RWBY and Friends watch the Multiverse

by Reticent Phoenix

Team RWBY and other members of the cast are made to watch the events and lives of not just others living throughout the Multiverse, but the lives of alternate versions of themselves. First Fic.

25. Destiny: The Coming War

Author's Note:

By majority vote by readers, this chapter shall be about Destiny.

Had to help clean and repaint the walls of the home for a few days, making me without access to my computer for a bit, so this chapter took a bit longer to complete.

Hope you enjoy.

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Destiny: The Coming War

The coin rose and fell from the air. The audience watched it until it fell into Alaric's out-stretched palm, the Keeper's fingers snapping shut the moment the silver coin laned on his hand. Opening his hand, Alaric saw it had landed with the side of the coin baring the moon-like sphere facing up. The Keeper nodded once, and turned his hand over and let the coin fall to the floor, the coin evaporating before it hit the floor.

"So?" Blake asked, wondering like all the others what the result was.

"Give me a moment. First, I must inform you all that I shall be sending some of you back to your universes, or I will just send you into an adjacent room to wait until I believe your relevant, uh... I mean, when a universe might interest or concern you." The audience gave Alaric looks for that comment about being 'relevant'. What was that supposed to mean? On the other hand, they were intrigued by his mention of sending people back to their universes.

The Keeper walked over to San, Zwei's Shiba Inu alternate, sprinkled what looked like grains of white sand onto the dog's head. Moments later, San slowly began to fade away right then and there. The dog looked up at the Keeper, and barked a couple times. Alaric leaned forward, and scratched the top of San's head before the Shiba Inu disappeared entirely.

"That is how you'll send us home?" Ozpin questioned Alaric as he watched San disappear. Meanwhile, the Keeper looked towards Port, Oobleck, and Chibi Ruby and said.

"Yep. Now, Professor Port, Doctor Oobleck, Chibi Ruby, you next."

"Awww, but I wanna stay and see more!" Chibi Ruby whined.

"Why did you choose us anyway?" Port asked Alaric.

"Well, um... I'm sending you back to your universes. Whether you want to or not," the Keeper responded, refusing to elaborate on the reasons behind his choices. After a small bit of back and forth that barely went anywhere because of Alaric's refusal to explain himself, the audience finally accepted Alaric's declaration, and the three that would be sent back to their home universes said their goodbyes to the rest of the audience.

Once the two professors and Chibi Ruby were done saying their farewells to the others, Alaric sprinkled to white sand onto their heads, and the three faded away. As they disappeared, Alaric pointed his a finger towards a nearby wall, a door forming in the area of the wall he had pointed at.

"Now, Jeanne, walk into the room please. Don't worry, nothing horrible waits for you inside. Especially not something related to fire," Alaric whispered that last part to himself. People looked questioningly at Alaric when he did so, but continued on with what they were doing, having gotten used to the idea that Alaric was omitting things from them.

Jeanne walked up to the doof and opened it, finding a simple, four-walled reception-like room with four couches inside. A potted plant rested in the corner. There was a portrait of a fiery bird hung above one of the couches, and another portrait of a deer in a temperate forest. In the corner was a suit of steel armour that was a mix of lamellar and plate, the cloth underneath was purple and black.

"Will there be something for me to do, while I wait in here?" Jeanne asked Alaric. The Keeper shook his head, and replied.

"Eh, no. Just take a seat, and the moment you do, you shall fall asleep. I'll wake you up when I feel like I need you to come join us again."

"Oh, very well then." Jeanne said her temporary farewells to the other audience members, and sat on one of the couches. The moment she sat on it, her eyes shut, and fell asleep in a second. Satisfied, Alaric closed the door to the waiting room, and sat on his chair, he turned to his guests and said to them.

"Right, this universe, like I mentioned before, is one you watched before. Well, most of you watched before," the Keeper said, still giving the audience no clues as to which universe he was referring to.

"Which one?" Ruby asked.

"Just watch," Alaric smirked from behind his mask as he took out his remote and pressed a button.

The TV screen brightened, and a drawing of a solar system of eight planets and one star faded into view. A familiar drawing of a white spherical object that was the Traveller, or 'giant golfball' as Roman had initially called it, appeared at the centre of the screen.

"I was born the moment the Traveler died," a familiar voice said. Much of the audience recognised it to be Pennydroid, the Ghost.

"Yaay! Pennydroid!" Ruby, Nora, and Penny cheered upon hearing the voice.

"Pardon?" Salem, the two older Belladonnas, and Raven, asked. Confused as to the name the three girls had given the current narrator. It was obvious they recognised who it was that was speaking, but, the four of them did not.

After a quick summary and explanation of the previous events the audience had seen involving this universe courtesy of the three girls, and including plenty of corrections from the rest of the audience. The four audience members who had not been there to see the first viewing of this universe went back to watching the TV. Possessing a picture of what this universe was about, and just what they could expect from it.

"As everything collapsed around us. Before that day, there had never been a Ghost. There had never been a Guardian," Pennydroid continued speaking. The Traveler was shown travelling through the void of space, until finally, he came to rest above a planet of blue oceans, landmasses of varying biomes, and white clouds. "I don't know much about the Traveler. But I know it made me to bring you back. And I spent a really, really long time searching for you."

"The Cosmodrome? Not the first place I looked." Drawings of tiny white objects with white trails surrounded the Traveller, journeying far and wide across the planet. One in particular went to the centre of the drawing of the planet. "As I saw the other Ghosts find their Guardians, and the centuries went by, I wondered if I'd ever find you. And then... I did. And we've been through more than I could have ever dreamed of."

"Oooh. Please tell us, other version of me!" Penny excitedly pleaded to the TV screen.

"We destroyed the Heart of the Black Garden." The surrounding stars lit up to form the image of a pulsating mass of a liquid like substance that vague resembled the shape of a heart.

"We bested the Vault of Glass." The stars dimmed and lit up again to now form the image of an unfamiliar giant alien robot with a cyclopean eye, and seemingly made of glass.

"We killed a Hive God." Dimming and brightening again, the stars now formed a giant alien creature, again unfamiliar to the audience, encased in spectral armour and wielding a giant cleaver-like sword.

"And we hunted down the House of Wolves." One final time, the image of the stars changed to large Fallen, that one the audience could recognise, in far more regalia than they had seen before, and wielding a giant weapon that they guessed to be a missile launcher. "After going through all that, I knew I made the right choice."

"That was nice!" Penny smiled at hearing all the things that her counterpart in this universe, and her Guardian, had been through and overcome. Though, she hoped the Guardian had a name now. The others in the audience admitted that, though they did not know the precise nature of most of the tings Pennydroid had mentioned, it sounded impressive.

The feats apparently performed by the Guardian and Pennydroid were rendered even more impressive when Alaric added something that shocked the audience.

"All that in a year."

"What?!" The audience said, shocked that one person and their ghost could have done all that.

"Yeah. The Guardian, with some help, hunted down almost the entirety of the upper echelons of a Fallen House, killed two god-like entities, and defeated a robot capable of controlling time! Crazy right?" The Keeper went on to say. Right, the Guardian and Pennydroid had gone far, and had grown from the lone Guardian who struggled to kill a single Fallen Captain.

The draws of the blue planet and the stars faded, and the camera panned down to a view of from above the rings that surrounded a yellow gas giant. Eleven rectangular hexahedron shaped ships, escorting an immense rectangular space vessel that dwarfed them, and the multitude of rocks that made up the rings. Two large dishs built into both sides of the massive ship's struture.

"What the heck is that?" Emerald said with a raised brow. The audience had gotten the idea early on in their stay here that other universes were capable of, and possessed things they had never dreamed of. But that spaceship was something else, it looked like it was huge. Like really, really huge.

"It's called the 'Dreadnaught'. It's very big. An approximately 3444 to 3500 kilometres (2140 to 2174.8 miles) long space ship," Alaric explained.

The audience were astounded by the mention of how large the Dreadnaught was. They could barely comprehend the amount of resources it must have taken to construct it, and propel it through space. But again, Alaric found a way to shock them even more than the mention of the Dreadnaught's size.

"Just so you lot know, the Dreadnaught was made from part of the body of giant Worm that served the Darkness. That part of the body was converted into the spaceship you see now."

"How?" Weiss questioned him, finding it hard to imagine that a creature of flesh, sinew and bone could have possibly been turned into that gigantic behemoth of a vessel that was capable of spaceflight. It was even harder for her to imagine the size of the creature that the Dreadnaught had been made of. What kind of beast was it?

"Wait, who had the creature's body turned into a space ship?" Ren asked, his question causing a few others in the audience to look to the Keeper for answers. Alaric did not respond, and put a finger in front of the part of his mask where his mouth was behind in a shushing manner. The audience should have really seen that lack of response coming, and were honestly getting used to it.

He was either going to keep the identity of who it was to himself, or reveal it in some surprising manner. There was even the chance that it was an alternate version, or versions, of any of them that had done it.

"I remember everything about the day I was born."

"Kahn?" Ghira muttered, the person that just spoke sounded rather like the current High Leader of the White Fang. But there was something to her voice. A reserved tone laced with a regal dignity and aloofness was the best way he, and a few others, could describe how the woman, who Ghira wholeheartedly believed to be Sienna, sounded like.

"Yeah. Kahn in this universe is... an interesting individual," Alaric spoke as he scratched the top of Zwei's head. The corgi having taken a sitting position beside his chair.

Six starships, designed like the large Fallen starship the audience saw in the first viewing of this universe, entered the TV screen and teadily approached the first fleet from beneath the rings. Flights of smaller starships accompanying the larger vessels.

"I still bear the scars," Sienna continued to speak.

The camera zoomed in on one starship in particular. It cut into an internal view of the cockpit, revealing the pilot to be a pale blue-skinned man with dark-red hair, and blue eyes that had a noticeable glow to them. He wore a dark-blue form-fitting outfit with a dull brownish-grey chestplate, and a dark-blue cape.

Though the man's appearance was different to their universe's version of him, the audience recognised him to be Adam Taurus, despite the lack of his bull horns and iconic mask. To Blake, it felt odd to see him without his mask, and especially without his left eye being scarred as it was in their home universe.

"This douchebag?" Yang suddenly groaned in annoyance upon laying eyes on Adam.

"Yang!" Taiyang and Ruby berated Yang for her use of a swear word.

"Ugh, sorry dad. Sorry Ruby," Yang grumbled. She looked at the Adam onscreen with a frown as she explained herself. "It's just... whenever I look at this guy, I feel a strong urge to punch him in his stupid face. Punch him really, really hard."

Alaric, knowing how Yang and Adam's first meetings across several Multiverses often turn out, smirked behind his mask. Yeah, he understood why Yang would fell that way towards the bull faunus.

"Are we forgetting the fact that Taurus has blue skin, and his eyes are glowing for some reason?" Roman remarked. In his opinion, Adam looked stupider than he already did. He had met the leader of the White Fang cell of Vale a couple times, and all those encounters left a bad taste in his mouth. If he was not being paid so well, he would have refused to even look at Taurus, let alone work with him and his desperate band of animals.

