Team SALTY
Rainbow Trailer (Destiny's Intro)
People really like to ponder various complex philosophical questions. Such as this one, for example: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? While what happened next did not shed light on this conundrum, it did answer a different, but related question. Does a tree hear the sound of a falling spider?
"Oww…" grumbled Yache Ruhm, scratching at her slightly bruised posterior. Even though Youkai were much more resilient to mundane wounds and regenerated from them in minutes, if not seconds, falling on your bum still felt like falling on your bum.
Groaning in annoyance, Yache stood up and looked around.
"Huh. I could've sworn that the Forest of Magic wasn't an option on the locations list…" she pondered out loud, looking around the area she found herself in. "Oh, right, my stuff," she exclaimed, suddenly remembering that she didn't just gain new skills and abilities, but also some new equipment.
Checking herself over, she took a moment to appreciate her new form before noticing that she was wearing a small backpack. She took it off and looked inside, finding that It contained her two major items of choice: the Sorcerer's Sutra Scroll and the Mini-Hakkero, along with some money and a bunch of currently empty spell cards.
Satisfied with what she found, Yache took out the portable furnace while leaving the rest of her junk in the backpack, slinging it on her back once again. The Forest of Magic was well known for being a home to a variety of rather dangerous, feral and, most importantly, hungry Youkai, so her first priority was to figure out how to protect herself. And with a lack of any other weapon, that meant the Mini-Hakkero.
"Now to figure out how you work…" she mumbled, looking at the small miracle of magic and technology with wonder. Even now she could feel it thumming with spiritual energy as the processes within it went on their merry way. But while she did have the mind of a true magician, thanks to the similarly named perk, magic was still very new to Yache.
"Okay, let's see here" she muttered thoughtfully. She had a natural feel for how magic worked and moved, but no actual knowledge of how it all ticked so she was currently on the having no fucking idea stage of the scientific process. She let out a quiet 'hrmm' as she pondered.
The Mini-Hakkero is a furnace, and Marisa always used it to augment her own specialty over light and heat… she thought, maybe I could try the same for my first attempt. The good ol' laser attack…
She was almost ready to begin her experimentation when she heard a rustle. It was less of a rustle that you get when a squirrel gets drunk off of apples and falls into a bush, and more of a rustle that you get when a bear wakes up and stumbles for its daily equivalent to a cup of coffee, which probably involved mauling some random passerby.
While Yache never had been much of a naturalist in her previous life, the volume of the sound combined with her newfound Youkai predatory instincts left her with the obvious conclusion of 'something big is moving around here, probably towards me'. "Screw it…" she muttered, sending the scientific process into that hole a few meters away from her and proceeding to the brute force approach of 'shove magic into it and see what happens'.
The whispering of the leaves quickly turned into excited talking, before becoming a rather heated shouting match as whatever was making the sounds finally appeared in Yache's view. It was big, almost twice as big as a normal human, and certainly bigger than the rather petite Jorogumo. The vaguely werewolf-like creature was covered from head to toe in matte black fur that was so dark, even with enhanced sight it seemed almost like a hole in the world. The only parts that stood out on the creature were the bony protrusions that appeared here and there, and the skull that served as its head.
The grim looking creature also noticed the woman standing ahead of its path, and seemed to pause in confusion for a moment, before giving off a roar and rushing at her. The woman, in turn, also gave off a roar, or perhaps a scream as she pointed the magi-technological furnace in her hands at the creature and desperately pumped it with all she had.
The two shouts were soon joined by a third, much louder one as the Mini-Hakkero burst alight, magic erupting from its front in a colossal rainbow beam of love and destruction, engulfing the creature, the trees behind it, and a rather large section of the forest in the bright light of Yache's first spell, which just so happened to be the Master Spark.
By the time she stopped powering the device the monster was gone, and so was quite a lot of the plant life that used to inhabit what was now a small ravine.
Yache gave herself a few moments to catch her breath before she once again began to think. Was that a?.. She pondered, thinking of the creature that almost tried to maul her, of the glowing orange eyes and the crimson markings on its skull. She looked around, noticing a rather glaring lack of anything fungal around. The Forest of Magic was rather well known for its grand variety of mushrooms, both mundane and magical, so the fact they were missing was rather concerning. Finally she reached a conclusion, which she couldn't help but announce out loud.
"Am I in RWBY? What the shite, Jump-chan?"
Unfortunately, despite the sheer weight of this discovery, Yache simply didn't have the time to ponder the implications of whether this was intentional, or if her quote unquote "benefactor" actually screwed up and sent her to the entirely wrong universe. Or if, perhaps, she bonked off of the Hakurei barrier or something else of similar nature.
She would have dearly wished to do so, especially immediately after the biggest scare of her newly immortal life, but said life decided to drop her a present in the form of some more scares. The apparent exquisiteness of her dark, fear-stricken and fear-composed soul had combined with the simplicity of the loud badaboom, and the resulting cocktail of love, explosions and nearly shat skirts attracted even more Grimm to her current position.
