[Nujabes – Battlecry (feat. Shing02)]
残り:四の影/ Remnant's Four Shadows
Volume 4, Episode 12: Returns run Reveals
[On the road through Anima]
Yuki had seen a few more events of the original and he was inwardly awash with frustration, doubt, and a bit of fear. There was anger, but he was forcing that on the backburning. And it was clear to his team that Yuki was in a sour mood. Ruby could sense his aura fluxing.
"Yuki, is everything all right?" Ivory asked worriedly. "You've been quiet for too long."
Yuki did not respond, but simply drifted to a stop before storming off his bike. He was simply hoping for a Grimm to show up, but none came when he actually wanted one to show up. He cursed under his breath, hand on a tree with labored breath and his head down. He did not step the footsteps of his teammates creep up.
"Yuki, are you all ok? My goggles can detect and monitor heart rates and stress levels. And have gone up." Peach asked.
Yuki glowed using Tranquility, and he made a mental note to send Ren a gift basket. However, he supercharged it with Aura Amp to force his stress out of his system. He was still mad, but just numb to it.
[Beacon Academy, Vale]
"Something is wrong, I can feel it." Toriel said looking out the window.
A ragged Salem sat in an easy chair having gotten uppity and was promptly beaten into submission by her. Toriel rubbed her temples as Salem proved to be stubborn. Given that Salem was immortal…that was going to be a tough trait to break. Ozpin was equally bad as he was clearly using their sessions as a pissing match with his ex-wife. To be frank, Toriel looked to her notes and she could only shake her head at the conclusion.
[Anima]
Yuki, calm and somewhat numb, had gotten back on the road with his team to a small village which Yuki did not bother learn the name of. When they arrived and got a place to stay for the night, Yuki trudged off on his own.
"Hey, Yuki." Yang said coming out. "You seemed kind of freaked on the road, you all right?"
"No. Honestly Yang, I'm inwardly seething and I'm abusing Ren's semblance to keep it together. Future events I see thanks to the 'gift' are slowly driving me to realize that me and the people closest to me are the reasons this timeline is coherent. Somehow, this world with the Grimm King and the Voyden is more fucking tolerable than the original timeline!" Yuki said holding down his anger. "I just…ugh…it's just the more I see of the future, I more I feel that I'm struggling to make good decisions with little to no reward while dumbasses are rewarded well for stupid and shitty decisions."
He dared not tell her more of who those dumbasses were.
"It can't be that ba-"
[Cues: Michiko and Hatchin Soundtrack – Sozinho]
"Yang…you say that as a person who blissfully doesn't become the pain in the ass dipshit your counterpart because *I* intervened. Considering you didn't lose your arm, Pyrrha's alive, and Vale's not on fire, don't you dare ask or say 'It can't be that bad'. If you fully knew what I had to see, you'd be a self-loathing mess." Yuki said icily. "Just leave me alone."
Yuki found himself in a tavern sitting at the bar having a self-realization where he was and what he was about to do. He asked for a mug of ale and got it before taking a swig.
"Yuki. I know what is going on in your head." Serena said pinging to existence next to him. "Was it needed to blow Yang off like that?"
"You and I both know how original timeline Yang is…a daft bitch. If we landed later in the timeline, this would have never worked out." Yuki said as he drank a bit more. "Even Chronoa known post-Fall Remnant was damned."
"Yes, I can concede your reasoning, but you can't take it out on the counterparts here who aren't guilty of it. Frankly, you-"
[Music Ends]
Serena was cut off by sense of a temporal distortion and Yuki felt it too. Serena vanished back into the mindscape as Yuki sprang into action but not before drinking the rest of the drink and paying for it. He and his team reunited to see a blackened portal in the sky above the sky. Out from it fell a knight and a princess. His eyes went wide…it was Adam and Lazuli. Blood boiled at the sight of Adam only to freeze to see Adam's face. There was no brand…but there were silver eyes.
"Adam, what happened?! Where are we?" Lazuli said tearfully.
"I don't know…I told you that we had to escape your king-" Adam said before being seeing a blackened figure come out. "Get down!"
[Music Ends]
Lazuli scurried away as Adam draw his blade as the figure took shape into something that made Yuki and friends' blood go cold. It took the shape of Lapis…but malformed.
"Sister…why do you run? It's high time you join the Grimm…like mother Salem wants us to." It said in a voice that reminded Yuki all too much of his version of Lazuli.
"Back, vile beast. You do not belong in this world!" Adam said drawing Wilt.
"What is a human?" It said with a laugh. "A puppet that dances until the strain of its strings are cut. But alas, I'll make your last moments agonizing. I may as show you the beast within."
The portal closed and Yuki's breath quickened. This Grimm, this thing gave off an aura…way too similar to Grimm King. It was not as virulent but seeing what was…most likely Lapis take not help. Nor did it's laugh or did its act of tear offing the skin to show what was under. Yuki was not one to puke but he did. What was underneath was something that barely resembled a human with gray-purple skin, ashen short hair, glowing red eyes, bone armor formed over the torso and the bottom half was a wispy ghost tail as tendrils tore out of its chest which had Adam by his throat choking him. Ruby got into action first by slashing the tendrils with her scythe only for it to go through her harmlessly.
"What? Bu-" *WHAP!* A tendril smacked Ruby into the tavern.
Yang tried shooting it but it went in.
"Weapons won't work." Lazuli said trying to fire a blast of aura only to get feeble sparks. "I…no…not now!"
"Ah, poor little princess can't her knight….now wa…"
The geist Grimm was blasted into the dirt thanks to Peach and Ivory's aura blast.