"What's up with that anyway?" Mercury asked Alaric.

"This Adam is an Awoken." The audience carefully listened to Alaric as he began to explain what Adam was. "Who are the Awoken? Humans who, while on an exploratory mission, got caught between the battle between the Traveller and the Darkness. They declared neutrality, some stuff happened, and viola, they became the Awoken. Blue-skinned and with shiny eyes. A balance between Light and Dark."

The audience accepted Alaric's explanation, and continued to watch the events on the TV screen. Some guessed that there was something else about the Awoken, but left it be.

"The Awoken are my family now. And I am their Queen."

"'Queen'?" Ghira and Blake asked, that was a surprise.

"Yes. Sienna in this universe is Queen of the Awoken. Adam is also the Prince of the Awoken in this universe, him being Sienna's younger cousin in this universe." Alaric explained, surprising the audience even more at the idea that Adam and Sienna were not just related, but royalty. Plenty were not sure about how they felt about that last part.

Battled was joined, and the small starfighters of the Awoken rushed at the fleet of rectangular space vessels. In moments, the rings of the gas giant were filled with explosions, and the debris of destroyed spaceships.

The Awoken starfighters, or Galliots, were fast and nimble craft. Weaving through the rocks of the gas giant's rings, evading the defensive fire of the enemy vessels, and outrunning the enemy's own smaller space craft, which quickly retreated from the Awoken onslaught. Though they were smaller than the enemy's larger warships, entire wings of the Galliots were able to overwhelm the defenses of the warships and inflicted crippling damage to a few.

However, their efforts were not without cost. A dozen Awoken fighters were destroyed in the opening seconds, their wrecks joining the enemy's and the rocks of the rings. And they had yet to do any damage to the Dreadnaught.

Cutting back to a view from inside Adam's Galliot, he swiftly approached the Dreadnaught, accompanied by two other Awoken craft. The sounds of his ship's making quick onboard calculations filled the cockpit, followed by a rapid beeping sounded indicated that he was preparing to fire missiles or some other weapon on the Dreadnaught.

With one final long beep, Adam pressed a button at he top of his starfighter's control stick. Together, Adam and his two wingmen fired three missiles from their starfighters at the Dreadnaught. The missiles lanced towards a section of the Dreadnaught's exterior hull and detonated upon impact.

Adam and his wingmen flew over the impact area of their missiles as they retreated away from the Dreadnaught, the Awoken Prince turning his head to survey the damage. But there was nothing. No damage at all. Their missiles, which had struck in close proximity to each other had not dented the exterior of the Dreadnaught. Adam's face fell when he saw the lack of damage that he and even the rest of the Awoken fleet were inflicting on the Dreadnaught, his eyes were filled with both dismay and uncertainty.

"Whooo! Space battle!" Nora cheered. Whenever she and Ren could afford to go, she loved watching movie space battles in the cinema. Now, as part of Team JNPR, she and her teammates would watch a movie every once in a while together, some of the with crazy space battles like the one they were watching right now. She often liked to make her team watch action films, Ren would often choose martial arts movies, Jaune would have them watch superhero movies, while Pyrrha made them watch romance films.

Others in the audience were not only amazed by the battle taking place onscreen, but the sheer number of vessels taking part in it, and how they were space capable. Another demonstration of spaceflight, if only Remnant had a reliable means of it.

Young Salem, who had not seen such a thing before, looked on in unbelief. The world beyond her world was still one of great mystery, and legends told that the gods came from above. Mortal men and women could cross the boundary between their world and the sky above?

"Doesn't look like they did any damage to the Dreadnaught," Ironwood commented upon seeing how little of an effect the weapons of the Awoken had on the gargantuan space vessel. Internally, he reeled at the idea of what both fleets could do the Altesian navy, and was already thinking up ideas of how to replicate the technology he was witnessing to Atlas' armed forces. Primarily for its use against the Grimm, but also, gods forbid, for use in war against the other Kingdoms, if the need arose that is.

"They'll need something stronger to harm it. What about the Awoken's larger ships? Could they do something?" Winter mused, adding to her superiors thoughts. The Awoken's larger starships hung back, and had not joined in the main battle. What were they doing?

"Not the ships themselves," Alaric enigmatically spoke, leaving the audience guessing.

"We fought to keep our beautiful creation safe."

The view of the camera changed from Adam to one of the Awoken's larger ships, Ketches as they are called. The camera slowly zoomed in on the command deck until it went inside. Standing on a platform in the centre of the command deck, an Awoken woman stood, looking out through the viewport and at the battle that raged in front of her. Her eyes focused solely on the Dreadnaught.

Speaking of the woman, she had black hair, glowinng yellow eyes, and the same tone of pale-blue skin as Adam. She wore a brown sleeveless jacket, with a fur-lined collar, over a purple shirt. Along with that, she wore dark brown pants, with heeled boots.

As the camera drew closer to the woman, three robed women were revealed to be standing behind her.

"So, this is Sienna Kahn's alternate in this universe?" Raven thought aloud. Like Adam, it was a bit strange to see her with pale blue skin.

"And now this beast has come, claiming to be King."

The Queen looks away from the battle, and towards the robed women behind her. Giving them an affirmative nod.

"Sienna Kahn bows to no one."

"That is certainly something Sienna would say," Ghira murmured to himself with a sigh.

Sienna took a step back, before she closed them, Sienna's eyes lit up with the brightness of miniature stars as she outstretched her hands before her. Behind the Awoken Queen, the robed women formed into a semi-circle and outstretched their hands, wisps of bright white and purple energy appearing between their hands.

"Huh, what are they doing?" Neptune questioned, he and the rest of the audience silently pondering on this mysterious display.

"Some kind of magic?" Salem and Ozpin asked at the same time. The blonde woman curiously looked at the grey haired headmaster when she realised what he had said, Ozpin quickly trying to diffuse her interest by stating that they had seen examples of magic in previous viewings, and he was just making a reasonable assumption.

In front of Sienna's ship, a large line of energy, like those between the hands of the robed women, formed. Moments later, seven bright spheres began to form from the line of energy, until the line was gone and only the spheres remained.

"Um, what are those?" Yang asked Alaric, eyeing the bright spheres with a mix of curiosity and trepidation.

"Harbingers. Semi-sentient superweapons used by the Awoken," Alaric replied to Yang's question, going on to explain a bit further on their nature. Though, not by much. "They aren't weapons that one should consider using in a ally or civilian rich environment, as you're all about to see."

Superweapons? That sounded both intriguing and worrying. Just what were the Harbingers capable of for them to be labelled as superweapons?

Mere seconds after the last of the Harbingers formed, all seven rushed forward towards the battle, appearing like luminous comets to all who were watching.

As they swept through the battlefield, hundreds of the rings' rocks, the wreckage of ships, and even a great many of the enemy's smaller spacecraft, were pulled by unseen forces after the Harbingers. Soon, each Harbinger was pulling a large cluster of rocks and enemy vessels behind them as they neared main body of the enemy fleet. The Awoken Galliots veered away from the Harbingers' paths and the enemy fleet, none of the Awoken were caught in the Harbingers' invisible clutches.

A quick cut back to the bridge of Sienna's flagship, showed the Awoken Queen falling backwards. The robed women catching her before she hit the floor, and anxiously crowded around her.

Back to the enemy fleet, the Harbingers had done much and tore their way through several of the warships, the rocks pulled behind them smashing through the exterior hulls of the warships with ease. Their shattered remains joining the hundreds of rocks and wrecks being pulled behind the Harbingers as they rapidly advanced towards the Dreadnaught.

Together, as one, the Harbingers slammed into the side of the Dreadnaught, the rocks and battlefield detritus they had brought with them doing the saw. However, like the previous attacks performed by the Awoken, it did nothing.

The rocks and enemy ships flung at the immense spaceship harmlessly impacting against the Dreadnaught's chitin hull. The Harbingers, shining brighter than Remnant's own star for several seconds, guttered out like candles and quickly disappeared. Further revealing the lack of damage the attack had done to the vessel.

"Well... shit," Qrow cursed.

"All that and they did nothing to it?" Cinder muttered, in slight awe of the destructive potential of the Harbingers, and the resilience of the Dreadnaught.

"What would it take to destroy that thing?" Fox rhetorically questioned, but Alaric went ahead to answer him.

"Well, you could get to the Dreadnaught's main power generator, plant explosives, and blow the Dreadnaught to hell. Though you'd also be destroying half of the Solar System in the resulting explosion."

Taking a moment to trying imagine the sight of half a solar system being destroyed by one massive explosion, the audience did not need to be told or think on the idea for too long, to come to the conclusion that was a bad idea. The specific way of how to destroy the Dreadnaught, and its resulting effects, the Keeper had described to them gave the audience the impression that such a thing had happened in a few universes.

"Who's flying those ships?" Glynda wondered aloud, the same question going through the minds of the other audience members. "And what are they doing there?"

The camera cut to Sienna, who, having just recovered her strength, looked on the Dreadnaught and the devastation surrounding it in disbelief. The intense glow of her eyes returning to the calmer glow they possessed before the Harbingers appeared.

"You and I know how this ends," Sienna continued to say. She was apparently addressing someone, though she was not visibly talking to anyone present.

The screen changed view and was now focused on the Dreadnaught's dish facing the Awoken fleet. Then, from an open balcony on the Dreadnaught, a winged figure, standing at 3.9 metres (13 feet), stood looking on as the battle continued on. They were incased head-to-toe in armour made of dark brown bone-like chitin, with flowing dark red robes, the skin underneath it all was corpse-white, and his body skeletal. The figure possessed three digits on each hand, three emerald green eyes glowed in the dark, and two long protrusions jutted forth from the sides of his helm. His wings were vast, increasing his already imposing figure. In one of his hands rested an immense, cleaver-like sword of incredible age.

"Who the hell is that? What the hell is that?" Yang said the moment she laid eyes on the winged, sword-wielding giant.

"Oryx, the Taken King. God-King of the Hive, servants of the Darkness who seek to live forever by becoming synonymous with death itself, through the act of killing. He's been pursuing the Traveller, and exterminating entire species for millions, perhaps billions, of years." Alaric told the audience. "He's in the Solar System because a certain Guardian killed his son several months ago."

Alaric gave the audience a moment to process that chunk of information. They had seen and heard of examples of attempts to attain immortality here, and in the legends and fairy tales back in their home universe. But the method of the Hive was not one they had ever heard or thought of before. Then, they started to connect something that Pennydroid said in the start of this viewing, particularly how the Guardian had killed a Hive God, and what Alaric had said about Oryx's son being killed. Quickly coming to a realisation, Weiss spoke up.

"Uh... wait. Killed his son? God-King of the Hive? Are you saying the Guardian killed his son?!"

"Yep," the Keeper replied. "Crazy how consequences work, right? One day, you kill a Hive Prince for a creepy lady. The next, his angry father comes by to take your head."

"Why's he called the 'Taken King'?" Velvet asked.

