This is the afterstory. You can view the fic as finished by last chapter, but I still have stuff planned, so I'm going to keep writing.
Anyways, I'm going to try to reign in the crack a little, because, well… I also like plot. To be perfectly honest, I only started planning the story after chapter twelve, so…. It's a miracle that this fic even made it this far.
Thanks for the 1.8k favorites btw. And enjoy the chapter!
-SpiritOfErebus
Cinder Fall stood before a crushed metal pod, power coursing through her veins.
However, despite the fall maiden's power now being completely in her control, she still felt no joy at all.
Vale was not going to fall today. And fleeing with all her might from a battlefield that was already being resolved by a horde of huntsmen only brought her ten minutes.
The core of her plan had crumbled, and only a side objective was fulfilled.
"Where to now, Cinder?" Emerald said, her eyes still wide in awe at the sheer power that coursed through Cinder's veins.
"Now…" She said, gritting her teeth, "We flee."
In the basement, they could still hear the rumble of Atlesian engines.
It would be much tougher than she made it out to be.
…
The grimm invasion was finally repelled. The airship acting as part of the wall was still firing at the gathering Grimm outside of the wall, but the huntsmen were celebrating in general. The unconscious body of Kojiro lay in Neo's arms, his grip still clamping down on Neo's sword.
"Get this man to a medic!" somebody yelled.
The celebrations ceased, and a couple of huntsmen gingerly lifted Kojiro's prone body. His arm dangled at a weird angle, his shoulder clearly still marred by the bullet. Countless scratches, bruises, and small burns caused by proximity contact with the magical fire lined Kojiro's arms.
It was honestly a miracle that a man like this could still have slain a dragon.
Pictures were taken from helicopters. Memories burned the scene into their minds. Huntsmen shook their heads, trying to rationalize the final slashes that had seemingly come from nowhere.
The name Sasaki Kojiro resounded around the city.
Meanwhile, a blonde boy looked at Kojiro and then at his own sword, pondering their difference.
…
"After the grimm invasion, it appears that not all of the monsters were deterred." a reporter said from the news. "A group of beowolves, along with an aberrant-"
Kojiro opened his eyes slowly. The ceiling of the tea parlor met his gaze, as unassuming and normal as ever. His body ached all over. An IV drip had been stabbed into his relatively uninjured arm.
"-many huntsmen were marred by the creature-"
The television was blaring, slowly drawing his mind back into reality. He had dreamt that he had slain a dragon… or a large swallow. It was a nice dream.
His shoulder stung as he tried to bring his arm up to scratch his hair absentmindedly, and he slowly let the arm droop down.
Apparently, it wasn't a dream.
Neo's eyes were glued to her scroll. With her heterochromatic eyes glazed over, she began to slowly scroll down her feed.
Kojiro wiggled out of the futon, before standing up and stretching one of his arms. Then, he shuffled over to the counter of the tea parlor, dragging the IV stand with him, and began to look for the teapot.
"Neo?" he rasped. "Where's my teapot?"
Neo didn't even try to look up from her phone, instead continuing to scroll through whatever feed was still available after the transmission tower was destroyed.
"I know it's somewhere…"
Suddenly, Neo fell off the couch. She looked at Kojiro standing at the counter, purple aura slowly coursing through his body and repairing the various bruises that were still on his body now that he was actually conscious.
Neo ran up to Kojiro and… just smiled.
"Yeah." Kojiro said, reaching for tea with the hand that was still connected to the IV. Irritated, he quickly dislodged the needle. "I'm just glad to be alive-"
He dropped the tea box.
"Nevermind. This is a nightmare. This is wrong. This is all wrong!"
Neo quickly held Kojiro still, fighting his twitches while trying not to aggravate his shoulder.
Was the dragon not killed correctly? Did he forget about something? Was he actually going to die?
"I forgot about my brother!" Kojiro yelled, standing up and running towards the door. Neo hugged Kojiro's legs and was dragged along as Kojiro doggedly trudged forwards.
Why was Neo stopping Kojiro from going?
It definitely wasn't because she was jealous of a truck and a temple.
…
Vale was treated to a strange sight that day. As various civilians and construction workers went about to repair the rooftops and windows that were shattered by a flood of nevermore, they saw a slightly emaciated man running in the streets, with what looked like Sasaki Kojiro's sidekick trailing behind the sickly man. It was an interesting state of affairs as finally, some people recognized the running man as the newly recovered Sasaki Kojiro.
