Hello, readers! Rubles the Amazing Cookie Mom here, finally back with a new story! Which is...well, from RWBY. Hehe...funny how things turn out like that. A note to everyone here though, this isn't really new as much as it is a rewrite. Although, it wasn't for story reasons but rather because of issues with its previous grammar. That's fixed now, so...it should be a lot easier to read.
Anyhow, I'm putting up this header to introduce you to the story (whether you read the previous version of it or are reading it for the first time). This story isn't strictly RWBY per se...it's a RWBY crossover that borrows from too many sources to count. The resources, however, are ideas or powers that — as standalone concepts — don't really necessitate the sources themselves being woven into the story as part of a crossover. That being said: any concepts not from RWBY that I specifically did not create myself are, obviously, not mine and I do not take credit for them myself. The credit belongs to the authors, artists, and outright geniuses that came up with them. This also counts for RWBY itself; I do not take credit for anything Rooster Teeth itself came up with.
Now to talk about the prologue! As a starting point, this chapter-before-chapters begins as episodes 9 through 12 of Volume 4, in the PoV (point of view) of Ruby and Jaune. I will not be adding Ren and Nora's PoV, nor the "flashback" of their childhood in Kuroyuri. I already feel bad enough copying the show's dialogue...if you want to have the flashbacks, watch the episodes. (Gods know it was the last season of RWBY with any quality in it...and I say this as a person who loves RWBY despite everything that's happened.)
Next chapter (well, Chapter 1 I should say), I'll introduce the plot of the story. The change will happen in this prologue, but you won't really see much of any changes until Chapter 1. I'm saying this because anyone with a hatred of source copying might as well just skim through this chapter. To those people, I don't know what to tell you except to just be patient for Chapter 1. It's...weirdly difficult to find a stable starting ground in a series where the average episode length is less than 20 minutes.
To everyone in general, welcome to the story! I hope everyone enjoys Miracle of the Second Semblance. This story is also available on Archive of Our Own, so for anyone who wants to read it there you're more than free to do so. I hope you'll all like what I have in store for you (for this and all the chapters to come), and I'll see you all soon~
~Prologue~
"Miracle". A curious word, yet a contradiction unto itself. It is a stroke of luck, a happenstance, a guardian angel watching over one in need. Yet it is an unbiased curse to the unworthy, a death sentence to the offending, a damning to the blasphemer. What no one can argue, however, is the nature of the miracle itself.
To the desperate, unsure, or religious...or to the stoic, clever, or agnostic...the reality of the miracle shows itself always in the storm of adversity, and to those in absolute need of a light to shine their path forward.
It would seem fitting, then, that one great miracle would shone itself in a dark land, tainted by an unfeeling corruption hellbent on eradicating all life, to a group steps away — literally and figuratively — from the shadow of death. All it took...was a stroke of bad luck.
But that miracle isn't exactly where our story begins. Instead, we begin a little before it: at a point where the damage leading to the miracle has already been dealt, and our heroes are desperately following a path to safety, not knowing of their trials that await them.
Ruby Rose, one member of the makeshift Team RNJR, carried the front end of a hastily-crafted stretcher carrying her uncle.
"Just...hold on Uncle Qrow..."
Uncle Qrow grunted in pain, with a splotch of purple on his gray coat over a nasty cut — a clear sign of poisoning — showing itself under shaking fingers.
"Tai," he muttered in hallucination, "she's not coming...Tai-!" He coughed, a clear sign of his deteriorating health.
Jaune Arc, a blonde boy in armor, carried the back end of the stretcher. "It's getting worse."
"How much farther?" Ruby asked worriedly.
"We've gotta be close," replied Nora Valkyrie, a grenade launcher (her trusty Maginhild) held at the ready for any possible threat.
The fourth member of the group, Lie Ren, walked in front of the group to scout ahead. "Without the map, there's no way of knowing," he said, "but I feel like we're close to something..."
He stopped, sheathing his weapons (Storm Flower, a pair of fully-automatic jade pistols with lethal, curved blades). Noticing a signpost some feet in front of him, he ran to look for directions to Mistral where they could cure Qrow of his poisoning.
"What is it?" Ruby questioned, seeing Ren at the post. The following group opted to quicken their pace, eager to find the fastest path to the city. Nora, unburdened by the injured man, made it there first.
"H-Hey! Mistral! We're on the right path!" She exclaimed this with an enthusiasm unfitting of the landscape, but upon examining Ren's line of sight she found what seems to trouble the boy. "Oh..."
"Does it say how close?" Ruby asked.
"No," Ren dejectedly answered, "and it looks like the path takes us up through the mountains."
"Guys," interjected Jaune, as he and Ruby set down the stretcher, "I don't know if all of us can make that climb."
Ruby looked at her uncle, who is thankfully unconscious at the moment, before jogging up to the sign. "Okay," she said, "well...what about this place?" She pointed to one of the branching planks attached to the pole, a crossed out name pointing to the left. "Kuro...Kuroyuri. Can we get help there?"
