Jack eyed his opponent, Mercury Black, from the other side of the ring, weighing the Mark II in his hand. The counter beeped, signalling the start of the match.
The two young-adults rushed at each other, swords and reinforced legs clanging as they clashed. There were no special arenas in these finals rounds, instead favouring a straight one-on-one duel.
Jack deflected this strike and that, getting more and more weary, before eventually throwing caution to the wind to try and get a hit in.
Jack activated his Semblance, looking around the stadium, until his eyes settled on Yang Xiao Long, a friend of Silver's. He'd seen her Semblance before; it was a sort of Super Saiyan thing, and that was more or less what Jack needed.
Jack's hair exploded into cyan fire as he adopted a more agressive, two-handed stance. He put more power into his swings than he'd even thought to do on a normal two-hand strike, forcing his way past Mercury's guard and landing a couple hits. He lost track of his Aura, his strikes, and even his sense of time... On the attack, it all just blurred together.
Jack stepped away from Mercury, turning towards MJSL to wave at them.
Anyone who talked to Jack afterwards would hear him swear that Super Saiyan was not his Semblance.
"And Jack Grayson has won the match again!" Professor Port boomed.
"He's played his cards well to have reserved his skills until now! Nobody will be able to know precisely what they're up against!" Professor Oobleck garbled.
Jack smiled and closed his eyes, scratching the back of his head and turning towards Mercury.
"Good game, mate. Maybe you'll win next time we spar," Jack said.
The Hunter-in-training opened his eyes when he heard Mercury's voice grind out, "There won't be a next time!"
In a blurry response, Jack had his sword out and up in front of his body, held like a barrier. Mercury, much to Jack's astonishment, was flying (albeit in slo-mo from Jack's perspective) right towards him. Letting go of Copycat and Speed, he braced for impact and closed his eyes. Much to his confusion, nothing came. Opening one eye, Jack saw Mercury down on one knee in front of him, clearly waiting for something.
"Aw, c'mon, dude, I'm taken," Jack said, smiling as Mercury's face went from braced-for-impact to wait-what-just-happened. "Hallucination? That's a low blow."
Unbeknownst to Jack as he walked out of the arena, Cinder scowled in the stands as she shut her Scroll. The variable was more of a defensive player, that was for sure. In that case, his Semblance seemed... mismatched was probably the best fit. She'd have to look into it later.
As MJSL reunited at the nearest ramen joint to celebrate Jack's victory, speculations on what the hell was going on were traded around to the point where Mercury was involved in a school-wide conspiracy theory involving JNPR, Mercury, Yang Xiao Long, Ozpin, and the Shopkeep. They were all laughing when the power (and thus the lights) blipped. They all went immediately silent as they watched the electrical systems struggle to relight.
Jack dove into his thoughts, freezing when he heard screaming and came to the only possible conclusion. The Starclimber was right when it had said imminent. As in... about a week until you do or die imminent. Distant rumbling could be heard in the distance as Bullheads dropped troops out into the school grounds and Amity Colosseum. Jack stood up from the table, throwing a pair of Lien cards onto the table.
"No," Jack said as Marinza stood up with him. "You've got to get to safety."
"Just tell me what's going on, then. I hate it when I charge into battle alone and with no clue what's going on."
"Major Historical Event was all I got. Just take Leara and Silver and go!" Jack said, eyes watering.
Silver stood up from the table as well. "Jack..." She tugged the wanderer towards her and kissed him, straight on the lips, as she started to cry.
Jack smiled, a bottomless pit forming in his heart. "Don't consider this to be goodbye. It's not. Try..." Jack thought for a moment, a weak smile on his lips. "See you later."
Silver smiled a sad smile, hugging Jack one last time. "See you later, then."
Leara cocked her assault rifle as Marinza and Silver readied their weapons. Tears in her eyes, Silver watched Jack race towards the carnage, before cursing herself and breaking from the group.
(Play Music: Siege of Beacon - Ura Zelda OST, Zeth Battle)
Jack ran towards Beacon Tower, looking up briefly as a large airship flew by overhead. He reached Beacon's courtyard when he was confronted by an Atlesian Paladin mech. Jack smirked as he raised his sword. It was just like in the training room, except there'd be no restraint and Mark IIs of everything.
