Author's Note:-
OKAY, MY GUYS! I'm ALIVE! Sorry I was very very late with this one. It was confusing because damn the actions for the future chs just changed the moment I sit down to write them. I also bear a piece of sad news but for that, you will have to wait for the 'Author's Note' at the end of the chapter. Thank you for your patience in waiting for the next chapter of 'Dead Man Rises'
Please leave reviews it helps me a lot in both motivation and increasing my skill in writing.
Without any delay, let's begin.
Qrow emerged from the shadows and entered a room. The room has mediocre decorations, some light bulbs, a double-person bed on one side, a bed stool on its sides with pictures over it, and two windows. The broken moon of Remnant shone through the windows of the room illuminating the darkness surrounding it. Spawn walked towards the only bed in the room and saw a woman sleeping on it. Wearing white night garments and black hair with brown tips, Qrow remembers who she is. Summer Rose, a huntress, his old team's leader, a woman who saw positive in every individual, and partner.
Qrow still remembers that day in the Emerald Forest. It was the initiation of Beacon, and he was sent flying (more like thrown) into the forest. The initiation procedure was simple, the first person whom you make eye contact with will be your partner for the rest of the years. When he landed, he took out Harbinger and started killing any Grimm that came in his path. His goal was simple, to find Raven, his sister, and become her partner before anyone else interferes and becomes either hers or his. He dashed across the forest as fast as possible, but his single-minded focus got him unprepared for a body colliding with him. He crashed straight into a tree and felt the person landing on him. When his eyes opened, the first thing they saw was silver eyes. At that moment, then alive Qrow only had one thought, 'Fuck'.
Coming back to the present, Spawn saw the sleeping woman in front of him. He raises his hand and slowly placed it on her head. One of the powers a hellspawn has is mind reading. By having physical contact, Qrow can get into any individual's mind and see their memories. An invasive ability sure, but it was needed so Qrow could uncover why would he ever make a deal to come back. He knows he doesn't have any 'incomplete tasks' to do so, nor does he have any loved ones which would let him become that desperate. Raven and the rest of the Team STRQ indeed treated him like a family, but in the end, he died with no regrets. He believed that perhaps, going into Summer's mind, his former partner and the last person who saw him alive would give him answers. He would have gone to Raven first, but if the sources were true... she would be a hard one to find. Summer was the only one who knew the most about him other than Raven.
He places his hand over her head and summons the hellish power. Qrow hesitates because he doesn't know what he has to do, and allows his instincts and suit to do the rest of the work. The energy glows in toxic green and reaches toward Summer. It nearly connects her when suddenly, someone knocks on the door of the room. Summer squirms in her bed and causes Spawn recalls the powers from flowing and take a step back. He goes deep into the shadows of the room and uses them to hide. Summer gets up and sits on her bed. She rubs her eyes and starts looking around. She asks, "Who is it?"
A girl's voice comes from the other side of the door, "Mom?"
Summer sighs and Qrow's eyes widen. She fully gets up from the bed and flips a switch near her for the lights. Before the light illuminated the room and removed the darkness. Spawn panics, and uses the shadows to leave before his escape route gets blocked. Summer dryly rubs her face and says, "You can come in now"
The door opens and Ruby enters the room. Seeing her mother with concern on her face. Ruby asks, "Are you alright?"
Summer rubs her eyes, the redness in them still being there, she says, "I'm fine"
"Mom...", Ruby pauses as the mother and daughter look at each other in silence. After a while she continues, "... I know about, you know..."
Summer's head moved and looked at the ground. Without even saying anything, she knew what Ruby meant. How did she get to know? Who knows. But still, she knew. Mustering whatever strength she could in this state, she raised her head to look at her daughter and said, "Ruby, I-"
"Mom, I know you are scared for me", Ruby interjected her sentence midway, "I know that you are scared if I end the same way as your partner", Summer's eyes widen at this, "I- I just want to be a Huntress that saves people and keep the smiles on their faces"
Tears start making their way back to Summer's eyes, but she held them back. After all, she had the same dream as well. The dream, that was shattered when Qrow died protecting her. Summer asks, "Ruby, do you really want to do this? To become a Huntress? Do you really want to live a life where there is a chance where you will see your teammates, your partner, your sister dying in front of you?"
Silence once again fills the room. The two Roses looked at each other, but then one looked at the other with determination in her eyes, "I am"
The tears finally make their way out of Summer's eyes as she smiles and embraces Ruby. Seeing the tears, Ruby started crying as well and returned the hug. The mother and the daughter hugged each other for minutes and cried their eyes out.