"That village was destroyed years ago," Ren replied, a slight edge to his voice.
Jaune walked up to the three, a contemplative look on his face. "But if it takes us around the mountains," he replied, sharing his wisdom, "it's the best bet we've got."
"It will take too long." Ren cut in, his voice sharper. Nora took notice of this, but kept quiet.
"The town would've had a doctor, right?" Ruby pointed out. "Maybe we can scavenge for medicine!"
"Right," Jaune agreed, liking this option more than the one of going up the mountain.
Ren, however, is having none of it. "We're not going to find anything! We just have to press on!"
A small silence follows his outburst, the other half of the team having now noticed the tense look on his face.
Jaune voiced his concern, "Ren, why're you acting–"
"We can split up," Nora interrupted suddenly, moving closer to Ren with her hand on his shoulder.
Ruby was completely taken off guard by the request. "Huh?" she questioned, suddenly scared of what she thinks is a terrible idea.
Nora continued, facing her Fearless Leader while applying reason to the strange request. "Ren and I can cut through the mountains while you and Ruby take Qrow around the village."
"No," Jaune rebuffed, as happy about this tactic as Ruby is, "we're supposed to stick together. We keep each other safe!"
"We don't have time for safe," Nora exclaimed. "If we make it to Mistral, we'll bring back help. If we don't..." she looked endearingly at Ren, calming him with a loving smile shared many times before, "we'll at least have a better view of the land. Up there, we can see if there's somewhere else we can go!"
Ren shared the smile back with Nora, thankful for her input. Behind them, almost as to drive the point home, Qrow coughed again. The four looked back at him, anxious of his condition.
Jaune contemplated the situation, before finally coming to terms with the new plan. "Okay," he said, walking forward to embrace Ren as he lets them go through with their idea, "just take care of each other."
Nora reapplied her loving gaze at Ren, a knowing twinkle in her eyes. "We always have."
With the new plan underway, Ruby and Jaune picked up the stretcher. They looked back to Nora and Ren, the former waving to them as they run up the opposite path.
Ruby looked back to Jaune as they walked. "They're gonna be fine, Jaune," she tried.
Jaune, perhaps affected by the desolate landscape, looked down disheartened. "You don't know that."
Ruby, unsuccessful in cheering up her fellow leader, sported the same expression as him. The two continue their perilous journey, not noticing a massive imprint in the ground surrounding their own footsteps.
A small walk later, the two arrived in Kuroyuri. Its appearance, as expected, didn't look dissimilar to the dead forest surrounding — and in some cases through — it. Buildings were collapsed, the streets were shattered like glass, and no sign of other life was anywhere in sight. Ruby looked around at the place, her sad expression still coating her features.
"Oh man..." Jaune said, depressed at how badly the town had fallen into disrepair.
Ruby, with her mind on her uncle, resolved herself. "Come on."
As they ventured into the town, they looked around for any sign of medicine to keep Qrow from getting any worse. "Any of these places look like a pharamcy?" Ruby asks.
"It's...honestly hard to tell," Jaune replied, the destruction around them making it difficult to make out any place that medicine would be stored.
"Ren really didn't want to come her, did he?" Ruby continued, making conversation in the quiet wreckage.
"Uh...didn't seem so."
"Do you know...why?"
Jaune sighed, not for Ruby's continued questioning but rather for his answer. "I think I have a pretty good idea."
The two continued on in silence for several minutes, before they set Qrow down and looked for medicine themselves. They met back in the center of town, a little ways away from where they leaned Qrow against a large tree.
"Nothing," Jaune said, revealing himself indeed empty-handed.
Ruby frowned at this, not having found anything either, before she looked to her uncle. "We should get back to Qrow."
The man is currently barely conscious, a hand held on his poisoned cut. He grimaced, clearly weak and in terrible pain. Ruby knelt by him, increasingly worried for her uncle and mentor.
A loud roar suddenly made itself heard far off in the distance. Jaune twisted around, his hand gripped on the handle of his sword (Crocea Mors, a sword with an extremely durable blade, sheathed in a white, foldable shield as durable as the blade). He looked around wildly, fully alert for any movement.
"It's far off," Ruby said reassuringly, though not in any less tense of a manner than he.
"I know," Jaune told her, his back to her, "but Ren and Nora are still out there."
Ruby, her mood descending rapidly into guilt, looked back towards Qrow, before she stood up. The young Huntress walks behind Jaune, a depressed look to her visage.
"I'm sorry."
Jaune looked back, utterly surprised at her words. "Huh?"
"This is all my fault," she continued, her pupils growing wider with held-back tears, "I should have never dragged you guys into this."
Jaune's frown morphed into a half-smile. "You didn't drag us in," he consoled her, "we wanted to come."
"But", the girl crieed, reaching her emotional limit with tears shimmering and voice cracking against her will, "you didn't know about Tyrian, about–"
"Ruby."
She stopped, quieting as he starts to talk.
"We lost...we lost Pyrrha," he said, his smile forgotten as he forced himself to remember the past. "You lost her too. And Penny, and your team, and in a way...your sister. But you're still here...despite everything you've lost, and everything you could still lose, you chose to come out here. Because you felt like you could make a difference."