"Well, Oryx, then Auryx, through a series of events too long for me to fully explain, communed with the Darkness itself. After their communion, the Darkness gave him to... Take his opponents." Seeing his audience's confusion, Alaric went on to say to them. "Don't bother asking, you'll soon see what Taking is."

The audience took him up on his word, and continued to watch, waiting for when they would this this 'Taking' that Alaric spoke of.

'What was that about a creepy lady?' Tai, and a few others, thought to himself. He shrugged and let it be.

Oryx stepped onto a circular platform, aglow with strange green light, took his sword in both hands and rose it above his head. It's tip pointed at the platform.

"This is gonna be bad," Sun uneasily remarked, dreading what would come next.

"We've known since you've escaped from that... pit."

"Who is she talking to?" Oscar wondered. Sienna was talking to someone, but who?

Oryx slammed his sword down onto the podium, a shockwave spreading through the balcony from the platform, followed by pale blue-white fog-like tendrils. Energy, the same colour as the fog-like tendrils from the platform, ran along the rim of the Dreadnaught's dishs, steadily pooling together at the dishes' centre as if charging up for something. The moment the energy formed a complete circle along the rim of the dishes, they unleashed a shockwave that decimated every around it.

From the surrounding asteroids, Awoken Galliots, to even the Hive's own ships. Nothing was safe from the shockwave's annihilating power.

"Is that-?" Blake started to say, but was interrupted by Alaric, the Keeper shaking his head as he said to her.

"Not Taking, but it's one hell of a weapon. As you can see right now."

The shockwave neared Sienna's Ketch, and as it drew closer, the camera changed to a close-up of the Awoken Queen's face. There was sadness etched on Sienna's face as she watched the shockwave approach her, but she did not panic, she simply closed her eyes in apparent acceptance of her doom. Seconds later, her, and the other Ketches of the Awoken fleet, were destroyed by Dreadnaught's shockwave.

To another part of the fleet, dozens of Galliots tried to turn about and flee from the shockwave, as the rest of their fleet was being destroyed. Sadly, many were caught and were instantaneously disintegrated, one of the fleeing Galliots belonging to Adam. Cutting to the inside of Adam's Galliot, the audience saw that his ship was violently shaking, the explosive deaths of his fellow pilots could be heard over his ships radio, Adam's face a grimace as he tried to get away from the shockwave.

His ship shaking more violently than before, and the end seemingly about upon him, Adam let out a scream before the TV screen turned to black.

"That went to hell very quickly," Roman remarked. The others in the audience agreed with the notorious criminal. Again, not exactly something the audience thought they would ever do, but hey, that was not the wierdest thing ever.

"The Awoken have played their part," Sienna's voice now said as the TV screen brightened.

The audience were treated with the sight of the shockwave's aftermath. The Dreadnaught was surrounded by the wrecks of hundreds of Awoken and Hive ships. From his balcony Oryx surveyed the destruction he and his warship had caused, taking in the pyrrhic victory he had won. The Taken King let out a low growl and turned away from it all.

"This... was all part of the plan."

"What plan?" Ozpin questioned.

"Oryx and his fleet would have absolutely destroyed the Last City of Earth. With his fleet destroyed, and a good deal of his ground forces with them, Oryx will have to wait for reinforcements." Alaric explained, the audience starting to see where he was going with it. "That gives the Last City ample time to act on the threat Oryx poses, maybe enough to kill him."

"So, Sienna sacrificed herself to give the City time?" Kali surmised.

"There's more to it than that," the Keeper said with a shake of his head. "The Queen of the Reef Awoken rarely does anything that did not ensure she got something out of the situation, but, you don't need to know about that right now. Keep watching."

The camera panned away from the Dreadnaught until it showed just how large the radius of the shockwave was. A massive hole in the gas giant's rings, thousands upon thousands of kilometres wide, had been created by the Dreadnaught's shockwave attack.

"Guide them, my Hidden friend. It is all up to you now." With those final words from the now, presumably, deceased Queen Sienna Kahn, the screen faded to black.

Sienna's words were ominous, and the audience wondered what the full meaning behind them was. There was a plan, a plan that involved the Queen's self-sacrifice and was intended to result in Oryx's death, but the identity of the person that Sienna conspired with, and their further aims, were unknown to them.

"'Hidden friend'. Who could that be?" Winter wondered, the others in the audience shrugged in response, while Alaric proved less than forthcoming with the answer to that question.

The screen brightened once more, this time to the sight of three jumpships speeding through space and towards one of two massive asteroids orbiting around a planet that the audience recognised to be Mars. That was not the only thing they recognised, for one the ships was the same Arcadia-Class Jumpship the Guardian had used to escape the Cosmodrome and fly to the last City, though, it was in much better shape than it was back then.

As the ships flew down to the asteroid's surface, and nimbly navigated their way through canyons and cliffs, a voice spoke through their comms.

"Guardians, this is Commander Ironwood. The Cabal base on Phobos is blasting a signal on all channels. If they're willing to break transmission silence, this could be a prelude to a full scale assault."

"I am a commander in this universe?" Ironwood muttered. He was starting to see a pattern where he appeared to be in positions of command or power in the Multiverse, especially when it came to organisations with a measure of militarism.

"Yeah, you're a Guardian. In fact, you're a member of the Vanguard, a triumvirate of the most powerful Guardians who are elevated to the leadership of their respective classes. You are the leader of the Titans. Congratulations!" Alaric informed Ironwood and the audience, clapping his hands together, though, no one joined him.

"Hmmm, very well then." Ironwood nodded, accepting his counterpart's position. Alaric looked towards Glynda and Qrow, pointed at the professor and ex-professor, and said to the two.

"Ms Goodwitch, you are the Vanguard of the Warlocks. Qrow, you are Vanguard of the Hunters."

Goodwitch, like Ironwood, accepted her counterpart's position as leader of the Warlocks.

"So I gotta work with Jimmy and Goodwitch?" Qrow grumbled, but was surprised by Alaric's response.

"Worse."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"A Hunter works better in the wilds, but you're stuck in the Tower. You're also not the greatest existing hunter. You are an exceptionally skilled Hunter, one of the best, but you got the position of Hunter Vanguard because of a dare from a dear friend." Alaric said. "Still, you're a great guy. You're just in a position that yoh are not too fond of being stuck in."

Qrow went on to grumble about something under his breath, while Raven posed her own question to the Keeper.

"Who are the Cabal?"

"Think 1.5 metres (5 feet) tall space turtles or rhinos that control a highly militaristic expansionist empire. And when I say highly militaristic, I mean highly militaristic," Alaric said with an amused snort.

The ships exit the canyons and flew over an open plain, steadily getting closer to the ground as they searched for a landing zone. As they were doing so, they flew over three large Cabal Tanks, one was a burning wreck while the two others were still and appeared empty.

"We're setting down on Phobos now," Pennydroid informed Ironwood.

"I'll be monitoring your feed through your Ghosts. Good luck to you all," Ironwood said to them.

The Guardians' ships slowed until they were hovering over a cliff, a second later, three Guardians materialised on top of the cliff.

One wore a hooded midnight-blue cloak with a white stylised wolf's head at the centre, a gas mask-like helmet with a metallic silver visor over their head, a dull grey chestplate over a form-fitting grey outfit, with brown knee-high boots. In their right hand they carried a black and silver hand cannon designed like a revolver, with engravings of feathers along the barrel. Pennydroid appearing above his shoulder a moment later, he was obviously the Guardian.

To his left was a muscular woman wearing considerably more armour than either of her companions. Wearing thick white and pink armour over her chest, shoulders, forearms, legs, and a helmet over her head. At her right hip was a pink piece of cloth that had a symbol of a hammer and a lightning bolt crossed together on it. In her hands was an auto rifle. And Ghost with a green shell with an additional splash of pink appearing next to her head.

The last of three was a slender woman wearing a pale blue longcoat, a white outfit underneath, and a white helmet with an avian design and a metallic silver visor. At her left arm she wore a band projecting a small hologram of a white snowflake. Beside her, a Ghost with a blue shell and an eye that fluctuated between seven different colours every so often. Held in her left hand was a semi-automatic scout rifle.

(For brevity's sake, imagine the armour they're wearing to be the ones the fireteam of Guardians wore at the Taken King: Evil's Most Wanted Live Action Trailer.)

"Huh, there's the Guardian." Blake remarked.

"I think I known who that one is," Ren said, pointing towards the white and pink armoured Guardian. He also knew who that Guardian's Ghost was.

"Oooh, what is that weapon?! Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme!" Ruby squealed at the sight of the lighg machinegun in the Guardian's hands, her hands reaching out towards the screen and started to aproach thd TV. She was stopped when Yang grabbed hold of her hood and pulled her back onto Team RWBY's couch.

"First, yes, that is Ms Valkyrie. Second, that weapon is called Thunderlord, a powerful and reverred light machinegun from the Last City's past." Alaric then turned to Weiss and said to her. "You Ms Schnee are the Warlock, the one wearing the longcoat."

"Who are our Ghosts?" Weiss proceeded to ask, the Schnee heiress feeling that she knew who ig was. The ever shifting colour of her alternate self's eye giving away his identity to her and Winter.

"I think I mentioned this before, but, Ren is Nora's Ghost. Renbot is your name," Alaric said. "Meanwhile, your Ghost, Ms Schnee, is your delightful butler, Klein."

Weiss smiled at the knowledge that Klein, the family butler and the man that practically raised her, was her Ghost. Nora, meanwhile, was hugging Ren tightly, and saying something about how the two were together in this universe. Not together together, of course, just normal together.

"Aaaah, it's great to be back together as a fireteam!" The familiar, but older, voice of Nora Valkyrie came from the Titan. Her voice also sounded like it was coming from a robot. "Is that a new shader Weiss? Looks good on you!"

"Thank you. Coco recommended it for me, I must thank her properly sometime later." The Warlock looked towards the Hunter, and cordially greeted him. "Orion, good to see you again."

"Snow Queen. Heh, haven't seen you since Venus. You been treating yourself right?" the Guardian, or Orion as he was apparently know as, replied to Weiss' greeting. His voice unfamiliar to the audience.

"'Snow Queen'?" Weiss frowned at this new nickname of hers.

"Why did I sound like I am a robot?" Nora asked, scratching the top of her head.

"That's because you are a robot," Alaric received more than a few raised eyebrows as he said that. "More specifically, an Exo. Robots with the implanted minds of humans from Humanity's Golden Age. Nora-12 is your name in this universe."

Nora thought on this for a moment, after a few seconds she smiled and shrugged. Accepting that this alternate version of her was a robot with ease. Meanwhile, Penny smiled at the information. To her, it was nice to see and hear Ruby's friends also being robots. She also wondered what Exo's looked like.

"The Guardian talks? Good, I didn't really like watching a mute-Ow!" Yang yelled in pain as a spoon was flung at the back of her head. Looking at the culprit, she saw Neo smirk at her, and pulled a sign from out of nowhere.