Jack started with a simple jumping lunge, but the mech raised its bracer to deflect it, which Jack followed-up from with a slice to the neck, which was stopped by a plasma blast from a pair of wrist cannons that the mech had deployed. He felt a huge hit to his Aura as he rolled to the ground. Wheezing as he got back up, Jack looked at the mech to see it stomp towards him, raising its cannons. Shying away as the robot audibly primed its cannons, Jack was surprised to hear the rhythmic thuds of an aircraft-grade machine gun. Opening his eyes, he saw the mech trying to shift its focus and destroy the new threat. He scrambled back to a rock as Silver walked out of the darkness, pounding the Paladin with high explosive rounds.
"Nobody-kills-my-boyfriend-but-me!" Silver said, punctuating each word with a shot from DakBoomstick. After a few more seconds of barrage, the mecha fell over onto its side, and its lights went dark. Silver pulled Jack up from the ground with a hand, at which he smiled.
"Thanks for that. I'm not entirely sure whether to watch my back from now on, considering there's a qubit's chance you'll be my downfall."
"I'll just smile and pretend I understood that."
"Point taken."
Proceeding onwards with weapons raised, Jack and Silver were startled as the side of Beacon Tower broke open, and Professor Ozpin and one of the visiting students in the red dress rushed out, duelling cane-to-obsidian-sword.
The students watched, dumbfounded, for a few crucial moments, before Jack rushed forwards and Silver started another barrage. As Ozpin fell to the ground, Jack clashed with the student, but she was clearly ahead of his skill, parrying each attack with little to no effort used. Jack fought to keep up as he was suddenly on the defensive, fighting to keep the student from running him through. Silver stopped her barrage, and moved around to get a better angle on the target. Jack blocked stroke after stroke, panting, before locking blades a good arm's length from Jack.
"It appears, young Hunter, that you still have much to learn," the student said, a cruel smile coming onto her face. "You're a knight in shining armour... all flash and no fight... one who has never had his mettle tested."
"Well..." Jack said, straining to keep his sword from slipping, "Maybe... that test... is today!"
Jack tried to push the student back at this point, but she had the upper ground, so Jack did naught but floor himself. The duellist reared her hand back to strike, and the blade flashed towards Jack...
And then there was the sound of a sword rending flesh.
Silver nearly screamed, her hand over her mouth.
And Jack blinked. Professor Ozpin, always the knight, stumbled, the murderer's sword having gone straight through. As the demon in the red dress sneered and walked away, Jack lowered Ozpin's weak, wounded body to the ground, Silver giving up her chase to rush to the Headmaster's aid.
"Professor Ozpin, you shouldn't have done that!" Jack said, tears welling in his eyes.
"Nonsense, Mr Grayson... I am old, yet you're still young... you have a whole other life ahead of you..." He turned to Silver, smiling. "Ah... I see you've found romance in your sister's partner, Ms Pierce... Congratulations..."
"Professor!" Silver gasped, unable to believe her eyes.
"Do not worry, Ms Pierce... I'll be fine, and will find a peaceful spot to rest soon, but you must go, try to succeed where I have failed... Defeat the Fall Maiden... Cinder..." With those final words, Ozpin slumped into Jack's arms, and eventually faded from existence.
Jack and Silver had a hard time processing this.
"Whot."
"It's happened in a couple of science-fantasy movies I've seen, but never in real life. It looks like the old magician had a few tricks up his sleeve after all..."
Jack and Silver said no more, taking Ozpin's cane from where he'd dropped it and running forwards, towards the sounds of fighting.
Leara and Marinza ran towards Beacon Cliff, the former cursing Silver for splitting the party, and the latter cursing herself for not foreseeing Silver splitting the party.
The two met a larger group of students coming from the direction of Amity Colosseum, and they ran to the courtyard, where a group of Paladins surrounded the group. BY, NR, ML and CFY hesitated, but Velvet smiled darkly and took a little blue construct from her belt box. She destroyed multiple Paladins as the construct transformed into others' weapons, and the others were left dumbfounded before finding their senses and continuing to fight. Nobody noticed, though, as Yang slinked off, intent on finding the Big Bad.
Once the mechs were destroyed, Marinza was clearing rubber insulator from the Dragonfury Gauntlets, and Leara was reloading her rifle's clip, Blake noticed her lack of partner and rushed off to find her. Leara and Marinza, noticing this, ran after the Faunus, hoping to at least give her a few allies.
Silver ran across Yang as she ran, bumping into her.
"Yang! What're ye doing?"
"Trying to find the Big Bad. What else?"
"Arright, me and Jack can-" Silver then noticed her lack of partner. "Ohmdarnit! Looks like it's just us blondes, then."
"Well, that's good then. It's better than nobody."
