Naruto, on the other hand, was the definition of a struggle. Whatever was so potently stirring beneath his flesh felt like a fire burning himself from inside out when he tried to use it, mold it like instinct screamed at him to do. It was so heavy and dense, his soft, undeveloped muscles practically snapped under the sheer weight of his will and power. Qrow clenched his jaw in an attempt to stave of the sheer shock and adrenaline suddenly coursing through his body, because Naruto's aura fluctuated visibly in that of a shroud. That was before the kid's feet sank into the stage and shattered it like glass, an expulsion of swirling golden streams doing its part to rip the ground asunder. His feet were glued in place, the man incapable of movement, like someone had turned something off inside him. Or, maybe it was the sheer terror he choked down that did it. The huntsman's heart almost flat-lined then and there. At this point, Qrow couldn't say, couldn't breathe... He couldn't even think beyond a single word, really.
Fuck.
It was, of course, the moment the thought filtered through the huntsman's mind that Naruto's body reacted and with a scratchy cry thrust his hands at the huntsman, "ALMIGHTY PUSH!" The boy grit his teeth and clenched his eyes, muscles tearing and reforming beneath the skin with the aid of unimaginable power. It was terribly poor timing when the kid stumbled. The shrill sound of a siren a source of fortune for the huntsman while the blonde found only a moment in time to blink slowly as he watched the ground close in on himself, and Qrow collapse to his knees with violent gasp for breath. His tiny hands shot up, instead, and the full width of the ceiling broke into pieces. It exploded outward into the night sky, the impact of the heavy debris shaking the foundations of the school as they dent into many places across the courtyard just outside. Finally, Naruto got his first full view of a shattered moon. It was so strange the way the sight of it hurt him; something so sorrowful spreading from gut to chest, hand-in-hand with the unbridled anger that seemed to tear out of him. He couldn't breath, couldn't register the way his body constantly tore itself apart and regenerated against the burn of his own source of power. Didn't even notice the way that he cried and thrashed brought the building down around him and Qrow.
Naruto did the only thing he felt capable of. He swallowed failure and slipped into another dream, only briefly haunted by the voice of Pain on his way.
Do you hate me now?
The sound of Ozpin's coffee cup shattering against the floor was the only thing that snapped Glynda out of her stupor. She had to move, she couldn't breath if she didn't move, and she wouldn't be able to save them if she stayed there any longer. Ozpin be damned, she was right. This was all wrong.
The headmaster on the other hand was stuck in a time-loop of his own make. Again and again, he rewound the footage. He absorbed it all, every last detail: everything from the way the boy seemed to look at things that weren't there, drew on a well of power that shouldn't exist, one so vast and potent the little that they saw practically split the arena in half. And then the way he sheared the roof off the facility. It was… Awe-inspiring, and absolutely terrifying.
That really wasn't the worst of it, though. No, it was what happened after. Naruto, with all that power, couldn't control his gift. It was literally tearing him apart, and regenerating him at the same time. He'd never seen so much flesh just melt into something so absolutely dark and angry. It was watched with a grim fascination as the little boy burned himself away under his own power, and rejuvenated just as rapidly over, and over, and over again. The man had to breathe the idea in for a moment, before the really unsettling playback fell away from his mind. Those golden streams of aura manifested into something at the end. Maybe his semblance? Ten tails just like his own, yet made out of energy itself, grew into colossal appendages that practically split apart the training arena with their appearance alone. He had to switch cameras to make sure, though. The ones installed in the arena simply decimated under the circumstances.
"Have the Gods returned to Remnant?" The man wondered aloud.
Ozpin turned his gaze down towards the broken remains of his coffee cup, trembling hands slowly stamping the butt of his cane down into them. He sighed heavily and closed his eyes, then tried to center himself. This was a dangerous piece in the game between him and Salem. One that might even be able to change the whole of Remnant. It was better to keep the boy in sight and under watch, yet at the same time… To keep him here was to invite questions Ozpin didn't have answers to, and also didn't want to answer. Not to mention he couldn't imagine trying to hold all that power back by himself. It would come out eventually, but it would be best to mitigate the fallout of that as much as possible. Keep it hidden just as much in a way that wasn't so… Obvious. Then there was the idea that the child was, in fact, related to the Two Brothers.
Decision made, Ozpin slowly stepped out of his office and made way to the infirmary. He hoped Qrow would be alright, but something told him it might be a week or two before he could persuade the man to the task at hand.