.

on the outside i freeze, but my heart is on fire

time goes by, every day i am getting older

but with unending pain i fight with the spirit of youth

i will wait until the end of time, i wanna be a soldier, a warrior

.

pellek - tempest

.


RWBY

NJKA


30 days prior to Beacon

It's a stupid and irritating thing how people meet, part, and then meet again. 'A small world' indeed. What a week this has been, speaking at length for the funeral of someone you didn't allow yourself to know, enduring the growing strain of Father's disapproval as your enrollment all the way in Vale looms closer and closer. You'd do anything to skim this month and wake up so far from Atlas that you won't have to look back until you're ready to bring your own company to its knees.

You hoped this week's stupidity was over, and that was certainly a mistake. If you believed in any sort of god, you'd be cursing it now, because there's something fundamentally unfair about not only running into the same caustic and violent Faunus who accosted you last week, but running into her in another public bathroom.

How did your argument lead to this? It was inevitable, you suppose, considering the parties involved, but you deserve better than this absolute farce! Back and forth and back and forth, stupid words from a stupid creature countered by a daughter of honor and intellect, the building rage. To insult you? Unforgivable. To insult your family? Unforgivable.

To call you, future Huntress Weiss Schnee, a weak-willed and petty child?! AGAIN?!

Perhaps it's not such a shock that it's come to this, an infuriatingly well-dressed piece of filth with an ugly and brutish weapon about to be crushed beneath the weight of finesse and legitimate skill. It really is a nice dress, though, fine work tailored with care, a smooth black fabric with tasteful green trim and what you suppose is her symbol sewn above her breast in brighter jade. A shame you'll be leaving it in absolute ruin.

You don't bother opening with a glyph; she doesn't deserve the honor of your full might. That ugly, screeching chainsaw can't possibly save her from a fencer's speed. Settling into readiness to deflect or avoid the inevitable slow charge, you try to clear your mind, to find that place deep inside where perfection is frozen and waiting –

And then she's two feet away and swinging far more quickly than you imagined, a startled backstep and screech of metal barely saving you from the brutal arc of that enormous whirring atrocity. The next swing is equally swift but you're ready for it now, ice spreading through your mind and purging any distractions. You underestimated her speed, but the fact remains that she's slower than you. If she could strike with that thing half as quickly as she can apparently move the rest of her body, this might actually be dangerous.

But she can't.

The third swing you let crackle and scream off the side of your blade. The fourth you redirect upward and away, a terrible position for you if she can recover in time, but a far worse one for her if she can't.

And she can't.

The satisfaction of landing such an easy blow abruptly scatters into confusion – something feels wrong. A normal thrust rebounds as if shoved away by some kind of magnetic gel, natural and expected, but there's none of that here. Something hot and wet flecks across your sword arm, bits of your torso, and even one bit on your cheek. You wipe it away with your free hand in this silent moment, and when you understand what's happening, you stumble from the outrageous force of a glacier's breaking in two inside of yourself.

There is a girl's blood running slowly down Myrtenaster's once pristine blade, angled up through the shoulder and apparently managing to avoid the most vital points of the hu – Faunus body in that area. Your weapon feels wrong in your hands, sticky in motion. Well, of course it does. It's currently impaling a living body.

You're still staring in half-comprehending horror when the chainsaw catches your midsection and lifts you clear off your feet, stars of aura-blunted pain flashing along its cutting path and your back your hand wrist head, bits of plaster from a shaken ceiling like snow too heavy for itself and

peel yourself away from the Weiss-shaped craterdentimpactzone in the wall, building's shock settling and

finally stand, dazed, aura still intact. It's been a long, long time since you were hit like that – harder than tutors, harder than spars with Winter, harder than Father. The only comparison you can make is to that thing and its colossal iron fist. How could someone with her build land a blow so utterly destructive? You try to regain your composure and correct your stance, but you can't. Apparently, holding a sword is difficult when you don't have one.

Across the room, that same blade is still run through her, bright blood dripping to the floor, a dark stain showing through the green trim near her collarbone. This is – wrong – you didn't – how – a lurch and twist in your gut. You fail to strangle a gasp when the Faunus, loosing one hand from her monstrosity, grabs Myrtenaster and pulls it free, only wincing as she does it and the red stain of her life continues to spread. This isn't... what you wanted. She should have had aura, she's a fighter, this makes no sense and this isn't...

"I'm so... I'm..." Where do you find the words? What do you even want to say?

She tosses the bloodied extension of your will across the floor, letting it clatter and slide to a stop at your feet. It takes you a full three seconds to realize that she's preparing to continue. The sword doesn't look right anymore. It's not... it's not yours. Nothing of yours would be so crudely stained, so hateful, vicious –

"i didn't mean it." You hardly recognize your own voice, weak and trembling with a mind of its own. "this isn't... this isn't what i wanted." She staggers just slightly. It must hurt. It has to hurt so much, and you don't understand how she isn't screaming, how she's still holding that chainsaw, preparing for the next round of blows. The pain hardly shows on her face, only the strange and inquisitive lance of hardened jade eyes.

"Hmm," she says, almost unflapped, "strange. You should be dead right now." And she should be sobbing on the ground, and she's not but she should be but she shouldn't because this isn't

"... this isn't what i wanted," you whisper again, and when you swallow it hurts.