They started running, heading towards the cafeteria.
Jack noticed his lack of partner in the courtyard, where he promptly got turned around and instead found Ruby and Weiss.
"Ruby! Weiss! You got any idea what's going on here?"
"None at all, but we need to stop Pyrrha from doing something dangerous and stupid!" Ruby said.
"Where?"
"Up there..." Weiss pointed to the top of Beacon Tower (Or rather, what was left of it) and Jack sighted down his spyglass, spotting the champion and the Maiden (Cinder, he supposed it was) at the top.
Weiss created a row of glyphs up the tower, then motioned to Ruby.
"You're the speedster, so I trust you know what to do?"
Ruby merely looked worried. "Send Jack, he's faster."
Jack didn't even wait for Weiss' response as he folded his spyglass. He quickly ReSemblanced Ruby, running around in a circle for a bit, before sensing a sonic boom and darting towards Beacon Tower.
The world passed by in slow motion as Jack felt the air around him start to heat up. He reached the tower, starting up the wall, as he felt his hair catch fire. Reaching the top, he saw Cinder and Pyrrha stand close to each other, Cinder looking ready for a killing blow, before casting his sixth sense back to the bottom of the tower. Sensing Weiss he ReSemblanced her now, using a single Glyph to deflect his momentum straight at Cinder. He'd only just thought over the physics of his actions when he connected, sending himself and Cinder sprawling across the tower, leaving Pyrrha on the ground with an arrow through her Achilles tendon.
"I won't let you kill another soul," Jack said, raising his sword in a clear challenge to duel. Cinder got onto her feet, forming her obsidian shards into a sword, and made the first stroke, expecting the duel to be over in a few swipes. However, it didn't end exactly as Cinder expected. All of a sudden, she felt like she couldn't breathe, and stepped back from Jack, using her sword to support her.
"Funny thing, that," Jack said, the words just barely reaching Cinder's ears, "Blood contains iron. It's magnetic." Cinder heard another voice sound, the girl's this time, and Jack stopped. Cinder gasped for air, and lashed out at Jack with the fury of an autumn thunderstorm.
Jack saw the lightning coming, and planted his sword in the tower, providing a ground for the electricity. Once Cinder realized the absence of screaming and pain was not simply death, she stemmed the flow of power, looking down at the boy. He got up, retrieving his sword, and putting away a device that was like a Scroll, but not. Jack smiled, and raised his sword.
"En garde," he said.
Marinza cursed Terminus as she broke from her group, reloading the Dragonfury Gauntlets, and rushing to Beacon Tower's stairwell. As she deployed the talons and started to scale the elevator shaft, she grunted a vow of revenge to her younger self and her lack of upper body exercise.
She flapped her wings to boost herself up as she reached the top, soaring into the sky above a swordfight between Jack and some chick in a red dress. She gawked at the obsidian constituting the blade, but readied her talons nonetheless, smirking at the woman, while Jack ducked out of Cinder's line-of-sight and started dragging a wounded Pyrrha to relative safety (As in, behind a rock).
Cinder and Marinza crossed blades for a couple seconds, in which Marinza came closer to landing a hit than Jack ever did (and actually did hit Cinder a few times). Cinder was apparently taken by surprise and had to restrategize, because the use of the Fall Season against Marinza was not only something that Jack saw coming, but that he actively worked to avoid. Sliding in on his knees, Jack once again drove the Mark II into the tower and grounded the lightning coming for Marinza. Marinza saw this, nodded to Jack gratefully, and switched to the Dragonfury Gauntlets' machineguns. After blasting away at Cinder's aura, Marinza switched back to the talons and leapt at Cinder, only to be caught with a blast of fire.
Jack retrieved his sword to get out of the way, but otherwise could do nothing to stop Cinder from using what appeared to be her Semblance. He worried for Marinza, but did nothing.
Marinza, on the other hand, took the fire in stride (she was a dragon, after all), and used Cinder's lack of guard to get one solid hit in. Cinder flinched from the hit, having expected painful death, and took one single step closer to the edge. Jack and Marinza switched places one more, and Jack drew the Mark II, rushing into Cinder's guard before she could defend herself. Holding the blade to her neck, Jack's face darkened as Marinza carried Pyrrha down the elevator shaft. Jack pushed Cinder back further, until she was standing at the edge of the tower.
"If this isn't enough persuasion for you," Jack said, "I don't know what is. But let me be clear on this: You will not, I repeat, will not, harm another living soul. Should you disregard this wise advice for keeping your sanity together, I will find you. And I will not be so merciful as now."
