An AU of a universe crossed with another AU element of another universe. I know this is a train wreck waiting to happen, but I really want to do this.

This would be written in a first person PoV

Nothing belongs to me here, Worm and RWBY is by Wildbow and Rooster Teeth respectively.

Rise – 1.01

Another gunshot rang from a store away, sending another wave of panicking people to run blindly into all possible directions. I'm surprised nobody has run towards the area where the shots are fired, because Remnant won't be what it is if it doesn't have the crazies and the fame seekers hoping to take some videos or pictures to upload on the huntsman online forums. But apparently, everyone on this city has a sense of self-preservation and decided to run away towards safety.

Well, almost everyone except me.

In my defense, I am neither crazy nor starving for internet fame, and is only a concerned citizen hoping that nothing bad happened to the people caught in the crossfire. Even if it means throwing myself at the flames.

Blame me; I always wanted to be a hero.

Damn, that sounds cringe-worthy even in my head.

Ignoring my cheesy inner monologue, I hurried directly into where the firefight is happening. Hoping that whatever gang-of-the-week this colony has, have gotten their itchy trigger finger scratched is generous enough to only engage with their normal mooks.

Two more turns on the dark empty night roads and I saw an innocent looking bookstore, its windows and doors thankfully having no visible holes from the firefight that happened. The light inside is still illuminating the storefront and everything is still in place, the only clue leading to it being the place where the fight has happened is all the damaged cars, burning trash cans, and the visible bullet-hole filled concrete on the outside of the building.

The area is too silent, the sounds of gunfire long gone before I even made one block on my way towards the bookstore. I quickly found out the reason why.

Good news, there is no longer an ongoing battle. The other side of the firefight probably decided to make a full-on retreat. Leaving no trace of any of the known gang colors for me to identify whoever they are.

Bad news, the winner is now inside the bookstore of all places, doing what they do best. Well, besides from ruining their own ideals and representing their race in a bad way.

Faunus harassment campaign.

I stopped, quickly crouching behind a car to hide myself from the White Fang members within the establishment, while praying to the brothers that nobody saw me dumbly sprinting in the middle of an abandoned road. I might be a self-proclaimed hero, but I'm not that dumb, and charging with only bravery and determination in your heart against armed terrorist can only result in a quick martyrdom.

I know most of them have enhanced senses, and if I'm unlucky enough, those who have a greater sense of hearing have probably heard me approaching already. My only hope is if their ears are still ringing from the fight that happened, or if they have none of those faunus who have a good sense of hearing.

A man can only hope.

I looked up, thanking the brothers for my still holding luck. None of them saw me; too busy threatening and harassing the poor faunus shopkeeper while some of them continued pointing their weapons at the line of hostages, almost all of them armed with handguns with that one poor guy with a baseball bat.

There are a total of five of them, four wearing civilian clothes that hide most of their features. While the one wielding the bat oddly wears the most decorated of them all, sporting a greyish-white sleeveless trench coat with an over-exaggerated collar reaching towards his upper neck.

Strange.

Even if with the store's bright lighting illuminating them completely, I still can't take a good look at their features as every single one of them wears a white, animal shaped mask that completely hides their faces. The masks are too concealing, even managing to conceal their facial faunus features such as their ears.

Only a single one of them guarded the door, taking some occasional glances at the outside before turning back to observe the inside of the store. He is talking with the other person guarding the subdued hostages, laughing and pointing while the bat wielder just stayed silent on the corner, looking at the both of them.

How incompetent can one be?

I eyed the ongoing crime for several seconds, thinking on how to best approach the hostage situation without making it worse. I looked around, spotting for any kind of backdoor or blind-spot on the store.

Which unfortunately proved to be useless, as the bookstore is placed in a connected apartment block. I need to encircle the area to find the back-alley entrance to the building, and who knows what would happen to the hostages while I'm taking my time doing so.

So, plan-A ruined, I started brainstorming for another plan again. Even with only a single guard posted, a gun is a gun. And the moment the guy spotted me, all of his friends inside can just go gang me up and beat me to death.

Or just shoot me and be done with it.

I sighed, wishing that I was some kind of a brute that can just walk through gunfire while laughing every kind of damage, or a mover that can rush them before they can pull the trigger. Hell, even a master power to make them peacefully surrender would be nice right now, public consequences be damned.

I thought for several more minutes while anxiously observing the ongoing situation inside the store. Nothing happened, the gunman still doing their hostile negotiations while not really harming everyone while the one with the bat started talking with another person on his or her phone.