"Yuki!" Ivory said slapping him. "Get your shit together! We need you! People need you!"
Yuki calmed down and glared at the geist. He did not know what the deal was, but he wanted it deader than dead. Yuki charged in helping Adam up.
"Who…you have silver ey-But how?"
"You fell through a hole in time and space. From your universe to mine." Yuki said tersely.
"Is my counterpart a goo-"
"He killed my parents…and I killed him years later. So no, he's scum. Frankly, this is really surreal." Yuki admitted. "He also did not have silver eyes."
"My word, but what was of my student, Blake? Does she still live?" Adam said as Yuki had a pensive look.
"Less talk more fighting!" Peach said as the Geist roared.
The Geist had enough before grabbing the team and Adam with her tendrils squeezing their necks.
"Enough games…I may as well suck the aura out of you. I can deal with one auric, but not more than one. I'd rather use you all as my meal! Now scream for me!" It bellowed before squeezing and siphoning their aura.
Yuki's very core felt violated from the assault. Ruby felt a struggle to breathe, Yang's flames flickered, Peach's builds were struggling to maintain themselves, and Ivory was flickering with a gray outline. Within their minds, Yuki was awash with thoughts. Doubts and fears….but then came the anger. It welled within…something…something dark…something that got the geist to freeze looking at Yuki who had eyes of silver and reddish-silver. He screamed…erupting with an amped blast of sound waves from his mouth. The geist was forced to release them as its ears rang only to get a hole through the chest from Ruby spewing out a beam of aura from her mouth. For Yang, Ivory, Adam, Lazuli, and Peach, it was not that you could not do so…but they did not expect Ruby to do that. The geist fell on the ground suddenly solid and clearly in pain.
Yuki walked forward slowly before slamming his foot on the geist's tail before proceeding to choke it. There was no words and no effort to hasten its death. He simply strangled it as it begged for mercy. It tried to appeal to Yuki's humanity which seemingly got him to ease on it. It tried to slash at him only to get a light knife into the throat before Yuki kicked her into the dirt leaving it to choke on its own blood. He did not move. He simply just watched the geist gave one last choke before expiring to which Yuki just vaporized it with an aura blast.
"Um, Yuki?" Ruby asked. "Your eye…it's…"
Yuki summoned up a screen to stimulate a mirror to which he was taken aback that his right eye was reddish-silver. Tranquility came awash to calm him down, but in those moments, he could see and feel the uncertainly in his teammates before he ceased using it. His eye was no longer red…noir blue, it was a bluish-silver.
"Serena, what's happening?"
Serena pinged to life quiet at first.
"Like Lapis…and many others…your semblance is evolving." Serena said gently before vanishing.
The village would get cleaned up by our heroes as they were thanked for their help and rewarded with a free meal. Adam and Lazuli would explain a bit about their universe and its history.
"So, it seems, in that world…the destined four were the four harbingers of death." Ivory said hauntingly.
For Ruby, the idea of her and her team as Grimm scared her. She asked if they were mindless.
"No, they still had their personalities from when they were human, I assume. They could think, they could feel, and they used that to serve Salem faithfully bringing kingdom after kingdom to the ground. My…kingdom was the last beacon of hope, and it's gone. All because I wasn't strong enough and I can't even perform magic for crap." Lazuli said looking utterly miserable.
"Lapis is going to have a field day with you." Yuki said as Ivory put a hand on his shoulder. "And we'll have to take you with us. It would safest if you're with us for the time being."
"I know that my presence must-"
"No, Adam. It's a shock, but you're not the evil dickbag mine was. Hell, Lazuli's counterpart here helped nearly doom the world. But I won't let that get in the way of helping you. The more allies we have, the better. However, I do want to send Lazuli away to a safe place, and I know the person to look after her." Yuki said.
With no hands, he used his technopathy to access his scroll and beam Toriel a message before he got up to cut open a portal. Toriel poked her head through.
"So…alternative universes? This is going to be an interesting case." Toriel said excitedly.
"You got room for her?" She asked.
"Yes, I do. Emerald moved out of my home to live with Mercury." Toriel said offering a hand to the princess.
"Milady, be safe. I trust our new allies will put you in good hands." Adam said as Lazuli nodded leaving through the portal.
The portal closed and Yuki rubbed his head. He was going to need a drink or three to sleep tonight.
[Pine Valley, Mistral]
Oscar felt things were going up for him. He had gotten to meet Brodsky to have their heart to heart and little really changed between them. He just called him father now, and Brodsky spent more time with him. Considering his past drama with the Usagi family business, he could have retired, but Kelly asked him to stay and handle business affairs in Mistral. Thus, he could live in Pine Valley and do business. And then were the dimension jumpers, Ilia and Niko Coliburi, who stayed on the Pine farm. Things certainly were not quiet anymore.
Oscar was in midst of fighting off a Grimm trying to attack the livestock. With a few taps, he pole-vaulted over it to trip the Beowolf before putting a few rounds into it with his sidearm. Ilia had taught her how to shoot.
"Not bad, Oscar." Niko said walking up.
"Thanks, Niko. Hey, what's wrong?" Oscar asked noting Niko's more serious expression.
"Bandits. There's been talk that their attacks have been on the rise lately." Niko warned. "If they are anything like in my world, they need to be stopped…for good."
(A/N: It's Yuki's turn for a semblance upgrade. I do plan for all four members of the main team to get a semblance upgrade. But now I've revealed Good Guy Adam. Things are going to get complicated. And if you're wondering why Yuki is fretting again…he's seeing Volume 8.)
Ending Theme: Boondocks Soundtrack – Credits Theme