Naturally, the reporters followed.
As Kojiro turned another street corner and looked for the section of wall that had collapsed, journalists began to pour from their construction site features and interviews to pursue him. Neo picked Kojiro up, much to his own chagrin, and reluctantly ran in the direction of the truck.
"Here we can see the Heroes of Vale, Neo and Sasaki Kojiro, familial relationship unknown, as they run towards the site of last week's destruction." a news anchor said, trying to keep stable footage on a news truck while its driver tried to drift through the bumpy and cracked streets to keep up with the duo.
"Why are they running? We do not know. But from the display that we saw last week, whatever issue this is that can trouble them so will not be a small one. This is Vale News Network, reporting live."
…
Neo skidded to a halt before the Atlesian airship. From the top of the ship, Ironwood surveyed the outside of the walls. There was still one strange grimm out on the prowl, and though it dared not show itself near the ship and the walls, Ironwood would remain vigilant in watching for the beast, lest it sneak into vale with its admittedly above average intelligence and wreak havoc on the recovering city.
"Sir. There's a commotion in the square." one of his subordinates said. Ironwood sighed and massaged his temples.
"If only the media didn't poke their noses into literally everything that was happening." He muttered, turning around.
"This time, it might not actually be bad, sir." the officer said. "Sasaki Kojiro has woken up, and is being carried into the square."
"He's awake?" Ironwood said, dashing over to the other side of the ship's viewing ports.
Ironwood sighed happily this time. As Kojiro was let down from Neo's comically short figure, however, Sasaki Kojiro hobbled up to the wreck of a truck… and collapsed?
"What is up with today?" Ironwood said, gritting his teeth. "Can we have a day without bad news spreading negativity all over the place?"
"Sir, Grimm activity has intensified in the eastern sector!"
Ironwood looked at the Vale News Network meticulously reporting every tragedy, and considered calling Ozpin about maybe taking what probably was a news agent for Salem off the air.
…
Kojiro looked at a wreck of a truck parked in the middle of the plaza. There were many slash marks that marred the windshield and seats. The top of the truck was completely shaved off, and the falling walls of the container on the back was completely separated from the truck.
But the worst of all… was that his temple. Was. Gone.
Kojiro knelt down, and ignoring his pain, began to grasp at the fragments of the roof tiles and the crumbling bricks. Their dust tricked down between his fingertips and fell onto the cracked concrete street, blending in with the destroyed environment.
That day, a program to fund a new truck for Kojiro was launched on Vale's local internet network.
…
Kojiro looked at the new truck parked on his driveway a couple of weeks later. A red ribbon was tied to one of the sideview mirrors, brought using the slim surplus of donations that surpassed the cost of a truck.
Meanwhile, during these three weeks, everything had been horribly, unbearably, disgustingly… boring.
"Is the source material also like this?" Kojiro muttered, much to the confusion of Neo. "Or are there just lulls in life like this, normally?"
Kojiro was suffering from a lack of opponents. Challenge a huntsman? They would run away screaming. Try to go outside the walls and fight a grimm? Something would stare at him the whole time, but he could never actually catch up to it. Decapitating cannon fodder in the form of grimm wasn't fun either.
Trying to convince Neo to let him practice the sword? Neo would look at his arm and make his sword invisible. Which was ridiculous, since his arm had already healed because of the awfully convenient thing that was aura.
Kojiro looked at the truck, and made up his mind.
"Neo, get in the truck." Kojiro said, grabbing his sword and the bag of cash that the city of Vale had awarded him for defeating the dragon from the altar before Neo could get to it and either hide his sword or spend all the money on sweets. Neo looked up from the scale, where she had been balefully staring at something, before tripping over some empty ice cream cartons and twirling past a box of half eaten cupcakes.
"We're wasting away in this boring city." Kojiro sighed, revving the engines and throwing the ribbon to the wind. "So, what we're going to do… is go back to Mistral, and get another temple gate."
Neo's face paled. She remembered the amount of memorization she had to suffer through to steal that gate, and immediately tried to claw her way out of the vehicle.
"Stop it, Neo." Kojiro said. "You're already thirty something. Besides, how many pounds have you gained eating-"
Neo kicked Kojiro slightly harshly in the face, before settling down and crossing her arms grumpily.