Leaving Cinder to ponder his words, Jack ducked down the elevator shaft, doing some acrobatic feats to parkour out of the elevator shaft. He met Marinza at the bottom, and together they blitzed out of Beacon, mowing down whatever Grimm they ran across.
RWBY and SL ran towards Beacon Tower, fearing for their friends' lives. They had to backtrack a bit, though, when MJ ran straight past them, towards a field hospital by Vale.
Once RWBY, JNR and MJSL had gotten Pyrrha to medical care, they had relaxed, letting endorphins do their job. Silver and Yang were laughing about some huge fight they had against one of the Big Bads of the siege, Adam Taurus, and Leara was chastising Blake for going off on her own ("You don't split the party!"). Marinza was telling Ruby about the obsidian sword she saw, and JNR was watching over Pyrrha, relieved that she was alive. Jack, however, contemplated how he'd acted in the fight, relaying to Weiss how he'd acted, how he felt about that, and the fate of Headmaster Ozpin.
"It was... monstrous," Jack said. "I fought dirty, Weiss. I magnetized Cinder's blood so she couldn't breathe."
"It was simply a last-ditch effort, I'm sure," Weiss said.
"Except, it wasn't. I resorted to that trick right off the bat. I nearly kept it still, which would put her life in danger... Only Pyrrha's quoting of Christopher Dawson brought me back... I'm a monster, Weiss."
"'As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.' I'm familiar with that one."
"And it nearly applied, Weiss. It nearly applied."
"You're not a monster, Jack. The fact that you showed restraint from killing a murderer means you retain empathy. It shows that, despite your previous actions, you're still human."
Jack took a deep breath after Weiss finished. "Even so, I'm not fit to remain with others who are good, always fighting with some sort of moral code. I'll be leaving at dawn." Jack collected the Mark II and left the tent, trusting Pyrrha to her team. Marinza, breaking from her story to Ruby, followed Jack out.
"Where are you going?"
"Back to the Starclimber, one last time. I'll put the last few repairs in place, and then I'll leave at dawn."
"Why?"
Jack stopped. "Because I don't feel I deserve the way you treat me. Not after that fight with Cinder."
"That chick in the red dress?"
"Yes."
Marinza's face fell, and she stood behind as Jack ventured on into the darkness, using his phone as a flashlight.
As the first few rays of light dawned on a new day, Jack put away the welding torch and started up the Starclimber. The ion engines made their usual scream, and then Jack looked one last time at the ruins of Beacon through the cockpit window.
"Looks majestic from this angle, doesn't it?" a voice said from his shoulder, making Jack jump from fright, turning around.
"Aye," Silver said, replying to Marinza's question, "It's like that old Mussorgsky piece... what was it? The Ruined Palace?"
"The Old Castle," Jack corrected, turning the girls' attention to him.
"He speaks!" Marinza said, hugging Jack.
"An' here I was, thinking tha' he'd ditch me," Silver said.
"Well, evidently not, sister-in-law."
Silver chuckled at Marinza's new title for her, and looked up at Jack. "You didn't think you could pop off without me knowing, did you?"
Jack opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Silver's passionate kiss, and so taken by surprise. When Silver broke off, she smiled.
"Just run, you clever boy, and remember me."
Jack laughed, his heart heavy. "Did you teach her that, Marin?"
"You bet I did!"
Silver sighed, hugging Jack. "Take care of Marinza for me, will you?"
"I thought she was staying with you..."
Jack and Silver both opened their eyes, looking to Marinza. "You can stay if you want, Marin."
Marinza looked pensive for a second, then jumped for joy. "Yay!"
Silver laughed. "I guess that means we have to meet again someday, eh?"
Jack smiled. "I guess so."
Three minutes, two goodbyes, and one last kiss later, Jack waved goodbye from the cockpit of the Starclimber, before the ship dematerialized, leaving Remnant in the hands of a dragon Faunus and a Scot.
"... I'm Mistralian! Honestly, how have you not gotten that into yer head yet?!"
Oio boios! DetectiveSky612 here!
And thus, Making A Sword is finally OVER! I can finally focus on finishing Dimension Travellers!
Jack: Thank God. I need a break from all this main-character-ing...
Shut up.
Anyway, be sure to leave a like and subscribe to my pen name! This may be the end of Jack's tenure in Remnant, but it sure as hell isn't the end of his story! Be sure to read Dimension Travellers for a what-happened-next!
