Prologue Part 4: The green haired high Paladin of legends is a 24 year old girl with a weird thing for a dusty, old Qrow.
Hi folks, it is good to have you here again, hope you all had a nice day. This is the last chapter of the Prologue Arc, enjoy. Critics and suggestions are always welcome.
Monkayleaf: Oh we still get to that part, mate. Everything to this point was only the first chapter of my old fic rewritten.
Cheese PuffXx: Chapters will be much longer from now on, Something between 3 and 5k words.
ShugoYuki123: Nice to hear.
Merendinoemiliano: Thanks for the compliment. Do not worry Peach is not that OP like it seems in this chapter, she has quite some weaknesses, but she is one of the stronger characters in my fic, and believe me you do not want to have her semblance.
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Qrow already felt in need of a strong drink. He looked at the person passionately hugging him and sighed.
"Peach, why are you hugging me?" asked Qrow tiredly. The greenette, who had pressed her head against his muscular, feathery chest, looked up to him and smiled.
"Well you looked lonely and depressed, so I hugged you so that you'll be happy again, Qrowie!" she said, a smile plastered all over her face.
Qrow felt how one of his eyes started to twitch at the mention of the nickname. He suppressed the urge to correct her, knowing very well how useless it would have been. Instead he opted for gripping at both of her exposed shoulders and looking directly into her beautiful leaf green eyes.
"Peach, we have no time for jokes or fun! When you came here, did you find Ruby and Yang, are they….?" he paused, the worry for his nieces painted all over his face. Peach's cheery demeanor became instantly serious, and she separated her arms from Qrow's avian form. "Yes, I stumbled across them and I did my very best to help them. I managed to stabilize Raven child, but for Summer's, there is nothing I could do."
Upon seeing his breath catch, she quickly added, "She is not dying, just, well, changing." seeing Qrow's horrified expression made her flinch, "Scales, red ones, are growing all over her body. Her teeth have sharpened and I found the beginnings of a tail and wings on her back. Not only her outside is changing, her inner organs are shifting as well as her soul and mind are starting to deform. She is in unimaginable pain, right now. I tried to put her to sleep but my semblance had no affect on her mind. To much is going on inside her and would have most likely damaged her mentally if I had tried something."
"Oh? So she'll made it?"
These words made both of them whirled around to see the Alpha Drakid, who had finally stopped killing the imaginary Peach.
She stared directly at them, a sadistic grin on her face. "That is quite the bad luck you have there, Branwen. If she had died, the whole thing would have been over for her, now you will have to kill her. If you survive."
The grin on her face grew even more twisted. Qrow felt anger flowing through his veins, but what he felt even more was desperation. He knew what she was talking about. Tears forced their way out of his eyes and disappeared in the dark feathers of his face.
The very next second, before Qrow could pull his suicide via "attacking one of the strongest and cruelest beings to ever exist head on without aura and unarmed" through, he was stopped. In fact all the rage that was burning in him like a Vulcan, so close to erupting, immediately disappeared.
He turned his face around and looked at Peach, who had touched one of his wings, smiling sheepishly. "I hate it when you do that." Qrow growled, but backed down when she pulled a bite on his wing, knowing fully well that she could turn his mind into a dump with a thought.
"Qrowie would you please stand back? Let me handle this, okay?" she said, still smiling. "By the way, I always thought that the only one who could do the Branwen transformation thing was Ravy!"
She turned her head and attention to the Drakid, who stood at the other side of the clearing. All traces of "her" blood and "her" body pieces had disappeared, as if the monster never had killed "her" in the first place.
Peach's entire stance became instantly serious, and while the cheerful smile never really left her face, in her eyes a dangerous spark appeared.
"Sooooooooo." she said in a clearly happy tone, "It is quite obvious that you hear me, but can you see me too?"
The Alpha frowned upon hearing this question, and she took a couple of steps back. For the first time in a long time, she was both confused and cautious.
"Kinda," " she answered, in rare honesty, "It is not that I can not hear, see or smell you, my brain seems to have difficulties to process the information it gets. That is quite the dangerous semblance you have. There were only a handful of humans that I knew of in my long life whose semblance could effect a Drakid, let alone an Alpha, and who weren't part of the three grand families. Now, I have no idea how your semblance actually works, but I am fairly sure I am about to find it, Hmm?"
