Author's Note: Hello everyone! Welcome to part two of RWBY: Desertion! (To those who have accidentally clicked on this, go read the first part. It's on my profile and there's sixty chapters... so yeah..) I'm finally starting to re-edit/rewrite these chapters in preparation for the RWBY: Desertion remake, so I figured that I'd better start with this chapter since it's probably the easiest to come change.

This part will be the prologue more than the first chapter, giving you a view into a recurring dream Gage has been having since his... accident. This is just the beginning and we are far from the end. Gage's new world will lie far ahead of him and Yang, along with the rest of Team RWBY and those of Beacon, and The Collectors… and maybe even another unworldly being.

Warning: This is an M rated story. Blood, Violence, harsh language, sexual content (smut, lemons, etc.), and feels are included. The whole package!

Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY. Just the OC. The entirety of RWBY belongs to Monty Oum, (God bless his soul), Gray Haddock, Miles Luna, and Kerry Shawcross. Any music referenced or mentioned also belongs to their respective artists.

Enjoy.

...

He was having that... dream again. The one he's been having every night for the last three weeks that he's been in the hospital, and it was the same as usual. All he could see was... darkness. Darkness with a small circle of light in the middle of it, but... soon it became different. The orb of light expanded, and a voice came from it. A familiar voice to Gage's ears. It was the ghost again, Summer Rose her name was

She was the woman that Gage met in the (apparent) afterlife or un-worldly realm that had he visited after his apparent death, and she was the mother of his close friend Ruby Rose and the stepmother of his lover, Yang Xiao Long.

And then she started to... speak to him.

"...I was killed only a few years after my daughter Ruby was born, being forced to watch as everything collapsed around her, and i had decided then that I would do anything to see her again... so I could say that I was sorry. I would've had to wait until the day that she would pass over into my world, until now. Thanks to you Gage."

He didn't know what was happening. It was just insane, but somehow, her voice soothed and calmed him, it made him feel... normal. The dead woman then went on to call him by his name, again, "Gage."

"Y...Yes?"

"...What do you think a legend is?"

"I don't know... stories scattered throughout time... about men and women who are smart, and swift, and brave, and protected the ones they love. Sometimes even giving their lives up... just for people that they won't ever know..."

"Then... do you think that your life could become a story? Maybe even a legend?"

"...No. My life... isn't just some story. Because no one would remember it. No one will. I'll just go down as some ghost that had great luck and a robot arm... something like that..."

He heard her snicker, and chuckle as the orb of light exploded and formed what looked to be... a galaxy.

"Hmhm... I knew you would say that. I've always known. Ever since I first saw you through my daughter's eyes... that is why I picked you Gage. Why I saved you..."

"How did you do that anyway?" He asked.

"A single life is never forgotten. Maybe how they look, or how they sound, but never their own life. They always leave an impact on someone, and throughout that memory of them, their spirit, and Aura is still bound to their family, friends, and their home. Our home. Remnant..."

He looked as he saw millions of stars form, and a few planets flew past him. Ones he didn't even know existed, and it made him think. How was he seeing this? It didn't even feel like he was inside his own body. It just felt like he was apart of the cosmos...

"And I have been watching you. How you've taught Ruby and entertained her, and how you've made Yang become happy time and time again, so I couldn't have let you leave them. And luckily, unlike most people... you had something that they didn't."

He laughed, but only briefly before he came to a sudden realization. "What? Luck?

"That... and your semblance. Transparency. You were born with a gift, not to phase through solid objects, but to phase between dimensions. Between the world of the living and the world of the dead. So you see Gage, you always were what you called yourself. A ghost."He continued to watch as his point of view moved throughout their galaxy, and looked on as a familiar green, white, and blue planet came into view. It was Remnant, with it's little shattered Moon and everything. "But, like many have told you before, you will have to fight for what, and who you love.. We will have to fight for them."

"We?" he asked.

"Yes. By now, I know you can't do everything yourself, even if you are or aren't human, you will face unbeatable odds and come back time and time again... So I will have to help you. But first., I must have your free will. And it will not be an easy path to take if there's two of us in your mind…"

"You're not making any sense."

"...I know." Summer huffed. "But you'll understand… in time." His dream all began to turn into a bright and burning white light, and he knew what was happening. He was starting to wake up, only to feel a tremendous amount of pain scorch across every part of his body...