However abrupt this transition was, Neo reasoned that this couldn't get any more chaotic than the original series, whatever the hell Kojiro meant by saying that.
She opened up her scroll, and began to look through an archived version of a Mistral travel guide. Which mountains had monasteries, and which didn't?
…
(Two weeks ago)
…
…
Miyamoto Musashi was a simple person. She ate, she slept, she looked for things to do, and she wanted to go to Vale to find this person calling himself Sasaki Kojiro.
And, over the last two months, she had been dutifully clearing away grimm while trying to save up for a plane ticket, which meant saving up for a ride to the international airship port from this middle of nowhere city, getting a scroll to order the ticket, and just… surviving.
Surviving also meant constantly eating food so that her mana expenditure to defeat Grimm would hopefully be amortized.
Now, she was finally in the city of Atlas. She didn't really know how to use something like a scroll, but some friendly pestering of other people eventually got the job done. She had brought a ticket to Vale that she could actually afford, and the flight was just in the next two days!
Everything was going to go right.
And then, a dragon showed up to ruin her day. Sure, she could probably split the beast in half with her noble phantasm or just a lot of effort, but it was on a different continent. Specifically, it was on Vale. A continent that she couldn't get to now that international flights were banned because of an increase of Avian grimm, along with the fact that General Ironwood had left Atlas with sixty percent of the airship fleet, and had thus left the city in a rather tense state.
So tense, in fact, that she along with other mercenaries and huntsmen were called across the kingdom of Atlas in order to defend the floating city. Currently, she had been shoved on an airship because she was carrying a katana and was wearing a colorful outfit.
"Wow, talk about different realities and their weirdness."
"Hey, you good?" somebody else sitting besides her on the bullhead said. "I know this is stressful, and that there may be a grimm invasion going on, but don't worry about it. Mantle is very well protected, and all we have to do is protect it."
"Thanks, I guess?" Musashi said, raising an eyebrow while adjusting a dusty and frayed rice farmers hat. "But this isn't my first job. I'm just not really… from here."
"Yeah. You look Mistralian, I guess. I'm Jim, by the way."
"Jim?" Musashi asked. "Isn't that name a little too… normal for an Atlesian?"
"Tell me about it." Jim said, sighing. "I wanted to get an aristocrat-sounding name, you know? But my parents were dust miners…"
"Cheer up." Musashi said, smiling. "My parents were…"
She paused. It had been a while since she last thought about her ordinary life, but her parents were technically aristocrats. One was the daughter of a lord while the other was an accomplished martial artist.
"You see?" Jim said, sighing. "Everybody's rich somehow if they're in the huntsman business."
Musashi looked around at the golden weapons and fancy mechashifts that apparently a whole mercenary group was using, and sighed.
It would have been nice to get a ticket one day earlier.
…
Musashi looked across the wall. Guns were mounted. People held rifles and looked uneasily at the approaching black tide. The floors of the walls -mostly rusty scrap metal- was uneven and would probably warrant a tetanus shot, but they were sturdy enough that when Musashi stomped on it, it just crumpled a bit.
Being a melee combatant, she was placed near the front of the line on the wall.
"Why didn't Atlas spare some budget to smooth out the outer walls?" Jim groaned, looking down from the ledge and onto the serrated sheet metal walls. "These Sabertooth grimm are going to roll into the city."
"Just keep firing your gun when they get here, you coward!" one of the mercenaries holding gold plated guns shouted brashly. Around him, his fellows laughed. "These are just ordinary grimm. There's no way they're getting up these walls."
The tide of grimm began to approach the walls, and just then, Musashi raised a question about basic castle defense she had learned during her life in tumultuous, chaotic medieval Japan.
"If the grimm are going to be climbing on the walls, why aren't the people with guns in the front to shoot them off?"
There was some silence in that section of the wall, only punctuated by the thunderous steps of the grimm, the rumbling of earth, and…
It was horrific. The grimm were acting almost as one, snarling and climbing over one another in a desperate attempt to scale the barrier between the monsters and the vulnerable underbelly, or, in more official terms, the residential district, of the city of Mantle.
Musashi was caught in a blur of people and clambering grimm. Their claws chipped and scratched the buttresses that lined the outer walls as clip after clip of ammunition was emptied into the horde. When ammunition was being requested, the close range combatants were unleashed to defend the wall. Musashi's sword sang through the air, chopping up grimm into mincemeat without much effort, though her mana was draining slowly.