Meanwhile, outside, Qrow watched as the two hugged each other. He thinks, 'I'll let them have their moment for now', and turns to leave.
But then suddenly, a claw comes out from the darkness around him and grabs him by the cape, and pulls him towards the darkness. The next thing Qrow knew, someone dragged him and traveled between the shadows, and threw him to the ground. Qrow places his hands on the ground and gets up, coughing as if dust went to his throat. He looks around himself and sees that he is in a forest. A forest, which he, unfortunately, doesn't know where is. Looking around to find the culprit, he was caught off-guard as a beam of energy blast struck him from behind and sent him crashing into trees. With anger coursing through him, he screams, and the suit responding to his emotions pushes everything that was near him away with chains and surrounds the Spawn with its cape and chains forming a barrier of sorts. Qrow takes deep breaths as he looks in front of him, and spots the person responsible for this. Or rather he would say, a demon in disguise.
The disguise made the demon look human, particularly a woman, but had some serious muscle, a mohawk hairstyle with blue hair, a punk rock clothing style, and an ugly face. She says, "So you are the new Spawn? I thought you would have some more muscle"
Qrow took out the Harbinger in its sword form and took a battle-ready stance. He asks, "Who are you!?"
"Doesn't matter worm!", the demon says as its voice changes from a woman like to demonic, the look of the demon changes as well as it grew more ugly, becoming something in-human, its hands turning into claws with sharp talons, and the entire body becoming a hulking beast. Standing in front of Qrow now stood a beast of a demon, "Now, satisfy me Spawn!"
Qrow grips the Harbinger even tighter. He quips, "Sorry lady, you're not my type", and waits as the demon lunges at him at a blinding speed.
He rolls and avoids the charge by hair's width, and lets the demon crash through the trees behind him. Then he turns around and sees the demon getting up. He swings his sword at the demon, only for her to catch it with her bare hand. With one hand on the ground using it to get up, and the other user to stop the sword the demon grunted as Qrow started putting some surprisingly heavy strength behind his attacks.
The demon grunts as she pushes Qrow away and gets away with a cut on her hand and Neroplasm leaking from it. Qrow lands on his feet and quickly charges onto the demon. Seeing this, she smirks and retaliates by pulling her arm and throwing a punch. The suit lashes out and throws chains to counter the fist. The demon goes for another punch, but this time Qrow brings the Harbinger and deflects it. The demon throws more punches, and Qrow just deflects them either using Harbinger or commanding the suit to send in its chains. This goes on and on for some time. To break the chain, Qrow clashed the demon's hand with Harbinger once again and applies pressure on it. The demon holds the Spawn off using one of her hands and pulls her other arm back for a punch the sentient, but Qrow twists the crossguard of the Harbinger and released the shotgun of the weapon. Feeding the necroplasmic energy into Harbinger, the barrel lights up and Qrow pulls the trigger. The demon stumbles back from the surprise blast but Qrow doesn't stop there. He presses his advantage and changes the setting of Harbinger. The blade folds, forming a curve, and the handle tilts and becomes long like a staff. He then spins the Harbinger, now in its scythe form, and presses his advantage over the demon.
He twirls his weapon and sends a flurry of strikes over the demon. Who just parries the strikes but still takes hits in some places. The suit doesn't back down either and manages to attack the demon with its own sets of attacks in the form of chains lashing out following Qrow's attacks and doesn't hinder his movements. Qrow then jumps backward and throws the scythe at the demon. The force behind the throw was so hard that the scythe acted like a buzzsaw. The demon, not reacting to the incoming attack stayed there and watched as it tore through its own skin impaling her torso. Qrow throws one of the chains at the Harbinger, it latches itself to its handle, and with a pull Qrow tears it out of the demon and grabs it in his hand.
The demon stumbles and falls to her knees. She puts one of her hands as a support, as for the other hand she places above the wounded region. With the toxic green necroplasm flowing out of her, she smirks and looks at the Spawn. The smirk soon turns into a chuckle and then into a laugh. Qrow stands there, stunned at the demon's reaction. As for the demon, she stands up and wipes the necroplasm off of her. The wound closes itself, and the next thing Qrow knew, she closed the distance between the two so quickly he barely had any time to react. She pulls her arm and he raises the Harbinger in hopes of blocking her blow, but it didn't matter as the demon's punch tore through Harbinger, breaking the blade, and connected at Qrow's torso impaling him. She pulls the same arm once again and flings the wounded Spawn off of her. Sending him crashing into the ground.