"I preferred it when the Guardian was quiet." Was what was written on a sign that Neo held up. There weren't nearly enough strong silent-types in the universes they had watched, and she liked it when those types of characters appeared.

"Can you not give her stuff to throw at us?" Yang said to Alaric, infuriated with the pint-sized criminal and Alaric's choice to not do anything to about her.

"I'm sorry Yang. But, I'm afraid I can't do that," the Keeper replied in a calm, monotonous voice.

"Still jealous I got this little thing?" Orion said as he tauntingly waved his hand cannon at Weiss.

"Hmph. C'mon, let's get moving." Weiss grunted, quickly walking ahead of the two others.

"She's so jealous that you got Hawkmoon," Nora-12 said with a chuckle before the two followed after their Warlock companion.

"Please, why would I be jealous about someone having a gun?" Weiss questioned. The hand cannon was rather marvelous to look at, but she was certain that not even an alternate version of herself would be jealous over a gun, no matter how it looked.

"Well, it does look impressive. And I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of any bullet fired from it." Ruby spoke up, looking on the weapon with wide eyes.

"You wouldn't," Alaric said. "Three bullets of the eleven fired from Hawkmoon's chamber, by some strange means, inflict greater damage than the other bullets."

The trio of Guardians walked along the cliff, their weapons at the ready in case of anything. As the advanced forward, they came a across a few bodies of large, 1.5 metre (5 feet) tall creatures in pressurised dark-brown suits and armour coloured light blue and red.

"Skyburners regiment. Can't say we've encountered them before. No other Guardians are on Phobos last I checked, wonder what did this to them."

Weiss sighed contently, she really missed Klein and it was nice to hear him again. Even if it was one from another universe.

As they spoke, three Cabal ships passed overhead in high speeds. Another Cabal ship rose up the cliffside and faced them, its bright spotlight focused on the Guardians. In response, the Guardians rose their weapons at the ship, but, to theirand the audience's surprise, it flew off to join the several other Cabal ships that were leaving Phobos.

"They didn't shoot at us?" Nora questioned as she lowered her light machine gun.

"They must be in a serious hurry to leave. Usually they take at least three shots at us whenever we're spotted," Orion remarked.

"I feel kinda insulted," Nora huffed. Behind their helmets Weiss and Orion rolled their eyes at their teammate.

"Ren! Do you think I could tank a shot from one of those ships?" Nora asked her green themed best friend. "Because I think I totally could. Look at me! I'm a walking wall, I-"

"Yes Nora, I think you could. But only two at most," Ren answered. Nora nodded and sat back down, though, she could be heard whispering about how she could survive more than two hits from whatever the Cabal ships could throw at her.

"That young lady is very... excitable and odd, I must say." Salem whispered to Glynda.

"Er, yes... I couldn't agree more," Glynda responded. Despite how they had been in the same room together for gods only knew how long, the Beacon professor, and the rest of Ozpin's Order, found it awkward to interact with the young women.

Continuing on in a cautious jog, the three Guardians of a large fortified Cabal base some distance away. Then, a Legionary crawled out of a crevice, his armour rent and leaking a dark oily substance. It let out a weak wail before it fell onto the floor and grew still. Nora-12 walked up to the Legionary and gave it a kick to make sure it was dead. Seeing that it was, the Guardians continued towards the Cabal base.

As they approached the base, the Guardians saw several Legionnaries running from a closed door at the front of the base, and saw them thrown a short distance when the door was blown open by an explosion. None of them got back up.

A Cabal ship rose from a launch pad, leaving three Legionnaries, and a Cabal wielding a massive shield behind. In their hands were slug rifles approximately the size of a human torso. They waved at it, as if pleading for it to come back, but quickly gave up a few moments later.

"Ironwood, the Cabal are evacuating with extreme prejudice. They're getting torn up down here," Weiss told the Titan Vanguard, before the three Guardians moved on towards the front of the base.

Winter looked on the Guardian version of her younger sister wth mild amusement. In a way, she still acted like Weiss, but at the same time, she could not help but feel that the way this other Weiss carried herself like Winter herself. Like an Altesian Specialist.

"So, is it Oryx and the Hive that are wrecking these guys?" Mercury questioned.

"Sort of. Oryx is behind all this, but you'll soon see what did this," Alaric replied.

The Cabal had not noticed them yet, so the three Guardians dashed behind a ruined Cabal ship. As they observed what the Cabal at the launchpad were going to do next, Renbot appeared and scanned the wrecked ship. After a couple scans, Ren disappeared and informed the Guardians of his findings.

"Hmmm, standard Cabal procedure when under attack. They destroyed this ship after it crashed. What's odd is the last directive they recieved. I'd say its an evacuation order, but 'evauation' is not in the Cabal's vocabulary. All the bases's ships and personnel were order to focus attacks beyond Martian orbit."

"Really? No word for evacuate?" Fox remarked, confused as to why they did not possess such a word in their vocabulary.

"Yeah, nor retreat. But, they do have six words for advance. Told you they were highly militaristic," the Keeper responded. The audience were rather perplexed by that information. Cabal society was so militaristic that it influenced their language?

"Why do they have no word for evacuate or retreat, Mr Alaric?" Penny asked.

"Huh. The Cabal are so devoted to victory, that they excluded certain concepts, like evacuate and retreat, from their own language. Cabal soldiers are even exiled from the empire itself, and can only return home if they are victorious." Shock was the response of most of the audience upon hearing that last bit of information. Plenty could understand the desire to win, but this was a tad bit ridiculous.

Being exiled from home was quite the motivator, that much they could admit, but it was still a bit much in the opinions of plenty of the audience.

"No need to waste ammunition. Ignore the Cabal. Get inside the base and figure out what's going on here. If something is here that can decimate a Cabal base, and if it can endanger the City, we need to know what it is immediately." Ironwood ordered the Guardians.

The Cabal at the launchpad seemed to be in a heated debate with one another. So, the fireteam took advantage of this and snuck between the wrecks and large crates piled in front of the base, and made their way to the door that had exploded.

As the Guardians entered the front doors blown open by the explosion, a new voice spoken on the comms.

"Something has drawn us here. I can feel it," The voice was a woman's, one that the audience did not recognise. The woman's voice was almost a whisper, and she sounded as if she were haunted by something.

"Guardians, I have asked Maria Calavera to monitor the channel." Ironwood informed the Guardians, unease and displeasure in his voice as he mentioned the woman's name.

"Maria Calavera. Maria Calavera," Qrow repeated the name Ironwood's alternate had said. The look on his face told everyone that he was trying to remember something.

"What's up, uncle Qrow?" Ruby asked her often drunk uncle.

"Eh, it's nothing kiddo." Qrow waved off his youngest niece. "Just feels like I know that person's name, but, at the same time I don't know it."

"You know her alright, but not by that name. Hehehehe." Alaric spoke up, proceeding to mischieviously laugh to himself.

"When you laugh you sound like dick!" Qrow frowned at Alaric. Still, his words puzzled the veteran Huntsman. From when and where did he know the name of this woman? A woman whose true name he was apparently not aware of until now. And why did she feel important to him.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not in that way, but, in a personal way. Like how an artist is inspired by his muse.

The Guardians continued on inside. When they passed through another door, they came across quite the sight. The interior of the base was in ruins, and no lights apart from alarms were on.. The bodies of dead Skyburners were scattered here and there.

"This place is a mess! It's worse than when Shaxx was invited to Ironwood's knitting club," Nora remarked when she laid eyes on the place.

"Keep your mind on the mission, Nora." Weiss rebuked the Titan.

"Hmmm, must have been quite the fight." Yang remarked once she saw the devastation on the TV screen. "One-sided too, I don't see any bodies other than the space turtles."

"What was that about a knitting club?" Roman spoke up with an amused tone in his voice, flashing a grin at the Altesian General. Neo joining him. "Sounds interesting."

"Yep, a knitting and crocheting course. I've seen some of the club's work, they're pretty good. Especially yours Ironwood, you make lovely sweaters! You want one?" Alaric asked, producing a white and grey striped wool sweater, and presenting it to Ironwood.

Ironwood's face turned red, his eye twitched, and his mouth took an 'o' shape. The man not sure how to react.

A few members of the audience chuckled at Ironwood's flushed and stunned face. Some in the audience, namely Qrow, Roman, and Neo, openly laughed at the Altesian general. Well, Neo laughed as best as a mute can.

It was not every day that you see Ironwood, a man who appeared so stern so much of the time he appeared in public, become as embarrassed as he was right now. Some of the audience even tried to commit the look on Ironwood's face to memory out of pure amusement.

With a sigh, Ironwood looked away from Alaric and the other audience members, and actually accepted the sweater. As he did, Ozpin and Alaric could swear that they saw the edge of Ironwood's lips twitch upwards for a moment as he took the article of clothing. And noted the meticulous care Ironwood used to fold the sweater and placed it on the arm of his chair.

Did Ironwood actually like the sweater? Well, now Ozpin knew what to give his friend next Christmas.

"I hear... whispers in the dark." Maria muttered through the comms, her words making Orion and Weiss tense.

"Why did Ironwood bring her into this?" Weiss muttered.

"She's useful. If it wasn't for Maria, we might not have killed Crota." Orion defended Maria. "And I might not have gotten a cool title out of that whole affair."

"Yes, yes, Crota's Bane." Weiss grunted. "But why her for this mission? Last reports stated that there was no Hive activity on Phobos,"

"Glynda's probably doing some of your wierd Warlock stuff, or turning people into frogs. Qrow's avoiding his duties no doubt," Nora said. "So yeah. Ironwood turned to the creepy lady to help keep her eyes and ears on us."

"Fair enough," Weiss sighed.

"What's the deal with this Maria, anyway? Why do most people sound like they don't even feel comfortable talking about her?" Neptune questioned, others also wondering at this.

"Well... Maria was once a Hunter that took part in an assassination attempt at Oryx's son, Crota. The Hive God-prince that the Guardian killed," the audience nodded to Alaric. Confirming to him that they were listening. "It, uh, did not end well. Everyone else in the fireteam died, and Maria was trapped in Crota's lair for two years or so. She lost her Ghost, ran out of ammunition, and had to replace her own eyes with those of the Hive's."

"Wait. When you said 'replace her own eyes', do you mean she..." Sun's voice trailed away as he imitated with his hands the actions of gouging the eyes out of an invisible creature's skull, and popping them into his own eyes.

"Add a third eye to the forehead, and yes. That is what she did," the audience recoiled at the answer they received from the Keeper. Alaric gave them no mind and continued to speak. "When she got out of that hellhole and returned to the Tower, people didn't really throw their arms open in welcome. She helped kill Crota, but still, she's not a person who you go to the nearest pub and share a drink with."

The audience could understand the reasoning behind the Last City's unease about Maria. She must have also been affected by the experience in more than just a physical way if the manner in which she spoke was an indicator of anything. She may have already spoken like that, but they doubted it.

Proceeding to head even deeper inside the Cabal base, the Guardians found the place to be devoid of life. Turning a corner, the Guardians enountered a small white light floating in front of an open door.