"Then what did you think you wanted?" She raises the saw above her head, somehow, with what must be horribly damaged muscles and tendons, takes the step that heralds nearly every fighter's charge. You have to get to Myrtenaster, have to be ready, if she hits you like that one more time you won't be shrugging it off, but the feeling of holding it as it jerked, twitched, embedded in flesh, a sickened daze, the sound of crimson drops splashing on ceramic tiles, you won't be ready. This time, you really might be cut in two.

"not this"

and with a thump and the sharp crash of heavy metal, she passes out face down on the ground. The chainsaw clatters and clicks, but a stroke of luck's landed the thing so that its own blade won't propel it in random directions.

Myrtenaster's weight is different in your hand, now. There's nothing here to wipe away the blood clinging stark red along the blade, red on your hands, red pooling on the floor beneath an unconscious Faunus who attempted to kill you.

You know perfectly well what your legacy demands, and it won't be hard to carry out the duty. One more strike, unmissable. Effortless. Even simply leaving would end in her death and your victory, your first true wound delivered to the greater threat. It's the right thing to do. Father would be proud.

... Father would be proud.

The call you place is anonymous, and you make sure that you're long gone before help arrives.


RWBY

NJKA


29 days prior to Beacon

Your shoulder is a raging pyre in a heaving sea of black. It hurts. It does not stop hurting even when a growing chaos of light and sound and input drags you out and into somewhere soft and sterile. Moving is hard, harder than it should be, especially for such a light wound, and all in a rush you understand what's happening.

Kanaya Maryam is no longer a troll. Kanaya Maryam is a fragile thing that can be laid low by a single thrust of a rapier.

This is a 'hospital,' you think; you've seen such places in human films and television, read about them in some of Rose's books. What a strange concept it is to dedicate entire structures – entire careers – to mending the wounds and diseases of others without any incentive to care. The naivete is as astonishing as ever, as is the human tendency to save those who should have died from their own failures in life and in self-treatment.

Was Rose ever hurt or sick, aided in a place like this? Was Strider?

... Maybe there are some times when naivete is forgivable. Such a selfish thought. It's typical of you, really, to let your own bias brush against your sense of objective reality.

Your arm moves but the pain is startling, so much worse than it should be. You are not who you were. All you are now is a mammal that can be felled by a single blow to a non-crucial part of her body. Someone could enter at any moment now, with any motive, and the state you're entering is not for the eyes or ears of others, but you can't help it. Please, please let no one find you right now.

Only one human is allowed to see you cry.

How can you accept this weakness? It's wrong. It's wrong it's wrong it's terrifying. That maddening girl should be nothing but drying stains and bitter memories after what you did, but even that couldn't overcome the natural defenses these people have and you lack. This isn't fair. You can't (protect) fight anyone like this, can't (live to find her) survive in such a world.

If only will alone could serve as a shield, you think that you could make yourself invincible. If only you carried that invisible alien barrier, you would shroud yourself tight and be the (shield that will not shatter) warrior you once were and maybe even more.

The green tears staining your hands remind you that even bitter children are now enough to lay waste to a jadeblood. Your mind must be lost in physical and mental pain, because you're more than aware that you currently bleed the same red as the rest of this world. But even so, do tears... glow?

It's not a delusion. Those transparent tears are reflecting a jade light that continues to grow. It spirals from every pore, trailing out your eyes and ears and mouth, pouring like smoke with a mind of its own and growing solid, stable, until your entire body is encased in a ghostly, rubbery nothingness.

You have to know. You have to know for sure before you permit yourself any further hope. Fortunately, someone's forgotten their scrawl-oriented cylindrical ink dispenser on a small table nearby. Their pen. Ugh. You suppose that your caste is high enough to somewhat justify blueblood speech, but you never cared for the overwhelming simplicity and the confusion it could cause. Unfortunately, this is not Alternia. This is not even a damned meteor, and the humans and Faunus in this world are just like the humans you (know) knew, and it'll serve you well to adjust at least partially to their vernacular.

And so you pick up the 'pen' with your right arm, aware that this injury will only worsen if you use your dominant hand, which you carefully place on your lap.

You raise the pen and bring it down with all your might to punch clean through that very hand. The pain is sharp but... not sharp enough? It doesn't align with what you've done at all, a stabbing pain that vanishes immediately and without a trace. The pen is still clutched in your (claw) hand and your target is completely unharmed.

Most likely you're not in your right mind with all of the epinephrine and who knows what else pumping through you, and most likely that's why you don't mind the pained laugh you can't keep from rising. How are you supposed to feel? Now and truly you know that you're one of them and not yourself, because this reality-bending film is clinging to you in a way that feels very permanent, very natural, and that ability is not one that an 'alien' should possess.

You're not yourself, and you'll probably never be yourself again, but you can survive... for whatever survival is worth to someone mired in a lonesome and baffling world and stripped of her very species.

... but that's not worth your time at this moment. Whoever runs this 'hospital' could be back any second now, and you need to be somewhere else, anywhere else. You take a quick look at your surroundings – first floor, a window you'll easily bypass, and an envelope in stark white lying on the little table where you found the pen. Its back is sealed with pressed wax in the form of a razor-sharp snowflake.

Out on the street again you have the time to open it, even if you can guess its source. Inside is a simple folded note along with an elegant script you shouldn't be able to read but somehow can.

'As recompense for undeserved mercy, the chainsaw-wielding bat Faunus who has been handily defeated now owes one (1) Favor to Weiss Schnee of the Schnee Dust Company.'

Oh. Oh, god damn her.

You make the decision immediately: if you find out that stupid girl is waxing pitch for you, you're going to burn this city to the ground.