Before anything else, I own nothing but the original characters, and content therein related to them. RWBY is owned by RT, and any mentioned creator's work belongs to them, and them alone. Rest in peace Monty, your vision lives on in us all.
CHAPTER 5
In the abandoned City of Oniyuri. Rot Schrodinger stepped forward, as everyone else stepped back. Letting his black duster fall to the ground, he cracked his neck and shoulders. "You…" Tyrian said, his voice full of hate.
"Ah, Tyrian. I'd recognize the sound of your voice anywhere… And the smell of a well licked boot on your breath… How is the queen?" Rot asked, taking his sunglasses off, seeming to drop them, only for the eye coverings to cease existing.
"Better than you as it seems." Tyrian remarked, getting a good look at Rot's missing eyes.
"Yes, well, as I understand Miss. Rose here is next on her list, which, if I'm anything to go by, is not something that should be allowed to happen." Rot said, flexing his fingers against each other until they all cracked at once and his elbows popped when fully extended. "Now, I see one of two major possibilities happening here today. You run away, and tell the whore you failed her… Or… I give you a beating that is most certainly going to hurt, and you run away, and tell the whore you failed her… What will it be?" Rot asked.
Tyrian bared his teeth at Rot, and lashed out, only to strike air when there should have been man. "It is what it is." Rot said from behind Tyrian. The faunus swung again this time with his tail, only for Rot to appear at his side and smile as he spoke. "You're still not very good at this are you?" Tyrian went to elbow him in the gut, missing again. Spinning in place, Tyrian looked for Rot, seeing him nowhere, before on his second 360 degree rotation, Rot was right back where he had been at the beginning. "Wasn't I already here?" Tyrian shot at the man with his wrist gun, only to miss him vanish when he blinked. Kicking behind him, Tyrian anticipated the man would be appearing there, and Rot did in fact need to duck down before appearing upright in front of Tyrian. "Oh you're learning, this is good... " Tyrian aimed a punch at his groin, only to miss again. "Very good, I'd consider that little prediction passable." Rot said, as if he hadn't even noticed his own fresh appearance down the street.
To the outside observer, Rot looked as if he was moving faster than the eye could track, and there was some truth to that thought. "What am I watching?" Jaune asked. He'd seen some zippy fighters, Pyrrha, Halcyone and Ruby in ascending order, but never someone so fast that they could simply not fight and still win. Rot hadn't even thrown a single punch, nor drawn one of the two revolvers on his belt.
"It's like he's everywhere." Ruby said, even with her somewhat better perception of fast moving objects thanks to her own super speed semblance, she couldn't see Rot even as a blur when he moved.
"Who is this guy?" Pyrrha asked, lowering her weapons as she sat in awe of the man blipping to and from around Tyrian.
"Rot Schrodinger… Otherwise known as the Vacuo outlaw Black Rattler, the man who can be everywhere." Qrow said, having only recently himself found out about the anomaly in front of them all.
"He had silver eyes." Ruby said, remembering the ethereal glow that the man had once used.
"... And while I get it, my name is Old Atlesian for Red Dead or Alive, it just feels right to go with the black hat cowboy aesthetic, gotta keep the look alive ya' know?" Rot's mockery of a fight continued on, his erratic movements beating Tyrian's at every turn.
"You haven't even tried fighting me!" Tyrian shouted, as he punctuated his statement by striking at Rot with his stinger, only for Rot to appear on the rooftop of a nearby building.
"Oh… You expected me to fight you? No no, I'm still giving you a chance to run." Rot said, before he teleported behind Tyrian and kicked him in the side of the head, before repairing in front of him to knee him in the face, and back again to grab his shoulders and toss him to the ground a few feet away. "You don't get it, do you?" Rot said, appearing beside Tyrian before he stopped skidding along the ground. "You can't fight what you don't understand." Rot placed a foot on Tyrian's tail before it could move to strike at him. All the same Tyrian swung his wrist blades at Rot's ankle, and like all the other times he failed to connect. Rot appeared right back where he had at the beginning of the fight. "Alright. Since you're so adamant about it. I guess we should get to the beating then." He said, fists raised like an old Mantle boxer. Appearing right in front of Tyrian, Rot threw a small barrage of punches, which caused the faunus to stumble, only to feel hands oh his back keep him steady, more than likely Rot's even as he was right in front of him, laying jabs and uppercuts into his face and gut.
Now dazed and confused, his back pressed against a wall, Tyrian felt one jarring punch after another, before he felt his aura break. With one last elbow strike, Tyrian slumped against the wall. Rot looked down at him with his missing eyes, and harrumphed in discontent. "You were hardly worth the time." Rot said, turning to walk away. Tyrian looked up, and for the first time, his opponent had his back to him. Lashing out with his stinger, Tyrian tried to stab the man… Only for searing hot pain to strike him.
Clayton stood, Kingslayer raised, the muzzle smoking from a freshly fired tight spread of shotgun pellets, the cone of buckshot restricted by the attached modified choke. He racked the slide, and adjusted his aim away from the now limply dangelling tail of the scorpion man, only for the now injured faunus to scamper to his feet and run around a corner, fleeing for his life. Lowering his gun, Clayton suddenly began to feel drowsy. "Clay!?" Was all he heard before the world around him faded to black...
In the fortress of darkness and stone, Cinder had a smirk on her face. Tyrian had returned from his mission, a failure. Rot Schrodinger was with Ruby Rose, and he'd beaten the crazy bastard like a rented mule. Better than that, the gorilla faunus, Clayton if she remembered right, had shot off his tail with that ridiculous axe gun. She nearly chuckled at the thought. Tyrian went on about how much he'd like to take on the silver eyed man again, but he'd had his chance and lost, not only in spirit, but he'd also lost the respect Salem had for him. Had the savage temper tantrum he threw after Salem left his presence been less violent and grimm dismembering, Cinder would have laughed aloud at his folly. The time was drawing near that she'd face the little gang of would be heroes, and now, more tha never she wasn't going to underestimate them.
Author's note.
We now get to see Rot in action, and damn he's still kickin' in his old age. Now while it seems like I went and nerfed Tyrian a bit, that's not the case, Rot is simply a brokenly powerful opponent. Even without his most powerful tool being rendered combat ineffective after he burned them out of his skull, his semblance allows him to appear and disappear, like nightcrawler from X-Men, but even faster, and with no visible trail or indicator he's left like a sound or flash. One moment he's gone, and the next he's somewhere else, blink and you've missed him make 13 jumps across the world and back. In a fight, even without his eyesight, he simply needs to be able to avoid attacks to make an opponent tired, much like Neo, except even more economical. The trade off to this is obviously that aura is burned to make teleports, but depending on the distance it could be literally unnoticeable and regained in seconds, or he could be drained after jumping to other planets and back for giggles. Then there's the cancer it's giving him... Principally though, Rot in his old age, now blind and in almost constant pain from his tumors, isn't trying to fight people anymore. He's past his prime by nearly 4 decades, and whatever bit of combat he gets into is purely because it's necessary, or because he stands to gain something. We'll get to se more of the grumpy old man later.