As the Guardians approached it, the light made a loud screeching noise and flees down the hallway.

"What the hell was that?" Ironwood questioned from over the comms.

"Fingertips, on the surface of my mind." Maria said, not really answering Ironwood's question. The three Guardians looked towards each other in concern, both of that white light and Maria's words, before walking towards the corner the light had disappeared behind.

"Yes... thank you for your input, Maria." Ironwood muttered, slightly unsettled by Maria's words.

"Uh, okay. This Maria individual is starting to concern me," Winter said.

"Other me did call her a creepy lady," Nora interjected.

"Uh, what is that?" Oscar cut in. Turning to the TV screen, the audience shared in the farm boy's shock.

Upon turning the corner, an eerie sight falls upon the Guardians. Several voids of nothingness appear in parts of the base, seemingly appearing as black holes, or windows into empty space itself. Some even swallow up the bodies of dead Cabal.

"Pennydroid, what is this?" Orion spoke as Pennydroid appeared in his hand and flew over to the mysterious voids. Pennydroid paused for a moment, as if unsure about approaching whatever the things were, but went ahead and proceeded to scan the voids.

Weiss walked ahead a small distance, her helmeted head looking around as if looking for something.

"Do you feel it?" Weiss asked her teammates, but spoke again before they could answer. "The Darkness, it's starting to hang heavy here. It's stifling. Almost to the point of suffocating."

"Then let's try not to get ourselves killed. There's no Ghost resurrections for us if the Darkness is that bad here," Orion responded to Weiss' words. Pennydroid finished her scan of the voids and told them all her findings.

"This membrane is attempting to form a bridge between dimensions, but I think it requires a living host. It's unlike anything we've seen before."

Nodding Pennydroid's analysis of the membrane, the Guardians took care to avoid stepping on the strange phenomena as they proceeded to explore the interior of the base.

"Interesting," Cinder said. Turning to face Alaric she asked him. "What would happen if a living creature touched them? Does it involve Oryx's ability to 'Take' in some way?"

"Aren't you clever," Alaric said with a snort. "But you'll have to wait a wee bit longer to see just what Taking is."

The Guardians reached a staircase made up of ramps wrapped around an elevator shaft. Suddenly an elevator car came crashing down, and slams onto a ledge, getting stuck between the beams. A lone Legionary was inside, it desperately scrambled to escape, jumpjets on its back fully engaged as it tried to escape out a hole in the top of the elevator car. However, debris came falliing down and knocked the elevator car loose, sending the Legionary plummeting to its death.

"Yeesh, almost feel bad for that guy," Nora remarked as she peered down the elevator shaft. The distant sound of the elevator crashing at the bottom of the shaft could be heard as the Guardians moved on.

"Really building up to something big, eh?" Emerald whispered to herself rather than anyone else in the audience. Regardless, others had heard the green haired thief and agreed with her.

As the three Guardians continued walking up the ramps of the staircase, they came across a startling sight. A Cabal soldier, in far more sophisticated armour than the ones worn by the previous Cabal soldiers the audience had seen, trying to pull itself from a white tether holding him in place. Before the Guardians could do anything, the Cabal was sucked into the source of the tether and disappeared into nothingness.

"Okay. I am officially freaked right now," Nora said after a moment of stunned silence.

"What happened to that Centurion?" Weiss whispered in alarm.

"Whispers are louder, I will endure." Maria continued to cryptically say to herself.

"Not helping Maria," Orion murmured. The Guardians taking slow, cautious steps as they moved on. Their eyes darting to every shadow, sound, and movement that they glimpsed or heard.

"That's Taking," Alaric declared to the audience. His guests were, like the Guardians onscreen, taken aback by what they had witnessed and were almost as confused as them as well.

"So, Oryx abducts people?" Jaune questioned, taking a moment the rub the back of his neck before posing another question. "That can't be all, is it?"

"Well, an individual that has been Taken is presented to the Darkness and is... perfected." The audience intently listened to Alaric as he explained Taking. Plenty of them had already had misgiving about it when the Keeper mentioned the Darkness, and the word 'perfected'. "Any flaws or weaknesses the Darkness sees in an individual is corrected, turned to strengths. That is, of course, at the cost of any free will that the individual may have possessed. Most of the time anyways."

Taking a moment the audience digested the information, thinking on the implications behind Alaric's words. It was not what they had expected, like so many other things they had seen, and it was both intriguing and terrifying to them. Intriguing for the fact that the process of Taking 'perfected' individuals, however, it was terrifying for their free will would be stripped away from them and the manner of their 'perfection' might not be something they themselves might like.

It was Raven that spoke the question that the others in the audience were also wondering, but dared not say aloud.

"So, what would happen if any of us were Taken?"

"Huh, can't really say for sure. Fallen Captains in this universe jealously guard their positions of power, but are unable to hide the power of their rank, making them priority targets for friend and foe. When they are Taken, they are given the power to blind their enemies." Alaric eventually said after a brief pause. the example he provided was interesting, and gave the audience insight to the kinds of 'perfections' that the Darkness would give to those that were Taken. Surprisingly, the Keeper kept on speaking.

"For you lot, one of the best examples I can think of is you Ms Nikos." Pyrrha, her friends, and several others rose a brow at that. "You are an exceptional warrior, to the point that there are very few people around your age group that can match. If you were Taken, my guess is that your righteousness, your want to properly bond with others, and similar such 'weaknesses' would be stripped from you. That's all hypothetical of course, there's no universe I have seen where any of you have been Taken."

No one said anything. No comment or question passed through anyone's lips after hearing Alaric's hypothetical example of Taking. So being Taken did not exclusively mean those that were Taken received abilities that compensated for their weaknesses, but also emotions and thoughts could be stripped away from them.

Without a word, they turned and kept watching the events onscreen.

Another Centurion is seen running for his life futilely before he is snatched up as well.

"Maria? I really, really want to know what is going on here? You know something. Tell us!" Weiss barked at Maria. The woman on the other side of the comms paid Weiss no heed, and went on with her strange ramblings.

"They speak a word... a name."

"Big confrontation coming up!" Yang grinned. This was like something straight out of a game or movie. The protagonists go through an ominous and seemingly abandoned location, they see things that freak them out and indicate that they are not the only one's there, and then boom! Enemy comes out of nowhere and they get into a fight.

Walking into a large, circular room with a high ceiling and two levels of floors, the Guardians more on edge than ever. Their hands gripping their weapons ever more tightly, constantly checking their radars, and ready to act on a moment's notice.

The moment the Guardians passed through the doors, dark fog suddenly began to fill the room, coalesce at the centre of it and formed into a dreadful shape.

"What-?" Orion started, but was interrupted when Maria yelled over the comms, her voice filled with fear.

"He... is here!"

The shape the fog took was Oryx's head, and it stared directly at the Guardians. More specifically at Orion. The Hunter himself felt the intense weight of Oryx's incredibly ancient gaze fall upon him, and could feel nothing but vengeful malice in the Taken King's eyes.

"By the Light," Weiss breathed.

"Light! Give your will to me!" The image of Oryx cried out, his voice filled with rage, and directed it was all directed at the Guardians.

"I would not want to be in Orion's boots right now," Coco remarked. And those were some nice boots.

A black orb, swarming with energy, appeared before the image of Oryx, gradually swelling until it exploded. As the orb exploded, the image of Oryx disappeared, and strange creatures began to fill the room. Some of these creatures were shield wielding Cabal, a slug rifle in their free hands. But their bodies were shadowy, they glowed with an eerie white light, and a glowing white orb was present over its face. Along with them were smaller, lither creatures wearing armour that resembled that of the Cabal's, wielding the same slug rifles that the Cabal did.

But one of the new creatures towered over all others. At the centre of the room, a giant humanoid creature, its body encased in armour like Oryx's. In its hand right hand was strange, alien projectile launcher.

"Take cover!" Weiss yelled to the others. The three Guardians leapt behind some large metal barriers just in time to avoid the initial fire from the creatures.

"Uh, what are they?" Velvet pointed at the creatures. She and the rest of the audience recognised the shield-bearing Cabal, but did not know the name of this type of soldier, yet they did not recognise what the smaller creatures and the giant were.

"The Cabal with shields were called Phalanxes. Those small ones were Psions, auxiliaries in the Cabal military." Alaric then turned his attention to the giant, that was 3.6 metres (12 feet) tall, and said. "That giant? That's a high ranking Taken Knight, a Knight is an ancient and fully-grown member of the Hive, and are the pinnacle of their warrior caste."

"The Guardians are combat ready. I am sure they can win this fight," Penny confidently said. The robot-girl was sure in her belief that this other version of herself, her Guardian, and the others would pull through this ordeal.

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch," Mercury interjected. The Guardians were outnumbered, and like Orion had said, they wouldn't be able to revive themselves if they were killed.

The Taken relentlessly pounded at the Guardians' cover as they advanced towards them. The giant Taken Knight hung back, letting the smaller Taken go forward.

Nora poked her head out of the barrier she hid behind, and instantly retreated back behind cover when three Taken guns fired on her exposed head. One shot grazed her helmet and left a small, black scorch mark on it.

"Tch, that kind of hurt." Nora grunted.

Orion took a step out from behind the barrier he stood behind with Weiss, and fired to shots from his hand cannon at the Taken. A Taken Psions was hit where its heart should be, its body was knocked off its feet, and disappeared as it fell dead on the floor. Another Taken Psion lost its head, and a small vortex that appeared where its head had been, the rest of its body getting sucked into the vortex a second later. Orion's third shot hit one of the Taken Cabal's shield.

The Taken returned fire, and Orion was forced into cover. The Taken Knight did not fire the weapon in its hand, but it reared its head, and jets of fire burst from the centre of the Knight's face like projectiles. The fires streaked through the air, and headed towards Orion, the Hunter narrowly avoiding the Knight's attack.

"That was close," Sun said.

"So, Taken Knights can shoot flames from out of her faces? Alright then," Ren muttered to himself. It was a curious ability to have, and he wondered whether that was a natural ability Hive Knights have, though he doubted it, or if it was an ability given to them as part of being Taken. That sounded a bit more plausible.

"Yeah, its to help them live by the central tenant of Hive culture. But, you don't need to know the exact specifics right now," Alaric said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"No Knight I've ever seen has done that before. Weiss! You got Light for a Nova Bomb?" Orion asked Weiss, the Warlock also retreating back behind the barrier after firing twice with her scout rifle.

"I got enough. Give me covering fire, alright?" Receiving a nod from Orion and Nora, the three peeked out from cover and started to fire on the Taken, while Weiss looked towards the second level of the room, clenched her fist at it and disappeared.

"Uh, what did I just do?" Weiss queried, confused as to what it was that she had done. Had she gone invisible?

"Blink. A short teleportation ability," Alaric quickly explained.

"And what was that about a 'Nova Bomb'?" The Schnee heiress asked, it sounded... powerful and destructive. The Keeper did not answer her this time, simply making a shushing gesture before pointing at the TV screen. She, and everyone else, would see in a moment.