…

"*GASP!*"

Gage opened his eyes as he stared down at a puddle he had his head planted in, now gasping as began to cough up a little bit of blood before he tried to raise himself off of the concrete ground. He looked down at his own image that was still visible in the puddle, and realized that the black liquid that had consumed was now gone…

...But there was something else strange that he noticed. His eyes were red. Not bloodshot, no, his irises were no longer turquoise like before, but a bright and bloody red. Almost like Yang's eyes when she was enraged, and he also had small blood trails coming down from his eyes sockets along with a trail flowing down from his lips as well.

"*Huff* *Huff* W-WHAT…WHAT THE-"

Gage quickly started to hyperventilate after that, tasting even more blood in his mouth before right as all his memories began to flood back to him. It wasn't of the nightmare he had just experienced, but… everything, everything since the start of his journey back at Mountain Glenn,

"Fuck… FUCK! The Collectors, Orin, The White Fang, The…." Then he felt more blood begin to drip out of his tear sockets as he felt a familiar burning sensation resurface, except this time It came from his heart instead. "The… THE SYNDICATE! I-I…. I have to-"

Gage looked back down once at the puddle and could see... no, remember what his body had gone through up to that point in his life. He was wearing his usual black shirt and brown pants, but his left arm was gone and was replaced with a sage-colored bionic arm. Once he finally got up from the ground, the ghost finally saw that he was on the side of an old abandoned road that lead straight into Vale, where he looked up towards the city and could see black smoke clouds rising right into the air as he heard distant gunshots and screaming.

"...Damn it, McCree..." Gage then immediately glanced down and picked up Mistletoe as he started to walk at a quick pace as it became faster, and faster until he started to jog. That eventually became a full on sprint after he traveled down the road a little further, and placed his shotgun on his back.

Multiple what-looked-to-be pods were now falling from the main Atlesian cruiser that was hovering over the main city, and the sound of their impacts fueled the ghost to run towards Vale's main outer wall, almost like it was a beating drum. But all it did was make him bare his teeth, and snarl as he ran faster with his revolver in one of his hands after he unholstered it, and suddenly started to hear various familiar voices that began to emanate inside his mind...

"I thought that... *sniffle* ..that you were actually going to-"

"Hey, you'll always have me."

"I TRUSTED YOU!"

"...I'm not just going to let someone else I love walk away from me!"

"I'M NOT AFRAID! I can't be, not anymore!"

These all went through his head as drops of blood began to form in his eyes, but he still ran down the road of gravel and towards the burning city with only one lingering thought left in his mind. One thing he wished he could say to his lover… who was now most likely being forced to hunt him down.

"Yang… I love you, and I'm so sorry-"

~You're not the only one who needed me; I thought you understood-~

~You were the one I needed, and you left me as I always feared you would!~

~-Would I change it if I could?! ...It doesn't matter how… the petals scatter now…~

~Every nightmare just DISCLOSES- It's your blood that's RED LIKE ROSES-!~

~And no matter what I do, nothing ever takes the place of YOU!~

"Gage Sim may have been a remarkable student even despite his current… predicament, but with the violence in the streets and his lack of communication, he's not giving us much of a choice. Whether he's truly guilty or not, the man's started a battle that he himself will not be able to control."

"You may have brought him to the academy Team RWBY, but with Vale hosting the next Vytal Festival, both Beacon and Atlas are being held responsible if we can't control his actions… And now it seems he's recruiting others to join him in his quarrel. He's even been given a name by the general public, and it's been adopted by the man himself… 'The Ghost of Remnant'... like he's trying to be something that's feared rather than followed."

"*sigh* ...So now, the official story will be that The Ghost of Remnant, will die. Hunted and killed by Team BOLE as a terrorist. But you, Team RWBY, are the unofficial story. Your mission is to find him, and bring him back as Gage Sim. You have the green light. Now do as you're told, and go."

Team RWBY's combat airship finally touched down into the distraught city of Vale. And once General Ironwood's message was done, the four girls all hesitantly readied their weapons… Yang more slowly than the others. Then, a second Team of students from Atlas lined up behind the bay door of the Bulkhead with their weapons drawn before a mechanical hiss was heard and the leader spoke aggressively to everyone,

"Let's hunt him down."

The team then moved out of the ship and into Vale while Team RWBY followed behind them slowly, all while Yang wiped a tear from her eyes as she saw the blinding light of the sun... and willingly followed.

DatRtfantho Presents...

Desertion Part Two: A Ghost's Beginning