Ruby looked up, eyes widened with desperation to find the truth in his words.
"You didn't drag us along," he finalized, placing a hand on her shoulder, his smile as dorky as ever, "you gave us the courage to follow you."
This seemed to finally allow Ruby to smile as well, the meaning of his statement doing its job. The two stared at each other for what seemed a century, as though lost in this one happy moment, before the same roar previously heard forced them apart. The roar, they noticed, was definitely louder than before. They turned around, hearing footsteps, only to find Ren and Nora panting in overexertion.
"What are you guys doing here?" Ruby practically yelled, panicking at why they were here despite the reason for their temporary separation.
Jaune, meanwhile, is mildly panicked himself, paying far more attention to the roar that definitely wasn't miles away like it had previously been. "Did you hear that noise? What was that?!"
Ren fell to his knees, a look of despair quaking in his eyes.
Jaune didn't notice, his head swiveling around like a bloodhound with a clue. Suddenly, he stopped. "Wait, you guys hear that?"
Footsteps, louder and more pronounced than any human limb had a right to make, pounded on stone. Another set of steps clopped, clearly originating from a hooved creature. The two noises sounded in a rhythmic tandem, slow yet purposeful.
"No..." Ren bent his head lower in his despair, the sound driving him nearly unresponsive.
"Ren?" Nora whimpered. Ren brings his head up almost unwillingly. In front of him, simply yards away, stood what could only be described as an absolute nightmare of a creature. A black horse, with white bone plating scattered across its body, is situated under a vaguely human-like body conjoined around its middle. This thing, obviously not human in nature, has large curled horns on its head, and its mouth — if one could call it that — is webbed together, stretched as though no mouth was supposed to have existed there in the first place.
But, one would suppose, the Nuckelavee shouldn't have any right to exist. A sentiment that, though not paid attention to in this dire moment, is absolutely shared by Team RNJR at this moment.
As though offended by this line of questioning, the Grimm attacked, forcing Team RNJR to scatter. As this happened, Qrow deliriously coughs, the poison noticeably worse than it previously was. Ruby notices the Grimm eye her uncle, and in a mad dash to keep him alive she uses her Semblance to dash to him and carry him behind a building. One of the Nuckelavee's limbs, seemingly capable of stretching, partially buried itself where Qrow were last located.
"Qrow," Ruby whined, honestly lost at this turn of events. She knew his Semblance was to blame somehow, but she ignored that train of thought over trying to come up with a way to help him. Ideas came and went as quickly as pastry on a plate, nothing making a lick of sense. Until, in a stroke up seeming madness, one idea stuck out. An incredibly stupid idea. One that really shouldn't have any chance of working.
But what real choice do I have, she thought. If I do nothing, he's going to die anyway.
"Uncle Qrow," she said, barely holding herself together as she shivered under her shaking fingers, "I think I'm going to do something really, really stupid here. Something that you're definitely going to haunt me for. B-but..."
No, Ruby shakes her head, steeling herself for what's to come, it's do or die, no matter what way you look at it. But if there's even a slight chance this will work...oh gods, give me a sign...anything...
Finishing what she'd admit later was a prayer of sorts — one of the first she made to something other than her late mother — she put her brain power into quickly coming up with a way to complete her idiotic goal. She remembered the chant, but...something felt off in her head. She had a bad feeling about the original wording in this circumstance, and so perhaps in a fit of more idiocy she decides to come up with a new chant on the spot.
Gods he's going to kill me if he doesn't blow up first...
"For...for to live is to attain wisdom," she chanted, closing her eyes as she held her uncle. She doesn't quite know why, but as soon as she spoke the words started coming naturally to her. She blamed it on being the heat of the moment, but decided she doesn't care and continued on. "Through knowledge attained in our lives, we rise above all and become paragons of glory and virtue. Through–" she stammered, tempted to look at the three fighting the Nuckelavee, but persevered, "Through regret attained in our lives, we bare our fangs against the pain and shield the helpless."
Her mind flashed back to Pyrrha's and Penny's deaths, and even to Roman's death, as a tear fell from her eye. Yet, she continued. "I release the battered chains of your soul, and stand by your side through death and time. I c-carry your heart past its limits...and by my shoulder, arm thee."
Letting go of her uncle's head, she barely registered the Aura draining from her body as she ran to assist her team. Grabbing her weapon from her back (Crescent Rose, a black and red sleek beauty of a scythe capable of mechashifting into a sniper rifle), she didn't notice her uncle's less-labored breathing. Sprinting like her life depended on it, she also didn't notice her uncle glowing faintly as he barely awoke again, poison still pumping through his veins.
"R-Rube," he muttered, eyesight dividing like a shattered mirror, dizzy and still delirious from the poison. He was aware, however, of the Grimm his niece went to fight, and so found enough focus to glare heatedly at the blurry demonic creature before he passed out yet again, one last pulse of Aura shining before dimming to a dull thrum.