With pain overtaking all other senses, Qrow couldn't think anything. Not being able to scream in pain, not even comprehending that his weapon has been destroyed, not being able to see that the demon was now approaching him. She looks down upon him, with a manic smirk on her face, and brings her hand towards Qrow's necroplasm. She picks up a large amount of the gooey liquid from hell and converts it into energy. A toxic green glow emanated within the forest as the demon absorbed the energy into her body. She moans in pleasure, while Qrow grunts in pain. She says, "Amazing! I forgot how it felt having fresh Necroplasm into my own body!"
With the wound closing in, Qrow clenches his fist and tries to get up, only to have the demon place her foot on his still recovering torso and keep him down on the ground. She kneels down and closes the distance between their faces, and brings out her tongue licking all over the Necroplasm spilled on the ground. She drinks it all up and says, "Can't have all that delicious Necroplasm go to waste right?"
Qrow grunts and manages to speak, "What. Do you want. From me!? Ackā¦"
The demon raises one of her eyebrows and answers, "From you? Nothing but that sweet and fresh Necroplasm", stating as if it were the obvious answer, "Do you know how hard it is to live without a constant supply of Necroplasm? Of course, you wouldn't know. You are a Hellspawn after all", she presses harder into his torso, and in a mocking sadness continues, "All we demons had was the souls of these pathetic beings to keep us alive in this forsaken locked world. Even then we had to look for vile souls to feed us", her tone changes to a mixture of disappointment and frustration," Even these creatures of Grimms were not good enough for us to feed upon. So you would be amazed when everyone sensed a Hellspawn of all things coming to this world"
'Just great', Qrow thought, "So what? I'm fresh food to you guys now?"
The demon lifts her foot from his torso and reverts back to her human disguise. She walks away from the Hellspawn and says, "Not to everyone", she turns to look at his lying form. With that smirk plastered on her face she continues, "Some of them just want you dead, and some want you alive to open the Dead Zone", Qrow grunts as he gets up. Understanding the shit he was in. Unfortunately, his train of thought gets derailed as he looks at the handle of Harbinger still in his hands, shifts his eyes towards the areas in front of him, and looks at other broken pieces of the weapon. Frustration and sadness fill him up and causes him to grip the handle even tighter. Under immense pressure, the handle gets crushed and becomes even more useless than before. The demon approaches him as she looks at the broken pieces of his weapon. With a deadpan expression, she says, "Well, that was bound to happen. It was a useless piece of junk anyway."
Qrow took offense to that. Harbinger may have been without maintenance for 15 years, but it didn't mean it was a piece of junk. Especially when he was the one who built the weapon with his own two hands. The demon took notice of it and with the same deadpan tone, she said, "What? It's true. Without proper tools, you can't kill any of us. Your suit and powers are good enough, but if you are looking for a weapon? I wouldn't recommend making it from materials from this world. I would say try getting materials from heaven or hell but considering our situation here... I don't think so"
Qrow looks at her with a stupefied expression under the mask. He asks, "... Are you helping me?"
She looks at him and shrugs her shoulders. She says, "I just wanted a good meal and I got it. Besides, considering our situation its best to help each other rather than stay divided"
"By attacking me!?"
"You have plenty of fresh Necroplasm. More than you think. I just took a small portion out of it to satisfy my needs for a while. Besides, we need you alive. Asking you straight up wouldn't have work, not to mention I needed some workout"
If Qrow wasn't baffled already, he was now. Impaling him and taking all that Necroplasm from him didn't feel 'small portion' by any means. He looks at her frozen in place, too stunned by her sudden change in attitude to ask any questions. The female demon walks toward the shadows and faces Qrow one more time, "By the way. What's your name?"
"Qrow", he said as he was still trying to comprehend what he heard.
"Drousilla", she said as she vanishes, leaving Qrow alone.
With all that happening, Qrow shakes his head and distracts himself by collecting the pieces of Harbinger. He grabs one piece of the blade and looks at it. If what that demon said was true, then just rebuilding it won't work. Especially if he was going to become food like he became tonight.
Author's Note:-
I would once again like to say thank you to all the followers who followed this fic, for your patience in waiting for this ch of 'Dead Man Rises'. As for the bad news...
The thing is that my college semester finals are arriving, and because of that my writing has been halted for the last few weeks. This will mean that I will be going into another hiatus for a month, till my semester exam finishes. I hate to break it down to you but my IRL problems don't like to leave me at all.
Till next time my faithful readers!
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