New Moon
Chapter 1: No One Important
Disclaimer: I do not own anything except myself and my own ideas.
Being sealed wasn't really that bad honestly. He was starting to think Kurama was just a big whiny baby. It's not like he even knew whether or not any time had passed. Most of the time, he just slept. At least until a little silver eyed girl picked him up. Now he just pitied Remnant. It wasn't ready for his particular brand of chaos.
****NM****
Song list
Clear and Serene – Yuki Hayashi
God Mode – Sons of Amon
****NM****
Ruby liked to think she was a practical person.
Sure Yang, Weiss and Blake would disagree. Sure, she knew she could be a little flighty, yes, she enjoyed tinkering with weapons a bit too much and yes, she had a rather debilitating addiction to sugar, but that didn't stop her from being a practical person, right?
Anyway, she was rambling.
She had just watched Pyrrha cut Penny into several pieces a while ago, a horde of Grimms were in Vale and running around the place willy nilly, the Atlas Mechs had gone nuts and started shooting at them and her team mates were nowhere to be seen.
So, excuse her for being in a bit of a shock at the moment alright?
They had been doing okay... somewhat okay, but the moment her silver eyes had caught sight of the stupidly huge Dragon, exploding right out of that goddamned mountain in the distance before it pondering through the skies towards Beacon Academy with heavy wing flaps while it rained goddamned Grimms from its butt, she knew that things had hit rock bottom.
The feeling alone coming from that….
No number of Teams could save Beacon from that.
Not even Atlas' presence would help against that.
So, she did the only thing she knew could help.
She grabbed the rusty little bronze ring hanging around her neck.
The world visibly slowed to a stop and then it…. shattered like glass.
Reality seemed to shift sideways and she found herself standing in a meadow all of a sudden, no longer in a city.
In front of her, there was a small, quaint and homely looking cottage.
She saw none of that and immediately rushed through the door. She sprinted down hallways and around corners that were way too long for a small cottage to contain before she came to the last door at the end of said hallway and burst straight through them, straight into a pair of arms and a broad chest covered in a dark vest.
She clung on to them like it was a lifeline and heaved a sob into said dark vest.
"Ruby?" a rough and clearly surprised voice croaked even as the arms closed around her and one arm wrapped around her side to keep her stead even as the other began to automatically pat her back soothingly, "What are you doing here? Weren't you in a tournament?"
"Something happened, everything's a blur," The girl babbled in a muffled tone, "There's Grimm everywhere! And a Dragon!"
One blonde eyebrow quirked upwards, "A dragon." The eyebrow's owner replied skeptically, "Really?"
"A friggin' big one." Ruby nodded her head violently, still not deigning to lift her face from his chest, "It's making even more Grimm and all the mechs went nuts and started shooting at us and General Ironwood's plane went down and-and!" She sobbed again, "Yo-You have to help! People are dying!"
The arm around her sides lifted to scratch at long spiky yellow locks of hair, there was some resignation in the man's tone, "If I do that, you know what will happen."
The man gently pushed her back a little. She heard cloth rustling as the man knelt down in front of her and watery eyes of mercury met glowing sapphire ones, "Are you willing to make that sacrifice?"
Mercurial eyes looked away, she hesitated but for a moment before her resolve solidified and she looked back, "Please…. save everyone…"
The man's cheeks, with whisker-like scars across them, stretched with a gentle smile, "As you wish."
Reality shattered once more.
Back in the real world, blackish red locks burned yellow and lengthened until they were waist length, and a crystalline blue hue bled through silver.
Those blue eyes with slitted pupils looked around. They were standing on the wings of a… plane? Wind whistled furiously around him, but it didn't affect them. In fact, the wind seemed to flow around her now as if it was being guided by a gentle hand.
Below them... well Ruby had been right. If anything, she had been underestating it.
The situation… did not look good.
Hmm... well, time for more desperate measures.