Blasts of particularly explosive semblances were used. Grenades and fire dust crystals were lobbed over the walls. But it wasn't enough for the geist that was approaching the wall.
It was made almost entirely of dust crystals. Gravity, ice, and fire dust made up its limbs while a blend of all three made up the torso. The mask on it had one, single, glowing red eye.
With one swing of the arm, it penetrated the low budget walls that surrounded Mantle and was stuck there. Its other arm came up to shield its face as huntsmen trickled off of that section of the wall to assume secondary defensive positions.
At that point, pressure on other points of the wall were alleviated, and the grimm collectively followed the giant geist into attacking the one point. Huntsmen gathered as the local atlesian army official organized a platoon of droids and Paladins to stand defensively, while people with earth semblances tried to patch up the holes in the wall. A sheep faunus girl with a storage semblance was heaping rubble vaguely in the shape of a wall, but her attempts were knocked out of the way with a scrap metal arm.
"Open fire!"
Missiles were launched. Grenades were thrown. The echo of gunfire almost gave Musashi a headache.
But the geist just reformed. Its arms were destroyed and its legs were reduced to ashes, but there was still a lot of surrounding rubble that was swiftly incorporated into the grimm's body. The shredded dust formerly in the grimm's limbs floated away into the air, creating a glimmery, purple haze.
Then, with a spark from a destroyed car battery, everything there exploded.
When the smoke cleared, the geist had been destroyed, the white mask slowly dissipating into dust.
What was worse was that everything else in that area had been destroyed. The Paladins, the droids, the huntsmen, the sandbags…
All of it was gone.
The mercenaries began to run. The huntsmen followed soon after, unwilling to face the tide of grimm.
It was natural, of course. There were no Atlesian officers left to stop them.
Musashi looked at the tide of monsters, and her swords, and closed her eyes. She had just come from the last world jump, running out of mana and trying to cut Ivan the Terrible.
Now, there was no grand threat to her, at least. Only an endless horde of demons. But, at the same time, this wasn't even her world. This was some faraway dimension very different from her own, only with some similar elements like humans and… whatever faunus were.
Did she really have a responsibility to this world?
But as Jim staggered back and prepared to run, she instead stepped forward.
"Musashi! What are you doing? There's no way we can stand up against all those grimm! Are you insane?"
"No." Musashi said, grinning and stepping into the bombed out clearing between the gap in the wall and the grimm. She felt as if, somewhere else right now, the supposed Sasaki Kojiro was making the same decision.
"I'm Miyamoto Musashi."
Her sword was wreathed in purple, and she ran at the tide of demons. Her red and blue robes flowed in a dance of death, beams of energy draining the energy keeping her in this dimension, but she persisted.
After all, she was a heroic spirit.
(That day, a new legend in Atlas was born.)
…
Cinder Fall sat down in the headmaster's office in Haven. The chair was comfortable, but her missing legs could no longer feel the cushions. Instead, her legs had been replaced… by another parasitic grimm.
"Damn those Atlesian airships." she said, gritting her teeth. Besides her, Emerald stood, scars running up her arm. Mercury had long since abandoned her, disappearing into the Mistralian slums. It was understandable. He was basically a mercenary.
The door creaked open. Lionheart stepped into the office, nervously looking behind him before turning and seeing Cinder at the desk. He almost jumped back, before remembering that Cinder was actually in league with him and Salem.
"I'm here… for the relic." she said, grinning.
It didn't matter that her legs and one arm had already been replaced. The maiden's power coursed through her veins, and-
"I'll definitely give you the relic if I could, but there's a complication."
"What?" Cinder said, her self-assuring thoughts interrupted.
"Sasaki Kojiro has left for Mistral."
Lionheart's desk was turned to glassy material with a wave of intense heat.
We get a little bit of Musashi story, and Kojiro's on his way to Mistral, where the spring maiden and all the next bits of the plot are. Goodbye, canon. We've officially derailed, though I guess it's always been like that since the dragon awoke in the story.
Musashi is mostly going to remain as just a side character. The next couple chaps are going to be Kojiro-focused, I promise! :P
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Thanks for reading, and please follow/favorite/criticize/review. I'm trying to do better in (another shameless ad alert) another Hans in BNHA fic.
-SpiritOfErebus