"Yes, yes you are." came the greenette's response, "But allow me one last question, before we start the fun. Did you murder Summer Rose, or are you aware who did it?"
"Who?"
Suddenly Peach's smile turned wrong. Artificial. "Grand Paladin Summer Rose, the mightiest silver eyed warrior since the silver eyed goddess! The one person, that I could never best in a one on one fight! My very best friend! The mother of the child, who you turned into a monster! DID. YOU. MURDER. HER?" yelled Peach, her smile vanishing completely. Green energy pulsated around her body, indicating an unimaginable concentrated Aura, whose pure presence alone send cracks through the ground.
"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't, what will you do about it? Kill me?" taunted the monster, but it was clearly less secure than about fighting Qrow, as she took on a serious combat stance.
"Kill you? No. I, High Paladin Peach, Paladin Partner of Summer Rose, Godmother of Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long, will not kill you, I will erase you and redeem the mistake of you ever existing!" she screamed, her eyes turning jade green.
The high Paladin's semblance kicked in exactly when the Alpha made her move. Reality seemed to break up and twist, spinning and breaking the world into impossible anomalies. Past and future seemed to mix, filling the Drakid with images so insane, that even the beast herself was nearly overwhelmed by the sudden chaos.
Blinding out her eyesight in order to escape the illusions, the Dragon like creature changed her entire orientation to her sense of hearing. The sound of one fast beating heart was enough for her to locate and to attack her opponent with immensely powerful punches.
The curse that made out her entire being manifested around her claws in absolute darkness, enhancing the already devastating force behind her attacks to a level that ridiculed the mere word "power".
Her fist broke through her aura like through paper, exploding through her ribcage and showered her and her surroundings in a fountain of blood and destroyed organs.
The very next moment impacted an utterly brutal counterattack on her unprotected left side in the form of a hailstorm of aura infused strikes.
The attacks did not use brute force or were delivered with an especially sharp object to penetrate her scales. Instead they were more of light taps from normal human finger tips. And these taps send spirals of pain through most of the left half of the monsters body, achieving in doing more damage than even the strongest of Qrow's rock shattering swings.
"Those were Aura high precision strikes. The concentration needed to pursue such strikes to deliver just enough aura to cut my nerves! And I heard nothing, how is that even possible?" she thought, ripping her eyes open.
Nonetheless she reacted with her far superior speed and reflexes, and whipped her tail exactly through the air where she had been hit. And she succeeded in hitting the assailant and sending her hardly recognizable form flying into the next tree.
She stormed at her with breathtaking speed, taking all her senses into account to locate her enemy's already moving form. She could see her rolling sideways towards the left, while she heard how the Paladin sprinted right and felt through the tremors that reached her feet that she had jumped.
The Alpha chose to ignore all three of the contradicting information and trusted what the curse inside her, her instincts telling her what she needed. Which was proven right, when her claws slammed into Aura shielded flesh and rammed the greenette into the tree.
This drove not only the air out of Peaches lungs, but also succeeded in breaking her infuriating masterly concentration, which lead to her semblance finally pulling out of the Drakid's mind. The alpha pressured her enraged against the wood, with only her Aura preventing immediate death.
"Your semblance is really fucked up, girl! You do not effect my eyes or any of my senses, you're messing with the memories of my brain itself, am I RIGHT?"
The Person before only smiled.
"Do not know!" answered she, "why don´t you ask her?"
Before the Drakida´s very eyes, the green haired woman´s form rippled, deformed and changed into Qrow Branwen.
The monster heard a click right to hear ripped her head around and looked directly into the barrel of the Branwen´s swordgun, held by Peach herself.
The high paladin did not hesitiate and pulled the trigger firing a dozen bullets in one salvo, which tore right through the open, unprotected eyes of the Drakid.
She screamed in Pain and stumbled back, letting inadvertently go of her hold on the veteran huntsman, who swiftly took advantage of that, by ramming his claws into her ears, destroying her sense of hearing.
She could only scream in rage and pain, as she felt how the Branwen gripped Peach and flew gen sky, in the direction of the children, she had attacked.
So that is the last of the prolog chapters. Hope you enjoyed it, and if that was the case please leave a review.