[[Play Clear and Serene – Yuki Hayashi]]
So, she inhaled, longer and deeper than anyone of her size should have any right to, and then she roared, long and loud.
Everything that had been moving, stopped doing so.
Every single Grimm in the vicinity instantly died.
Crows, griffins and whatever have you plummeted as they dissolved into ashes. Those below them were more fortunate, but Grimm and human still locked up in wide eyed fear. All fighting within several kilometers of Beacon stopped. The air itself seemed to freeze in anticipation.
Even the Dragon flinched, ancient and bestial instincts warred against its desire and instructions.
There was something up there.
And it was not happy.
Back on the plane, Roman and Neo who had been sneaking up on Ruby stumbled backwards in horror, their limbs shaking violently, "You… you're not Little Red."
The dark-haired girl was now blond, her silver eyes were now crystal blue. The short blond waif smiled politely at them, seemingly completely unsurprised, "Indeed, I am not," Her head tilted to the side as if she was listening to something, "She can hear you though."
She was cheering too and making a goddamned racket as her mentor had straight up frozen everything around them with a single roar.
The blond girl in the black goth skirt calmly swept over to them and knelt next to Roman, "Ruby says that you should be the one messing with the Atlas mechs." Blue eyes bore into green, "Is she correct?"
The two thieves just shook.
That roar had been one thing, but her presence.
By Oum's shriveled balls, her presence!
She was just kneeling there, not making any aggressive motions whatsoever, but he could feel the atmosphere itself pressing down on him. It enclosed him and choked him. He couldn't breathe. He could feel it pouring down his spine, he could see his life ending before his very eyes.
Every time he shivered, he died and came back to life.
The thought of lying didn't even have the chance to form in his head.
Screw Cinder.
Screw that fucking flame bitch.
Screw her with a goddamn 10-foot barbed pole.
She was messing around with things that she Didn't. Fucking. Understand.
That was the only thing that could explain why he was now face to face with… whatever this monster was. It sure as hell wasn't human, because if it was, he'd break Melodic Cudgel into a thousand pieces and eat them all, piece by piece.
He was just a goddamn thief from the streets, but it didn't take a genius to know that whatever this blond was, it was entire fucking magnitudes above his pay grade.
Cinder was scary, but she had nothing on the blond next to him.
"Hello, is anyone home?" The blond politely repeated again, waving one hand in front of his face.
His teeth were rattling so hard he couldn't answer. So he just nodded as violently as he could to get his meaning across. The blond waif smiled gently, almost elegantly. The smile looked extremely strange on Little Red's face, and rather than reassure him, it just made him feel like he was about to be eaten whole.
Somewhere deep inside him, he wondered if being eaten by a Grimm would have been better than this.
"I'm not very good with technology. Would you help me fix that instead?"
Another violent nod.
"That's wonderful." The monster smiled again, and one finger tapped his forehead almost playfully before doing the same to Neo. Chills run down and up his spine at the contact even as the skin where the finger had made contract prickled painfully, "Wh-What was that?" Roman half croaked; half sobbed.
"Just a bit of insurance, you understand." The blond waif explained nonchalantly, "Hurry along and fix the mechs now please, while I deal with everything else below. Don't worry, I'll find you after I'm done."
She stood up and lifted one hand.
Her scythe instantly zoomed back into her hand like it had been vacuumed there, before she nonchalantly stepped onto the edge of the plane's wings and jumped right off without a care.
The moment that thing had jumped off the plane, the presence immediately lifted enough that Roman's limbs stopped shaking so violently. It took a minute before he could even stand. Then it took another minute for him to look at his partner.
Roman's eyes met Neo's.
"We fucked up." He concluded somberly.
Neo nodded emphatically.
They didn't even think of running away.
The chills that had been running up and down his spine earlier had solidified into claws. He didn't know how he could feel it, but feel it he could. They were hooked into his very being, and there was one resting casually against his collarbone. Judging by the grey sheen on her face, he would bet a thousand lien that Neo was currently feeling the same thing.