Weiss reappeared at the room's second level of floors and hid from view behind a large crate that was as wide as she was tall. Seeing a few of the Taken had grouped up together, the Warlock drew power from the Void, and purple energy began to coalesce in her right hand. Feeling the void fill her hand with its power, Weiss stepped out from cover and unleashed it on the Taken.

A condensed ball of Void energy burst out from Weiss' left hand and rocketed towards the Taken. The explosion that followed when the Nova Bomb hit a Taken Phalanx in its arm disintegrated it and several of the surrounding Taken.

"Hmmm, impressive." Ozpin stated after watching Weiss display of her powers as a Warlock.

"Did you see that Weiss? That was so cool! You were so cool!" Ruby squealed. It was, as she had just said, cool to see her best friend do something so awesome. But inside, she wanted to see herself do something awesome onscreen soon. She could wait, Ruby really wanted to see the cool things other versions of herself did in fights.

"Y-Yes, Ruby. Thank you," Weiss mumbled.

"Like Orion's Golden Gun ability, the trademark ability of the Gunslinger Hunters, that's the super ability of Weiss' favoured Warlock subclass. The Voidwalkers," Alaric said to the audience. That left the audience wondering as to what the other Guardian subclasses could do. What powers of the Light did they wield?

"Ooh, what is mine?" Nora excitedly asked. Orion could summon a fiery gun, and Weiss could shoot a purple explosion out of her hand. If that's what their powers were, she could only dream what the super ability of her alternate self was.

"Striker. Don't worry, you'll see your's in time." Alaric responded to Nora's question.

The hammer wielding girl let out an annoyed groan and crossed her arms. She really wanted to know what remarkable ability her counterpart onscreen was capable of.

The explosion from Weiss' Nova Bomb gave Orion and Nora an opening to move to some new cover. Nora ran up to the second level. Throwing a flashbang grenade at the Taken, and unloaded seven shots of lightning infused bullets on a Taken Phalanx and at the giant Taken Knight, before ducking into cover.

Orion, meanwhile, moved to Weiss' position. Two Taken Psions stood in his way. The Hunter promptly killing one with a shot from Hawkmoon, but as he aimed the hand cannon's barrel at the second, it did something unexpected. The single Psion in front of him split into two Psions.

"Whoa, what?" Emerald exclaimed. Like the Hunter, she and the audience had not seen that coming. This most astonishing of abilities that these Taken Psions apparently possessed the audience assumed, correctly, to have been granted to them by the Darkness.

That it could be a natural ability they were capable of prior to being Taken was highly improbable.

Orion paused, too stunned by what he had just seen to shoot, giving the Taken ample opportunity to shoot at him. Their shots struck him in his chest and arm, and one had even torn a whole through his cloak. Quickly recovering, and incensed by the damage done to his cloak, Orion killed thd two Psions with two shots to their heads, and dashed into cover beside Weiss.

"Did you see that?!" Pennydroid spoke.

"Eliminate the Psions first, there's only three-wait, there's now five of them! Best to stop that number going to ten, asap!" Klein urged the Guardians.

Heeding the advice, and understanding the danger the Psions possessed, Weiss and Orion began to gun down the Psions. The Warlock killed three Taken Psions in quick succession, one of them at the opposite the room and trying to outflank Nora. Orion killed the two others, stabbing one of them in the chest with his knife as it jumped up beside him. Nora meanwhile fired at the the Taken Knight, her bullets tearing and electrocuting its dark flesh.

The Taken Knight let out a ferocious roar, and let out another flurry of fire from its face towards Nora. The Titan avoiding the attack and reloading her weapon.

The Guardians killed the last of the Taken, the giant Knight being the only foe that remained in the room. Concentrating their fire and seperating to divide its attention, the three Guardians started to overwhelm the large Taken creature.

That was when several more black orbs appeared throughout the room, they swelled and exploded as the others had before, with even more Taken Phalanxes and Psions appearing to reinforce the Taken Knight. Among them were new creatures, creatures that resembled the Knight, but were smaller and less armoured. Lastly, creatures whose bodies were skeletal and the three digits of their hands were long rending claws.

The appearance of these new forms of Taken intrigued the audience, the Keeper informing them of their original nature and Taken abilities moments later.

"The skeletal ones were Thralls, they're the lowest and weakest morph of the Hive. As Taken, they now have the ability to teleport short distances. The slightly armoured ones are called Acolytes, the morph Hive take after Thrall, and before becoming Knights and one other morph. As Taken they can put down turrets,"

"Uh, thank you for the information." Salem responded to Alaric.

"The he-?!" Was all Orion was able to say when he saw the hulking form of a Taken Phalanx appear beside him. The Hunter tried to turn and shoot at it, but the Phalanx lifted its shield between it and Orion, and, too the Guardian's great surprise, the shield produced a burst of energy that sent Orion flying into the side of a crate.

"Ouch," Oscar grimaced. That must have hurt, but Orion did not appear to have been seriously injured.

"Taken Phalanxes can push enemies away from them. Hmmm, I can see why the Darkness gave them that ability," Pyrrha thought aloud. Having a shield that could push an enemy back was quite the ability or piece of gear to have, and was something she would not be averse to having. But her current shield worked well enough, so she saw no reason to replace or upgrade it in the near future.

Weiss, seeing the trouble Orion was in, ran over to him, ducking a clawed hand from a Taken Thrall that teleported right beside her, and coming to the Hunter's side.

Over by Nora, she emptied he weapon's magazine drum after killing half a dozen Taken Thralls, a Acolyte, and a Phalanx. Finding she had no time to reload, Nora quickly slung the light machinegun onto her back, and a shotgun materialised into her hands thanks to Renbot. Advancing, Nora unloaded shell upon shell into the Taken, and punching any that got too close to her.

Back with Orion and Weiss, the two Guardians were back-to-back, gunning down or meleeing any Taken that entered their sights. Weiss tapped Orion's shoulder, and the two switched places. As they did, Orion summoned the Golden Gun and shot three times, the Solar bullets striking three of the Taken. One of them a Taken Phalanx, and two Taken Psions. The three Taken died in three fiery explosions, while any Taken around them were immolated.

"He has certainly improved in the use of that ability since we last saw him." Glynda said to herself, admiration in her voice. It seemed Orion had mastered the use of the Golden Gun. He had a year to practise summoning and using it, so he would have learnt how to master its use by now.

"Screw this! That giant thing is really pissing me off!" Nora yelled over the comms after being subjected to another fiery attack from the giant Taken Knight.

"Nora, please don't tell me you're gonna do it?" Weiss questioned the Exo Titan she cast a bolt of Void energy at a few Taken Acolytes and Thralls that had grouped together The moment it impacted against the chest of one of the Taken Acolytes, which had just summoned a turret-like orb, the bolt turned into a Vortex that crushed Weiss' foes.

"Not again," Orion sighed. Turning round and throwing his knife at the head of Taken Psion that was about to split itself.

"Please don't Nora," Renbot also said. The audience were now very concerned.

"Again?" Jaune asked, worried about what it was that Nora-12 planned to do.

He'd seen, as well as personally experienced, several of Nora's crazy antics while in Beacon, and made several guesses as to what Nora-12 was going to do to the Taken Knight. The other two members of JNPR doing the same.

"Uh, what's she gonna do?" Velvet nervously queried.

"Yeah. What am I gonna do?" Nora also asked. Compared to the others, she was positively excited for what was about to happen next. Was this going to be her super ability? Was it going to be super awesome?

"Something very Nora is my guess," Blake muttered.

"You mean reckless? And so crazy that it actually works?" Yang surmised.

"Yeah," Blake confirmed. Nora made to argue against their words, but quickly stopped herself when she, and the rest of the audience, saw what was happening on the TV screen.

Nora did a running start, blasting a Taken Psion away with her shotgun as she ran, and jumped into the air towards the giant Taken Knight. Reaching the giant's head, Nora grabbed onto the Taken Knight's head, reared her head back, and slammed the front of her helmet into the Taken's face with a loud crack.

"Yeah! Go me!" Nora cheered her alternate self on. Meanwhile, the others in the audience were stunned by the sheer audacity of the act. An exception to this was, not surprisingly, Ren, the boy calmly looked on, unphased by Nora-12's decision to headbutt such a large foe.

The force of the Titan's headbutt snapped the Taken Knight's head backwards and fell onto one knee. Nora landed in front of it and delivered a lightning filled punch to its chest, knocking the Taken backwards, its back crashing into a wall. Nora-12 was not done yet, and, to the surprise of the audience, went ahead to headbutt the Taken Knight again. And again, and again, and again.

"Uh, I think this other you's taking this headbutting thing a bit too far," Fox spoke up. Honestly, he was questioning how the Titan was still bashing her helmeted forehead against the Taken Knight's skull.

"What are you talking about? This is awesome!" Nora shouted at the top of her lungs when she said that last part.

"It is... an impressive display of strength and endurance." Ozpin admitted, several members of the audience looked at ghe beacon in shock. Was he approving Nora-12's behaviour? "But, I would suggest that you do not attempt to imitate this version of you, Miss Valkyrie."

Nora's shoulders slumped at Ozpin's words. She had honestly wanted to copy her counterpart onscreen, but, if the Headmaster said no, she supposed she had no choice but to do as he said. That is, while Ozpin and anyone that would tell on her were keeping an eye on her.

The ginger-haired girl would definitely try it while there was no one else around.

After the sixth headbutt, the Taken Knight's body dissolved. The creature finally dying from Nora's repeated application of the age old practise of smashing an enemy's head in with a blunt object, that object being Nora's helmeted head.

Looking up from her kill, Nora saw Orion and Weiss looking at her. The two having succeeded in killing the rest of the Taken while she was headbutting the Taken Knight to death.

"Seriously?" Orion said, Nora-12 only shrugging at him in response.

"And she has done that before?" Oscar asked the Keeper.

"Yeah. Uh, don't ask me how many times," Alaric slowly responded. A quick look in the Keeper's eyes told them all that they needed to know.

Nora-12 had headbutted so many enemies to death, that Alaric had stopped bothering to count how many times she had do so. Had it become a habit for the Titan? A few members of the audience sent concerned looks towards Nora, the girl shrugging back at them in response.

In the end, they decided to not press that little issue, and keep watching. Probably the best course of action to take right now.

As they stood victorious together, the group's comms came to life again, and Maria's voice spoke to them in her ever vague way.

"You have seen His face. It was His hand that transformed the Cabal."

"This mission is scrubbed. Guardian, get to your ship and get out of there!" Ironwood urged the trio of Guardians.

In the audience, Ironwood grimaced when he heard his alternate say those words. He'd stopped counting the number of times he had made similar such orders during the course of his military career a long time ago.

Running over to a door at the far side of the room, the door opened was they came near, revealing a Taken Phalanx waiting at the other side. The creature charged towards them, its gun raised and firing at the trio, but the three Guardians quickly gunned it down and moved through the now open door.

