I'm back! The prompt this week was "Summer appears before Ruby in a time of distress and takes her place during battle, decimating the enemies in her stead."
Summer collapsed against a tree, struggling to calm her shaky breathing. She was going to die. There was no way around that now. The hole in her stomach was the size of a fist, and she didn't have enough Aura left to close it.
The roars of Grimm were still close by. Summer sighed at the thought that this would be her fate. Killed by the Grimm like so many other Huntresses. Even with the power of her silver eyes, she was no better than anyone else.
Summer thought of her family, Tai, Yang, Ruby, Qrow, and even Raven, and her eyes began to shimmer. She still had enough strength for one final blast of light. At this point it would be nothing but a last spiteful blow against the Grimm, but it was better to go out with a bang than with a whimper.
"No," whispered Summer to herself. "I can do better than that…"
Summer called on her Semblance, and silvery white light swirled around her. But nothing else happened. The light wouldn't activate until she chose a single person to focus on.
"Ruby," Summer said aloud. "If I'm going to die, I want to see my little girl one last time."
As the Grimm closed in around her, Summer disappeared in a flash of light.
Ten years earlier, Summer sat on the roof of the Beacon Academy dorms, her legs dangling over the edge.
Three days. For three days she had been gone, her teammates having no idea what had happened to her. But for Summer it had been an instant.
"I think I've figured it out," called a voice from behind the Huntress in training.
Summer turned to see Raven crossing the roof towards her. She nodded.
"Alright, let's hear it then."
"Your Semblance is like mine," explained Raven, sitting down next to her team leader. "You form a bond with someone, and then you can go to them whenever you want. But my Semblance opens a portal to their location. Yours takes you-"
"Into the future," finished Summer. "To a moment when they need me."
"Something like that," agreed Raven. "If you hadn't reappeared when you did, I'm not sure if we would have survived those Grimm. But unless you can figure out exactly where it takes you, you can't ever use it."
"You're probably right," mumbled Summer noncommittally.
"I mean it," insisted Raven. "You don't know how far into the future you might end up jumping. We already know it's not just the next time they're in danger, so what is it? The next time they'd die without your help? What if that moment doesn't come for years? What if it never comes?"
"Raven, I get it," Summer snapped. "I won't use my Semblance again. I promise."
An instant after breaking that promise, Summer reappeared in a blasted wasteland. Violet crystals jutted from the earth all around, and the sky was a sinister crimson color. Grimm of every kind surrounded her, stopped in their tracks by the suddenness of her appearance.
Summer raised a hand and hurled one of her scimitars into the crowd of Grimm. She activated the gravity Dust in her other weapon, and the scimitar curved across the battlefield, cleaving through half a dozen Grimm before returning to her hand.
Summer nearly collapsed from the movement. She could fight through the pain in her stomach, but she was becoming dizzy from the blood loss. She had to turn slowly as she tried to get a better grasp of her surroundings.
And there they were, standing right behind the place where she'd appeared. Her daughters were grown now, Huntresses in their own right. The wear on their weapons, as well as the prosthetic Yang wore, spoke to all that they'd been through, but there was also strength in them that allowed them to keep fighting. Other Huntsmen and Huntresses stood beside them, but Summer only had eyes for her daughters.
Shock and confusion were written across their faces, and it wasn't hard to understand why. They had lived more than ten years with her gone, only for her to reappear without warning.
Summer slowly met their eyes, first Yang's lilac then Ruby's silver, trying to reassure them that she was real. And as it dawned on the girls, silver eyes began to glow.
The Grimm surrounding them felt the foreshock of what was coming. Some tried to run away, while more simply turned toward the two women and waited for the end. As the wave of recognition spread across the battlefield, each and every creature of Grimm stopped fighting and turned to acknowledge their deaths.
And it didn't stop there. From the tundra of Atlas to the coasts of Menagerie, from the deserts of Vacuo to the mountain peaks of Mistral, and even in the throne room of Salem's keep, every being of darkness on Remnant looked towards the meeting of the two silver-eyed warriors, instinctively sensing their anathema.
As a smile spread across Ruby's face, light poured from two pairs of silver eyes, resonating with itself into a supernova whose indomitable power shone across the wasteland. An army of Grimm was reduced to ash in less time than it took to blink, and a losing battle became a total victory.
But as the light faded, so too did Summer's strength. She fell, and only Ruby's Semblance allowed her to catch her mother before her back hit the ground. Yang followed close after Ruby, and as Summer looked up at her daughters, she thought this might not be such a bad death after all. She closed her eyes for what she thought would be the final time.
But to her surprise, strength began to flow back into her. The lightness in her head slowly faded, and the wound in her stomach stopped hurting so much.
When she felt she was able, Summer opened her eyes. Ruby and Yang still stood over her, but now there was a young man there too. He had blond hair and wore white and gold armor. His hands were pressed against her stomach, and light was flowing from them into her, restoring her Aura.
"Mom!" cried Ruby, tears pouring down her face. "You're alive!"
Those were the most beautiful words Summer had ever heard.
Author's Note: I've been focusing on other stuff for a while, but this prompt got me thinking. I hope you enjoyed it!