Roman was a thief. Roman wasn't an idiot.
He recognized it for what it was.
It was less than a threat, and more than a promise.
So, he set about fixing the mechs.
****NM****
When she touched down on the ground, it was almost daintily and blue eyes swept around the clearing.
Her smile widened at the huge amount of frozen Grimm and Human alike watching her warily, and her presence ramped up spectacularly.
The humans watched in wide eyed fear as the blond in the goth dress sashayed down the road as entire waves of Grimm outright exploded into dust with every step she took, straight towards Beacon Tower. They were affected as well. Their knees gave out and limbs shook, but they didn't die. Though at least one of them would need therapy after this.
Lots and lots of therapy.
As the girl with flowing blond locks reached an intersection of the city, she tilted her head. Rather than head straight for Beacon Academy, she turned and headed down a side lane for a while until she came across three wide eyed people sprawled on their backsides amidst a pile of mech parts.
That was good.
He had been mildly worried about those.
His presence could lock down both humans and Grimm, but not mechs. Circuits did not understand fear after all. He had tried to moderate things to influence the humans as little as possible, but he couldn't stop it entirely, so they would have been slowed and weakened at the very least while handling the bots.
"Good evening." She bowed politely, "It's good to finally meet the three of you. I've heard much about all of you from Ruby."
Glynda Goodwitch, Qrow Branwen and James Ironwood stared incredulously at the blond who had nonchalantly walked out of a side alley. None of them needed to share a single word. They didn't know how, but they knew that this person in front of them had been the source of the terrifying roar and subsequently, the crushing pressure that had settled upon the city.
Glynda knew her students well, the troublemakers especially so.
The dress, the scythe, the face, she recognized, was pure Ruby Rose.
The mannerisms, the hair and the eyes on the other hand…. Frankly she didn't want to know, but she had to ask.
"Ruby?" She whispered weakly, "Ruby Rose? Is that you?"
"Not quite." The short blond girl smiled and sketched a man's bow before answering in a painfully polite and formal tone that none of them had ever heard Ruby take before, "But she's listening and she says that she's glad the three of you are okay. Especially after she saw your plane go down, Mr. Ironwood."
James Ironwood blinked and nodded slowly. His tongue felt like lead and for the first time in his life, Mettle was completely silent and he understood why.
Against this girl, no amount of resolve would be sufficient.
In the face of something that was so completely beyond logic, so completely alien, that it was a variable that could not be removed, reduced or managed in any way, Mettle had suffered a critical error and directly crashed.
Luckily, someone else had enough presence of mind to struggle to their feet and step forward aggressively despite…. Whatever it was that was emanating from the blond waif.
"Who are you and… and what have you done to my niece?!"
The blond waif tilted her head again, as if listening to something, before she spoke, "Ruby says not to worry, Mr. Branwen. Everything will be alright. But she would appreciate it if you could find her after all this is done. She would like to speak to you."
Qrow tried to take another step before his legs gave out again, "You…. You! Stop whatever you're doing to us!"
"It is unfortunate, but I cannot." The blond replied apologetically, "I am the only thing preventing the Grimm from moving at the moment. If I stop, the battle will continue and more Grimm will arrive. So, until I find the culprit and deal with them, the city will have to suffer my presence. I assure you that I mean no harm to anyone in Beacon."
"You…. What are you?!"
The blond girl simply sketched another bow, satisfied that the three of them were alright, before turning around and heading back towards Beacon Academy.
"What…. What in the fresh hell was that?" Ironwood breathed out finally after the presence around them had dissipated. His head was still mercifully silent.
"I don't know, but I plan to find out." Qrow answered grimly even as he continued to struggle to his feet.
Ruby and her mentor passed a number of other students as they continued down the main road. Some he recognized, like the Bunny girl and Ruby's white haired team mate, but this time, Ruby didn't ask him to stop.