Entering the room, the Guardians found that a firefight between the Taken and a few Cabal was in Phalanxes, Psions, and a regular sized Taken Knight were battling Cabal Legionnaries. There were no allies in this fight, for both the Taken and tried to kill the Guardians while also trying to kill each other.

Nora charged forward, shotgun in hand, and started to decimate both Taken and Cabal in close quarters. The Taken Knight charged at her, swinging its gun at her like a club, but Nora sidestepped the attack and shot it point-blank in the face. Destroying the Taken's head, and sending it wailing into the vortex that sucked in every Taken that lost its head.

Meanwhile, Orion had somehow clambered onto a Legionary's shoulders, and plunged his knife into the joint between the Cabal's helmet and shoulders. As the alien creature's body fell to the floor, Orion rode on its shoulders and shot the pressurised helmet off of another Cabal Legionary, the Cabal dying in seconds after being exposed to the unpressurised air of the ruined base.

Weiss slung her scout rifle onto her back and pulled out another weapon. A short weapon, the size of a submachine gun, and when she pulled the trigger, the weapon did not fire any bullets but energy started to charge up along the barrel and towards the muzzle of the gun. A couple seconds later, seven beams of Solar energy lanced forth from the weapon, and disintegrated a Taken Phalanx. Repeating the process to a second Taken Phalanx, and a Psion.

"Oooh, what is that weapon? I need it!" Ruby screamed, again, grasping at the TV screen and spilling the bowl of strawberries that had been on her lap. This time, it was her father that stopped the red-hooded girl from smacking her face into the TV screen.

"Please calm down, Ruby." Taiyang said, trying to reign in his youngest daughter.

"Fusion rifle," Alaric responded to Ruby's question. The girl was now sat back on Team RWBY's couch, and, to keep her in place, was being hugged by Yang and Penny. Zwei, meanwhile, had decided to plop himself on top of the girl's head. "Directed energy weapon that can fire about seven shots in quick succession."

"So, kind of like my weapon's gun form." Neptune spoke up, seeing the similarity between his weapon and the fusion rifle.

Clearing the room of enemies, the Guardians made to leave, but their Ghosts materialised and started to scan some nearby terminals and other objects.

"Klein, we don't have time to do any of that right now. Let's go!"

"Begging your pardon, Weiss. But there's information here that might give us a greater idea of what happened here, and where these things may come from."

"Reasonable, I guess. Gathering as much information on your enemy while you can, could prove instrumental to victories in the future." Winter thoughtfully remarked, agreeing with the Ghost version of her family's best butler.

"Let's just see if they can get out of there with their lives first." Qrow added, knowing from experience that retrieving a intelligence, or any kind of mission objective, could be much easier to do than it was to get away with it.

"I concur," Pennydroid called out to them. She had scanned a small hologram that lay beside a dead Cabal Centurion, the holographic image being displayed was none other than the Dreadnaught. "This matches an image I collected from the World's Grave... a Dreadnaught. They don't exist in our system. I'll mark it for transmat to the Vanguard and hope we get a signal."

Renbot, who had just finished scanning a monitor, spoke up as he flew back to Nora.

"There's a notification from three days ago. A 'Primus Ta'aun' suspended all Phobus mining operations and recon pending investigation of a trans-Jovian threat. They also sent teams to investigate anomalous energy fluctuations across the base. None of the units reported back."

"No need to guess what happened to them," Roman whispered to Neo. The short woman/girl(?) nodding in response to her bowler hat wearing partner-in-crime.

Klein scanned a terminal with the image of Phobos displayed on the screen, a couple seconds later he flew back to Weiss and disappeared. Informing the Guardians of his findings with a troubled voice.

"Oh dear. Cabal mining sites across Mars and Phobos have been hit. Losses to Blind Legion: 35% percent. Losses to Sand Eaters, 58%; Dust Giants, 39%. What is this?"

"One thing at a time," Orion interjected.

"How large are those forces?" Ironwood asked Alaric, the masked man quickly answering her.

"Individually, they're several thousands strong, at least over ten thousand is my guess. And all those losses are being inflicted on them in a matter of minutes."

Okay, now that was really shocking. Several regiments worth of soldiers spread across an asteroid moon and a planet, were being quickly down by Oryx and his Taken in an incredibly rapid rate, and in an alarmingly short amount of time.

"The base is a loss! We have reports of these things across the system! Go! Get out!" Ironwood urged the Guardians onward as they descended down a staircase. The trio went down a couple of hallways until they found a door leading to a balcony, the sounds of a great battle raging on outside.

Hastily making their way outside, the Guardians found that a large battle was indeed taking place. They were overlooking some kind of aerodrome, the sounds and sights of the few remaining Cabal clashing with the Taken could be heard and seen. Ruptures the same colour as the Taken tore the sky apart. A massive rupture opened up in the distance, a smashed a Cabal communication tower with a pillar of energy. Cabal anti aircraft turrets were firing frantically into the sky. A flaming Cabal ship streaked through the sky, and crashed into a building near the Guardian, exploding on impact.

"Uh, how did we not notice all this?" Nora questioned.

The Guardians own ships flies overhead, turning near their position, and hovering over a ledge at a safe distance.

"Our ships are landing across the airfield. Hurry!"

"That's rather dangerous. Why can't they just pick them up right there?" Weiss questioned the Keeper. The Guardians had quite a way to go, and Weiss was confused as to why they had made such a hazardous decision to keep their ships so far away from them, and keep them in a single place for a long amount of time.

"Reasons," was all that Alaric would say. Shrugging as he did.

The Guardians turned and ran across the balcony. Two Taken Phalanxes appeared in front of them, but they were swiftly dispatched by a Nova Bomb from Weiss. Reaching the end of the balcony, the Guardians leapt down to the ground beneath, falling at least 15 metres (49.2 feet).

Instead of splattering all over the floor and turning into three crumpled messes. The Guardians were able to slow their descent, Weiss and Nora by hovering in the air for a moment five metres (16.4 feet) before they landed, while Orion jumped a second time whilst in mid-air.

"Okay. I'm not gonna ask how they just did that," Emerald mumbled. They had seen weirder, and the audience guessed that this was another ability that the Light wielding Guardians were capable of doing.

The Guardians had landed in the middle of a firefight between three Cabal Legionnaries and a few Taken Psions. Their priority being to escape from the base as fast as possible, the Guardians sprinted away from the fight, avoiding enemy gunfire as they did so.

They ran towards a bridge that led to an building. That the centre of the bridge was destroyed was of little concern to the Guardians, as they jumped or hovered over the destroyed section of the bridge. Yet, as they crossed the bridge, two Taken Phalanxes appeared at the other side and raised their shields, preparing to push them back with their new abilities and into the gap.

However, Orion summoned the Golden Gun again, and as the Taken Phalanxes shields charged up to push the Guardians backwards, he fired at them. Killing the two Taken, and allowing the three Guardians to safely enter the building.

Going through the building, the Guardians found another bridge, intact this time, but swarming with at least a dozen Taken.

"We're almost there!" Weiss snarled in anger at the appearance of so many Taken impeding their path. She and Orion had not enough Light to summon a Nova Bomb nor a Golden Gun, but, there was one who had not used their super ability since they arrived on Phobos.

"Uh. That's a lot of Taken," Oscar remarked upon seeing the number of Taken charging down the bridge towards the three Guardians.

"How are they going to deal with all that? Shoot them all to death?" Mercury snorted, they must surely be running out of ammunition by now, and would probably run out before they killed all the Taken.

"Oooh, I got a good feeling about this." Nora surprisingly squealed, bouncing on her seat on Team JNPR's couch. She did not know why, but she felt that something exciting was about to happen in a couple moments.

"Nora!" Orion yelled to the Exo Titan. Nora-12 understood what it was that the Hunter wanted, and quickly acted.

The Titan charged forward, no weapon in her hands, but her entire body now crackled with electricity. Ignoring the shots from the Taken, Nora reached the front of the swarm of Taken, all of them neatly packed together like bowling pins, jumped into the centre of the Taken and slammed her fists into the ground. The moment she did, a massive discharge of electrical Arc energy exploded from her with a crack louder than thunder, the discharge absolutely destroying the Taken in an instant.

The audience were surprised by Nora-12's unique subclass ability. So, she could store a vast amount of Arc energy inside of herself, and could release it with extremely destructive effects. That much was what the audience could infer from what they had just seen. Honestly, for those who knew her Semblance, some of the members of the audience could see why Nora-12 was a Striker Titan.

She had, essentially, become a living lightning bolt as she used that ability.

"Ren-" Nora began to say to her best friend, but Ren stopped her from continuing on with whatever she was about to say.

"No Nora, I don't think you can do that."

"Okey dokey!" Nora cheerily replied to Ren. She was satisfied for now after seeing that awesome display, it was worth the wait in her eyes, and wanted to see more. And she now had a new idea as to how to use her Semblance. Team JNPR's next outing against the Grimm she intended to make an interesting one.

With a clear shot to their ships, the Guardians ran toward them, and warped into their jumpships. Not a moment later, the ships immediately turned around and took off into the star filled sky.

"Ironwood, we made it to our ship, and are heading home."

As the ships disappeared into space, the screen faded to black.

"That was awesome!" Nora, Sun, and Yang cheered once the screen had completely turned to black. Ruby wanted to join them, but, she was still stuck between Yang and Penny.

"It was indeed most exhilarating to watch," Penny said, voicing her honest opinion of the events they had seen. She also felt a great deal of pride for her alternate self and her Guardian, they had indeed come far, and was happy for the both of them.

"Still don't understand why they didn't enter their ships at that balcony," Weiss said with a shake of her head. The Schnee heiress had enjoyed watching this universe, and admitted to herself that she was being a bit nitpicky about that little detail.

"Oh c'mon, get over it Weiss cream." Yang joked, earning her a few annoyed groans and a frown from Weiss. "We got to see that cool ability Nora had."

"My Nova Bomb was cool too," Weiss huffed, crossing her arms as she did so.

"Is that it?" Ozpin asked Alaric. The Keeper shook his head and pointed a finger at the screen, indicating to the audience that they were not done yet, and that there was still more to see.

The screen came to life again, and this time the audience were greeted by a hologram of the Dreadnaught on the middle of a lengthy table. Surrounding the table were three people, one was a bald Awoken male wearing silvered Titan armour, a blonde-haired Human woman wearing a purple longcoat, and an Exo with a black chasis, red eyes, and a red cloak. They were in a darkened hall, the only light source being the hologram, and were in the midst of conversation.

"So, that is us?" Glynda murmured.

"You didn't mention I'm a robot in this universe," Qrow said to Alaric. The Keeper shrugging back at him, and casually replied.

"First; you're an Exo. Second; you didn't ask me if you were, so I didn't tell you."

Qrow rolled his eyes at Alaric. That was a weak excuse, and he'd made several of those in his lifetime. He did not look bad being a Exo, however, he personally did not like the thought of being one because it meant he would not be able to drink.

"My contacts near Saturn say the weapon fired only once," Glynda said to her colleagues.