This made me consider my supposed first plan that I embarrassingly forgot on my rush towards here.

Actually calling the cops.

I cursed myself, before grabbing my dust phone to dial the emergency hotline that I have already memorized due to it being posted in almost every corner of this colony. I waited for someone to pick up the phone while I continued peeking at the ongoing situation inside the store.

It only took until the end of the first ring before someone picked up the phone.

"Vale Police Force is there any emergency?"

Finally!

"Umm, yeah, right" I flinched, cursing myself as I almost shouted. "There's an armed group of White Fang members inside the local bookstore, umm, on Turmeric road. I think it's a hostage situation of some sort. Please send help, I don't know what to do." I spouted out of relief.

"Thanks for reporting Sir. Please don't do anything and stay where you are, we have already dispatched several nearby units at your location. They would arrive on approximately 2 minutes from now."

"Thanks. I would do that." I whispered, before noticing that there is something happening inside the store. The hostages are still held at gunpoint, unmoving, but the faunus at the counter is now being forced to do something. The one talking with him is now acting more aggressively, dragging him outside of the store counter and into the open space near the other hostages.

"Thank you Sir. Now, do you know if any hostile huntsman is present at the location? Or is there any sign of power usage you've saw?"

I was about to answer when things got worse.

First, the bat wielding one has hit the faunus shopkeeper's head with such force that I can hear the impact a street away. The hostages started panicking, which made the two other White Fang member guarding them fire several warning shots at the ceiling.

Second, the armed door guard is now shouting, scrambling to point his gun at my direction.

And lastly, I realized that I moved without thinking. Now I am rushing towards the shop on my own two slow feet, while taking a good look of the barrel of a handgun clearly pointed at me.

While I'm in an empty road without any kind of cover.

Cursing myself, I braced for the inevitable, hearing three loud ring of gunfire before a sudden flare of pain bloomed from my midsection and my thigh. It hurt so much, that I immediately lose my control of my body, impacting the now cold concrete of the midnight road.

The world is already fogging, the light from the lamp-posts now dimming as I slowly lose consciousness. But still, I tried to look up, look towards the shopkeeper I just tried and failed to protect. I can't see them, only man-shaped blurs moving and slowly disappearing, their colors being drowned by the shifting reds and blues that suddenly burst from somewhere.

My hearing is muted now, but I swear I can hear drums and a noisy alarm clock beating at the distance. Or nearby, I can't tell now. Strangely, a sickening crunch followed by a hushed animalistic roar mixed with the other sounds.

I tried to look harder, to see if the faunus is safe and fine. But I can't see clearly no more, the only thing not blurred enough the road in front of me.

The cold road is now wet and warm for some reason.

I almost cried.

Apparently, I didn't even manage to cross half the street before crashing to my now approaching death.

Some kind of hero wannabe am I, can't even save a single person.

And then darkness welcomed me.

A flash of light, and I am back to the waking world. Or the afterlife, since I'm floating in an endless void without anything. I can't even feel my whole body, and all of my senses are missing, except from my eyesight apparently.

Well, one look and several seconds in, I already know that the afterlife is boring as hell. Nothing here, only a darkness that never covered everything, more like a huge empty box painted on the color of the night than the night itself.

But thankfully, at least the searing pain is no longer there anymore.

Not really 'not there', but more of it is now dulled that I-

In front of me suddenly exploded a million light as bright as the sun, showing an ever-changing kaleidoscope of stars, bursting to existence as their bright shapes moved and stayed in a hypnotic sense. The uncoordinated eruption of solid brightness have took an eternity to fully finish, and in the blink of an eye, everything started to put themselves in place like an impossible puzzle building itself from the ground-up.

I was mesmerized.

The stars took form, shaping themselves into dimensions that don't make sense, dancing at the unheard tune as tiny gigantic flecks of existence flew and swim and danced and slither towards each other. They do not just moved, their motion filled with a sophisticated kind of grace. Too accurate, too stiff to be living, like a perfect machine multiplied by a million-fold.

But still, I just know that the stars are alive, life flickering and dancing in and out of existence.

It took me uncounted infinity before I started to know what the swirling vortex of light is. It is not but lights thrown by the huge formless beings at each other without reason, but it is a part of them. Shards shared by each of them, passed and passed in a loop of knowing and trying to know, endlessly changing and evolving and-

Another burst of blinding light that didn't blind, and reality shuddered. The darkness/not-darkness of the void dissipated, showing the true form of the two massive beings coiling at each other.

And then everything suddenly makes sense.