As long as they were alive and visibly unwounded, she was content to let her mentor continue their journey to Beacon Academy. The mechs they had been fighting were no longer operational, so clearly Roman and Neo had done their job. Probably.
Still, she hadn't seen Blake and Yang yet. So, she could only hope they were okay.
Her only consolation was that her Mentor had assured her that they were fine through whatever means he was using to survey the city. They were hurt, but alive, and in no imminent danger.
She wished that they could go faster, but she knew that her Mentor was already pushing it with her body. Keeping the presence up was already taking much of his focus, so he could not afford to rush.
At least, not until they had reached the tower.
That's when her mentor seemed to notice something happening at the top of the tower.
Without a word, he dropped his presence and leapt up. His feet miraculously stuck to the surface of the tower and he began to scale it, one huge leap at a time.
****NM****
Pyrrha regretted many things.
But she would never regret coming up here to battle Cinder. Even as her life seemed to be coming to an end, even if she and Jaune would no longer amount to anything together, she didn't regret, because coming up here had been the right thing to do.
Not the smart thing, no, but the right thing.
No matter how she dodged or moved, no matter how she attacked and feinted over the new Fall Maiden's superior firepower, Cinder was faster and stronger. They had been more or less even, or so Pyrrha liked to think, until Cinder had pulled that reforming arrow trick out of nowhere.
Idly and half blind through the pain emanating from her heel as she struggled to get on back on her feet, a little voice at the back of her head wondered if that was a Fall Maiden ability, or one of Cinder's own original ones. She certainly hadn't done it before, though that was only normal if she had only been pretending to be a student
A hand yanked her chin up and Pyrrha had to narrow her eyes to focus blearily on her opponent.
"It's unfortunate you were promised a power that was never truly yours. But take comfort in knowing that I will use it in ways that you could never have imagined." Cinder gloated.
"Do you believe in destiny?" Pyrrha croaked back.
There was a brief pause at the non-sequitur, before Cinder stood back up and replied curtly, "Yes."
Her bow reformed around her left arm. She pulled back another arrow and let it fly.
At this distance, she had no hope of dodging.
She refused to close her eyes and forced her eyes to stay open, if a little pointlessly.
She was already too exhausted to even track the arrow, much less dodge it, so she just waited for the bolt to strike home.
Her last bit of rebellion, if you would.
One beat later, she felt nothing.
Two beats later, still nothing.
On the third beat, she finally realized that she was looking at something.
That something, was the tip of an arrow.
Then she noticed the fist around the shaft.
She blankly followed the fist up the arm.
The sunshine yellow hair looked like Yang's she idly observed. But the dress was all Ruby. In fact, wasn't Ruby the only one in the Academy that dressed like that?
"It's a good thing then, that I don't."
Cinder flew back from the force of a sudden wall of air smacked straight into her, as a blond that hadn't been there before, appeared between the two women and crashed into one of the few remaining walls.
"In fact, I generally make it a point to tell destiny to fuck off as often as I can."
The fist clenched and the arrow shattered.
[[Play God Mode – Sons of Amon]]
The unknown blond bowed politely, "Good evening Cinder Fall. It's nice to finally meet you."
Cinder slowly floated back up again and narrowed her eyes at the intruder in partial recognition, "Ruby…. Rose?"
The blond smiled politely, "Not quite. But please feel free to keep calling me that."
One flick of the wrist sent Pyrrha jostling over a safe corner with a quiet yelp, while his other hand gently redirected Cinder's blow to the side with one finger, and promptly jabbing the dark-haired woman in the abdomen.
Cinder choked violently and fell back, "Wha?"
The unknown blond continued to stand there with a nonchalantly calm expression, one hand behind her back, the other hanging at her side, scythe neatly folded and harmlessly attached to her back as if she had no intention whatsoever of using it.
Cinder growled, "No, no, no, no more interruptions!"
Flamed erupted from both hands, sending her hurtling through the air at the blond.
One finger came up again and gently pushed the kick to the side. She pivoted and the finger turned into a grip around Cinder's heel, upon which the dark-haired woman was promptly swung straight into the ground face first, by her own momentum.