"It's not like the Queen to attack a superior force..." Ironwood began, a contemplative look in his voice as he looked on the hologram.

"How could she have known? How can anyone?" Glynda rhetorically replied. The Warlock Vanguard then placed both of her hands on the table, before assertively saying to the two other members of the Vanguard. "We need a Warlock inside the Dreadnaught."

"Here we go," Qrow-6 sighed. It sounded like this kind of conversation had been had before.

"Our first priority must be to protect this City! Our Guardians got a good look on Phobos. Whatever it was, it turned Cabal against Cabal, wiped out their base in minutes. How long would we last?" Ironwood argued against Glynda's suggestion.

"You do have good points, sir." Winter spoke up in support of her superior's alternate self.

"Yeah, the bad guys are so powerful that we should sit back and let them come to us. Real good points, Ice Queen." Qrow sarcastically grumbled, receiving dirty looks from Winter as he did.

"Until we understand what we're dealing with—" Glynda started to say, but was interrupted by an unexpected arrival.

A green blur whips through the room and lands squarely on the Dreadnaught hologram, interrupting its projection. The object was revealed to be an emerald green orb with a stone suspended within. The Vanguard stopped arguing and looked towards the entrance to the hall from where the orb had been thrown at the table.

Standing there was Maria Calavera.

She was a woman wearing a dark blue outfit, wearing a hooded cloak like that of a Hunter, with shoulder guards made of Hive chitin. Her face, the only part of her body that was exposed, had dark skin. She wore a blindfold over her eyes, yet disturbingly, three glowing lights like that of the eyes of the Hive could be seen beneath the fabric of the blindfold.

"So that's Maria?" Ozpin uttered, like Qrow, he was trying to remember who exactly this woman was.

Despite the headmaster's own efforts, he could not recall her name ever popping up. Maybe she was someone not important? Maybe someone he had never heard or met? Or, she was someone that hid her identity? Either one of those options were a possibility.

"Yeah," was Alaric's simple answer. The audience waited for a few seconds, but the Keeper did not say anything.

"You're still not going to reveal to us who she is in our universe, are you?" Glynda sighed. She already knew his answer, which was confirmed when Alaric made a shushing gesture and chuckled at her. "I shouldn't have asked."

"They are Taken," Maria stated to the Vanguard as she prowled towards the three Guardians around the table.

Qrow, not at all phased by Maria's sudden appearance, or maybe he had recovered quicker than his companions had, pointed at the orb and said to her in a dead serious tone.

"Maria... get your rock. Off my map."

"Hehe, that is so something you'd say Qrow." Taiyang said with a smirk, nudging his brother-in-law with his elbow as he did. Others, including Ruby and Yang, nodded in agreement at Taiyang's words.

Maria ignored the Exo Hunter. She had reached the table now, and slowly walked around it, saying.

"It hasn't spoken since Crota fell." Maria lifted up her hand slightly and reached out towards the orb. The orb flickered at the action, while Eris continued to cryptically speak. "It speaks now, because Oryx has arrived... come to fill the final covenant of his son."

"A bit... dramatic, is she?" Cinder remarked.

"You should know," Mercury whispered under his breath. The raven-haired young woman shot him a pointed glare, but Mercury ignored her, it was not like she could do anything to him here.

As the creepiest woman the audience had seen so far, walked past Glynda, the blonde-haired woman looked to Maria and, confused by her words, asked Maria.

"But... why fight the Cabal?"

"Not fighting... Taking." Maria stopped where she stood, and answered Glynda without turning her head towards her. "Controlling their will-"

Maria might have said more, but she stopped herself when she, Glynda, and Ironwood noticed that the room glowed with orange light again. Cutting over to Qrow-6, it revealed that the Hunter had taken Maria's orb off of his map and started to play around with it. Much to Maria's chagrin.

The people who knew Qrow snorted at the events onscreen. Apart from being an Exo, not being cynical every so often, and not drinking, Qrow-6 was almost just like the Qrow sat in the audience with them.

"Just like every single meeting we go to," Taiyang groaned. Remembering every parent-teacher conference he and Qrow attended at Signal.

"Just like every single meeting you attend," Ironwood added. Remembering every single meeting of the Order that Qrow was ever a part of.

Qrow did not say a word in response and just took another drink. This was turning out like every single meeting he had been to in his life.

"So we focus on his army... kill these Taken until he's all that's left?" Ironwood suggested. Maria looked like she might have snorted at his words when she turned to face him, and eventually replied.

"Whatever you kill... Oryx will replace."

"Yes, it wold be hard to defeat someone that can replace his army's numbers by snatching people up, and turning them into his own soldiers." Salem uttered to herself. When she looked around her, the blonde haired woman from the past found it odd that Ozpin, his close associates, and that Cinder girl were sending looks of concern and intrigue.

There was something they were hiding. That they knew about her. Just what she could not place at the present, but, she was determined to find out what they knew and how they knew her.

"The Dreadnaught, then. How do we get past that weapon?" Glynda questioned.

"Without ending up like the Awoken?" Ironwood muttered loud enough for everyone else at the table to hear. That was indeed quite the predicament.

The room became silent as Ironwood and Glynda stood there, thinking up a dozen different ways to infiltrate the Dreadnaught, while Maria just stood there, and Qrow still playing with Maria's orb. Qrow-6, noticing the change in the hall's atmosphere, stopped playing with the orb, and looked to the others in the room for the moment. Deciding that he had heard enough, and not really wanting to be cooped up in the hall anymore, Qrow spoke up and made a weak excuse to leave.

"I gotta go, uh... see about a ship."

When he finished speaking, Qrow-6 threw the orb towards Maria. Maria rose a hand and caught the orb, the orb itself hovering a couple centimetres away from the palm of her hand, and sneered at the Hunter Vanguard.

"Qrow! Our discussion is not yet concluded!" Ironwood called out to Qrow-6 as he started to leave the hall, taking a single step forward as if to follow after the Hunter.

"Oh, I know. That's why I'm leaving," Qrow casually responded without looking back.

Qrow-6 left the hall, crossed the Tower's main plaza, and entered the Hanger. Going to a corner, the Hunter Vanguard found a band of Guardians, among them Orion, Nora-12, and Weiss.

Nora-12's robotic head was painted orange, and had bright blue optics. Weiss had the pale-blue skin of the Awoken, glowing ice-blue eyes, and her white hair was in a bun like how Winter currently wore her hair. The audience could not see Orion's face, for his hood was raised over his head in a such a way that it also obscured his facial features.

With them was another Hunter playing with a knife, her outfit coloured black, white, and with splashes of purple here and there. Unlike Orion, the hood of her tattered black cloak was lowered to reveal an Awoken woman with black hair that fell past her shoulders, glowing amber eyes, and the usual pale-blue skin of the Awoken. Beside her was another Awoken, this time a male, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes. His cloak was white and yellow, his outfit consisting of white and blue, with red gloves.

There were two Titans. One was a male human with short-cut blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing white armour lined with gold, the Titan Mark at his hip yellow, and a two-handed sword on his back. A Ghost with a saphron shell beside him. The other was female human with red shoulder-length hair and green eyes, she wore bronze and red armour, and her red Titan Mark fell past her knees. Her ghost was red with a green eye.

An Exo Warlock in a dark-red long coat leaned his back against a wall, his hands in his pockets. He was painted tan brown, with bright blue eyes. The Ghost that hovered over his shoulder was white and green. Another Warlock, a human woman with brown hair and eyes, in an equally brown long coat. Her Ghost was a light green colour.

The audience did not need Alaric to spell it out for them to recognise who it was the other Guardians were. The two Hunters were Blake and Sun. The Titans were Jaune and Pyrrha. And the Warlocks were Neptune and Velvet.

"Oh sweet, I'm a Guardian in this universe too?" Sun smiled at the sight of himself, if he could take a guess, he was a Hunter. "What kind of Hunter am I?"

"Gunslinger, like Orion. And a better one to be honest," Alaric answered.

"What about Blake?" Ghira spoke up, he was glad to see his daughter, but sad to know that she must have died somehow to become a Guardian. It was also a bit odd to see her with blue skin.

"Bladedancer. Can infuse Arc light into her knife, real quick with a blade you are." The Keeper produced a knife from his sleeve, an exact copy of the one in Blake's hand. He waved it around before sliding it back into his sleeve, he did not want his guests getting any ideas now.

"So, Pyrrha and I are Guardians? Titans, I'm guessing?" Jaune asked. Pyrrha smiled beside him, glad that they were together as a team in this universe.

"Yep. Arc, you're a Defender, and a damn good one. You can summon a protective, nigh indestructible bubble shield of Void energy. You Pyrrha are a Striker, though, not as proficient with it as Nora-12."

"Hmmm, y'know. I don't look bad being an Exo," Neptune hummed.

"Hey Velvet, you're a Guardian." Coco said to the rabbit faunus, nudging her with her elbow.

"Neptune, you are, like Weiss, a Voidwalker." Alaric then turned to Velvet, and said to her. "While you Velvet, you're a Sunsinger. Filling yourself with Solar light, you increase your abilities several times over, and can resurrect yourself without the aid of your Ghost."

Hearing the abilities they commanded, those members in the audience mentioned above, were impressed with their alternate selves. Really, everyone in the audience were impressed as well. To varying degrees, but still impressed nonetheless.

Qrow-6 examined the motley band in front of him. He nodded satisfactorily, clapped his hands together and enthusiatically said to them.

"So. You all ready to go on a high-risk mission that may, or may not, result in your permanent deaths?"

The Guardians looked back at him with uncertain looks on their faces.

"Uh. There'll be a lot of loot in it for you all?" Qrow-6 tried to entice them.

The group of Guardians actually perked up at the mention of the word 'loot', and looked to each other, before looking back to him a couple seconds later. They had all come to a silent agreement with one another. Orion going on to say to the Hunter Vanguard.

"We're listening."

With that, the screen faded to black.

Seeing that it was over, the audience started to express their thoughts on this viewing.

"Well, that was a quite the thing."

"That really all you have to say?"

"Yeah, I liked watching that one."

"The Guardian was... impressive, I will admit. Their powers even more so."

"Why did they seem excited about loot?"

"I don't see a problem with that."

"I think loot's a good thing."

Alaric listened to his guests' words, but did not say anything in response. He pulled his remote from out of the folds of his robes, and started to prepare the next universe he planned his guests to see.

---

And with that, another chapter is done.

Originally, I planned for Winter and Weiss to be Mara and Uldren, respectively. But, then I recalled how much of an ass Uldren was back in Destiny and Destiny 2, so I changed it. Made Sienna and Adam cousins instead of brother and sister. That would work, right?

To those interested, for the next Destiny chapter, do you think I should do the Regicide mission? Maybe the missions where the Guardians get their new subclasses? Or do you want me to go straight to Destiny 2, and do the Homecoming mission?

For the next chapter, I want to make it a short one. Something over 5,000 words but below 10,000. I already got another chapter in the works, and it will probably be over 10,000 words. We'll just have to see.

I'll see you all when I next see you, oh reader mine.