[DESTINATION]

Two great gods allowed me to grace their endless existence, how they rule the very stars that illuminated everything. Observing and judging and interfering from their thrones beyond the stars.

[QUERY] [DESTINATION]

Both of them fixed in a perpetual dance with each other, only sometimes intentionally missing a step to bless those chosen by them with a fraction of their might. Intervening but not guiding countless empires, only to crush every single one of them with the same power granted to them when they are satisfied with their observation.

[CONCERN] [QUERY] [TRAJECTORY]

A never-ending cycle of creation and destruction, all until the guilt born from an eon of genocide caused one to betray the other. In one single blink of an eye, the betrayer lashed out with its countless swarms of light, most of them having enough power to destroy a world, all thrown towards the unsuspecting god.

[PROPOSAL] [DISAGREEMENT]

One moment uncounted even by a microsecond and the now dead god lose its step, it's now bloated carcass crashing into a gigantic sea of silver, cracking and breaking the luminescent orb as it fell down from its throne.

[QUERY] [SHOCK] [DISAGREEMENT]

But even on its death, the god cursed everything, reality breaking and bending to its dying will. On its command the shard of the silver seas darkened, bleeding monochromatic crimson as it started to fall into a sky of green.

[REGRET] [DETERMINATION]

And I saw it all, every single path that they took, every single from the million timelines split apart like a broken mirror, only to force itself into one as the final blow struck the fallen god. How the fallen have caused the beginning of the end, unleashing the dark of the broken moon to fell yet another unnamed empire on its wake.

[CURIOSITY] [HYPOTHESIS]

And I saw how the betrayer scrambled everything on its path to salvation. Scattering and raining down its infinite number of tears for the life it have called man to fend against the dark by themselves. Forever fading into an existence beyond the veil of reality, never to interfere again.

[OBSERVATION] [RESEARCH] [ANTICIPATION]

And I know no more.

I woke up in an empty room, the smell of antiseptic quickly flooding my nose, while the mechanical beeps of the heart monitor an irritating ring in my ears. The small room is empty besides my pure white bed and the hospital mechanisms attached to me. There are also several chairs at the furthest side of the room near the closed curtain, but there are no people inside besides me.

I feel light as a feather, the searing pain I clearly remember now long gone as I slowly remembered some of my past memories.

I don't know what happened after I fainted, but I still remember trying to be a hero and getting shot for my effort. But still, I have that feeling that I have forgotten something very grand, something very important. Something related to the two brothers.

Before I can further frustrate myself on thinking about it, the hospital door opened, revealing a middle aged, bespectacled man wearing a doctor's coat. On his two hands is a pile of papers and a cane respectively. He looked at me, smiling faintly before approaching my bed.

"Good day, Mr. Arc"

I flinched.

Well, at least they already know my name. Probably searched my belongings then, since the only thing that can track me back to the Arc family in the Mistral colony walls is my home address written behind a family picture I kept as a lucky charm.

Or probably the limited edition Mistral hero collectible Pumpkin Pete figure I hid at my bag, since those things are only available in Mistral.

He smiled at me, probably ignoring my reaction to his announcement. He started talking again, but I can't hear what he is saying. It's probably something about how I got myself here and the treatment that I have gotten while unconscious. But I ignored it, too focused on thinking about something more important than a doctor saying that I have almost died.

It's not like it's a big deal really, unauthorized colony hopping is only punishable by exile when proved, and only goes up there by stacking dozens of dozens of other smaller law's from what the person have done while illegally settling inside the colony, to their reason for hopping between colonies on the first place.

I shouldn't have interfered with the locals when I'm not one myself. Now I'm heading straight from the hospital, into the prison.

I looked back at the doctor as I noticed that his tangent of medical terms has already stopped.

"And now, Mr. Arc, now that you have almost completely healed from your injuries" The doctor have kept his smile. But now the smile seems to hide something mischievous, like an evil cartoon villain who's about to spring the very evil trap.

"I believe that a talk about you is in order"

Fuck.

I can't do anything but smile back and curse my own bad luck.

So, that's it. I would probably be very slow at updating this (and the other story I am doing right now), since I just found myself a job and I'm only rushing the first chapter before my inevitable start to being a working member of society.

Good news, I already have most of the concepts and groundwork done. Unlike Rose Painted Parabellum, a mostly unplanned story that got grounded three chapters up because the ideas stopped flowing or started mixing into absurd, nonsensical stuffs.

Bad news, I have no idea how the story would flow. And I don't know if I would still have some time to spare when I start my work.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Feel free to drop your reviews and criticism since I always wanted to improve my writing. I won't lash out I promise!