In a cottage somewhere, Ruby cheered.
The moment her mentor had gotten his hands on Cinder, he had basically already won.
Ask her. She had a ton of experience with what was happening to Cinder.
It almost felt cathartic to finally see it happen to someone else.
The best part? It couldn't have happened to a nicer person.
Her mentor didn't bother to ask questions or even try to reason with Cinder.
"You're a right bundle of anger and angst, aren't you?" The blond observed blandly, "I can feel it pouring right of you."
Cinder lifted her face with a near animalistic growl as she began firing kicks from her free leg, each kick sending out gouts of flame that the blond simply evaded with a tilt of the neck before yanking on her trapped foot again.
"Desperation and fear too. What of, I wonder."
Pyrrha watched blankly, half dazed, half amused as the familiar looking blond began swinging the ravenette around by the foot like a meat club and began to pound on anything he could reach, with her face. Each hit was so hard and powerful that Pyrrha could feel the floor shaking. She idly wondered if the blond was planning on demolishing the entire tower with just Cinder's face alone.
Then realization hit.
Was that… RUBY?
Red light flickered with each slam as Cinder's Aura held, but each flicker was coming out weaker and weaker.
Cinder went half mad trying to blast the man with her Fall Maiden powers, but she couldn't even aim as the world spun around wildly, much less actually hit him. Fire, Ice, Lightning and Earth alike shot off awry and pointlessly. She yowled and struggled. She kicked and squirmed, but the grip on her ankle was like a steel clamp that she just couldn't break. Not even heating her foot up to the maximum of her abilities seemed to do anything to the blond's hands.
As her Aura started to falter, she was now desperate enough to start sawing her own leg off with her Semblance.
Pyrrha was just about to say something and warn the blond about what Cinder was trying to do, when a green haired woman and a grey-haired man suddenly appeared out of nowhere behind Ruby. Greeny was already swinging those dual scythes and grey boy kicked the air, firing off a blast from his boots. She opened her mouth, but nothing but a weak whisper came out of her abused throat.
Then she watched in shock and fascination as the blond casually intercepted the bullets without even looking.
By swinging Cinder around.
Straight into the shotgun pellets.
Face first.
And then, just to add insult to injury, he spun the other way around and slapped Emerald straight out of the air with a spinning kick. The kick sent Emerald flying straight at the grey-haired boy. Both of them hit a wall and crumpled to the ground with a groan when the blond threw Cinder at them with a casual flick of the wrist, sending all three crashing down in a tangle of bodies and limbs.
"Illusions. Real cute." The person that looked like a blond Ruby, or was that a mini Yang? Commented dryly as she shattered a huge column of marble with another kick and then sent it hurtling straight at the three attackers with a dainty push of the toe.
The massive marble pillar slammed straight into Cinder's back with all the force of a dump truck.
There was an audible crack.
Then Pyrrha heard a howl of pain and anguish coming from the dark-haired girl before it cut off as Cinder fainted.
Something had just broke and it wasn't the pillar.
The other two were still conscious but pinned beneath both Cinder and the heavy marble pillar.
The blond idly observed the three of them for a while until he was satisfied that they weren't going anywhere anytime soon, at which point he turned to Pyrrha and smiled at her, "I'm sorry about earlier, Miss. Pyrrha Nikos. As I was going to say before I was so rudely interrupted, it is nice to finally meet you face to face." There was a sudden screech as the Wyvern they had forgotten about began swooping down towards them, "Although I wish it were under better circumstances."
She nonchalantly bowed to Pyrrha, as if the Wyvern bearing down on them wasn't a huge concern at all, "Please give me a moment to deal with a pest."
Pyrrha blinked and nodded uncertainly as the blond turned around and squinted up at the wyvern, "Hmmm… Well, this isn't going to be pleasant, Ruby. I hope you're ready for it." She murmured to herself.
She opened one palm and a small black bead began coalescing above her palm. Due to the color, it was hard to see, but the bead was spinning hard and furious. The bead pulsed and grew until it was the size of a softball. The sheer force of the softball sized orb's rotations was now strong enough to whip up the dust and rocks around them.
He lifted it up and gently blew on the orb. Despite that gentle gesture, the orb shot off like it had been fitted with a rocket.
Boom, Boom, Boom.
Each time the orb of black light pulsed violently, it expanded dramatically until it was now large enough to rival the Wyvern itself.
By then, even the huge Grimm knew that getting hit with something that size wouldn't be pleasant, but it was too late for it to was too big, too ponderous to change course. And so there was nothing it could do as huge black orb slammed straight into it's snout and continued hurtling up through the air without slowing down at all.
The Wyvern roared maniacally as it struggled and fought against whatever it was that seemed to be keeping it stuck to the ball. Everyone in the Vale that heard the roars, looked up in horror as the Wyvern shrieked and thrashed madly.
It was almost anti climatic, Pyrrha observed, as the ball kept going up and up, and she wondered if the blond Ruby was planning on just shoving the Grimm away until it was far beyond Vale's borders or something.
At least, that was what she thought, until she saw the blond Ruby who still had one hand aloft, clench it into a fist.
"Doton: RasenKuhaku."
'Earth Release: Spiraling Void.'
All at once, there was a muffled burst of air and the orb expanded until it was the inky blackness seemed to cover the entire city.
It hung there like a city sized Black Moon in the sky.
There was no sound, no explosion, nothing.
Anything it touched, be it cloud, Grimm or Wyvern, simply…. disintegrated.
Complete and utter annihilation.
When the Black Moon finally faded away, there was a perfectly round hole in the clouds above them, letting the moonlight from the real moon shine through.
Finally, the blond Ruby turned around and approached Pyrrha with a smile.
Okay…. This sure as hell wasn't Ruby.
Humming to herself tunelessly, the blond ignored Pyrrha's incredulous stare as she calmly tore off a strip of her skirt and began binding Pyrrha's foot with a piece of wood as a makeshift splint when the elevator door suddenly creaked open.
A gray-haired man stumbled through the door.
"Professor Ozpin!" Pyrrha croaked softly.
"Miss Nikos!" The grey-haired man cried with great relief until he set eyes on the blond next to her, hands neatly folded on her lap now that the splint was done, looking perfectly calm and unruffled despite the destruction all around them, "And…. Miss Rose?"
"Mr. Ozpin." The blond smiled gently, "I'm glad you made it. I was worried I had come too late."
The bewildered and frazzled Ozpin blinked rapidly, "You…. You are not Miss Rose…." Then it finally clicked, "You were the source of that roar, weren't you?"
"Indeed I am." The blond nodded.
"Thank you for that…" Ozpin said slowly, his eyes slowly panned around the room until they landed on Cinder and her goons. His eyebrows shot all the way up to his hairline, "It scared Cinder enough that she decided to rush off and finish whatever objective she had rather than stay and finish me off."
"I've dealt with the Wyvern as well." The blond added, almost smugly.
"You…. dealt with the Wyvern…" Ozpin choked and stumbled a step mid-sentence and stared at the short blond waif, "Who… are you?"
The short blond smiled gently, "No one important."
Then she patted Pyrrha's good knee, "By the way, Miss Nikos?"
Pyrrha blinked in a nonplussed manner, "Yes?"
"Please catch me."
"Excuse me?"
The blond gave her and Ozpin a cheeky little wave before blue eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed onto said knee face first.
Ozpin and Pyrrha stared in complete and utter disbelief as the blond fainted just like that.
Then the blond wasn't even a blond anymore as her hair sunk back into her skull, until it reached Ruby's customary neck length cut and turned back into their usual blackish red.
"Fuck this. I need some coffee." Ozpin muttered.
Pyrrha mutely nodded in agreement.
****NM****