At first each and every appearance of a new black and white and red muzzle was met in almost the exact same way, with roaring on one side, screaming and magical heavy ordnance on the other hand. But soon it changed, as the screaming first quieted down into boredom as Yache tried to march through the newly redecorated forest. Then it changed once again into shouts of annoyance and even louder heavy ordnance as Yache simply got tired of constantly blowing up the same things over and over and over again.
Nothing stays the same, though, and even this eternal tradition of smokey werewolves getting blasted in the face with love, friendship, and magical furnace juices had to end, as all things do. Yache was making way through what was now an especially annoying part of the forest, what with all the fallen trees and intersecting ravines, when she once again detected some rustling.
At first she was ready to frown, shout and blast for what felt like the thousandth time, but some primal instinct made her hesitate for just a moment, and she was beyond glad that it did, for what came from the leaves were two obviously human figures. Even though both of them were massively and annoyingly taller than her, which she thankfully didn't care about. At least, not now.
"Oh finally, someone other than the bloody Grimm. I was afraid that I'd end up turning this place into reverse crochet at the rate I was going" she sighed happily, releasing a breath she didn't even know she was holding, although it was most likely less of a fearful breath and more of a prepared curse cut short.
The two figures quickly got over the freeze caused by almost being on the receiving end of a Mini-Hakkero held by an incredibly annoyed Jorogumo, even if they obviously didn't know that this wooden box was called a Mini-Hakkero, and the itty bitty pretty spider lady was a Jorogumo, or what either of those things even were.
One of the figures was a tall, lithe human man who wore what looked like a rather subdued suit. He walked with a cane, though it was obviously not necessary, and held a mug of… coffee, if Yache's nose wasn't lying, up to his lips. He seemed simultaneously worried and amused in equal measures.
The other was a tall, statuesque blonde. Also human. She wore a figure-hugging top with a deep cleavage window and a black principal's skirt over black leggings. A purple half-length cape with small stereotypical devil tails on the end hung off her shoulders. One of her hands was holding a riding crop. The other adjusted her half-moon glasses closer to her severely annoyed eyes.
Hidden Wizard and Telekinetic Dominatrix. Ozpin and Glynda.
Meeting a Spider Witch in the Emerald Forest.
Yache felt as if someone far, far away was having a laugh at her expense. And judging by how the laugh didn't have any similarities with a constantly sneezing small dog, it wasn't Jump-chan. Or, at least, not her Jump-chan.
It would make for a rather nice Touhou song title though.
Glynda was clearly on guard, just waiting for Yache to make a move. The fingers around her riding crop were subtly stressing the leather, tiny squeaking sounds audible to any with sensitive hearing.
Ozpin seemed a little tense too, but his curiosity was equally apparent. He took a sip of his coffee and studied Yache for a little while more. Then he lowered his mug and opened the conversation.
"Is there a particular reason you're tearing up my forest?" he genuinely asked, raising an eyebrow. "And with Magic, no less?"
Glynda's eyes widened. She glanced over to Ozpin, saw his serious face, then locked back on Yache immediately. Her shoulders tensed even more, and the almost physical aura of tension surrounding her became just a little more real.
Ozpin sighed. "Relax, Glynda. I doubt this… woman, means us harm," he chided her. "Despite her… unfortunate, coloring. Not everything black and white is a creature of Grimm." His eyes never left Yache's, however, and the dangerous glint in them gave her the obvious message that having that intention would not be a good plan.
Fortunately and, at the same time, unfortunately, Yache managed to miss out on that obvious message with the speed of a runaway train drifting through whatever runaway trains like to drift through, and so she looked simultaneously relaxed and careless, her own body language being even more obvious than what Ozpin seemed to be intentionally projecting at her.
As she lowered the Mini-Hakkero, Yache gave off a vague and incoherent grumble before pulling one of the long sleeves of her short, black and white dress up a bit and raising one of her tri-fingered hands up to graciously correct the two, not bothering to hide the fact that that sleeve was hiding two more arms.
"I am black and gold, thank you very much," she protested, "and also pink, but that's besides the point."
She sighed, covering her five eyes for a moment to gather her thoughts, before she continued. "I do, however, apologize for the damage I've done. After the… I think fifteenth Grimm that tried to ambush me while I was trying to get out of here, I kind of grew careless. And annoyed. And a little bit pissed off."
At that moment, all three of them heard a random tree try and continue the 'are falling trees silent' experiment, with pretty loud results. Yache couldn't help but wince at that, and it wasn't simply because the tree seemed to have a rather poor idea of proper ethics of experimentation. At the very least, it failed to check whether there was anybody nearby for the results to be accurate.
"...as I said, my apologies. As for magic…" she shrugged, "I don't really have anything else to protect myself with at the moment. Didn't have any chance to grab anything else after SOMEONE," she looked up into the sky with annoyance for a moment, "dumped me here. And before you ask, no clue how and no clue when. I just sort of woke up here after deciding to take a nap at my own bloody house."
Technically correct might not actually be the best kind of correct, but at the very least it was better than nothing, especially as it helped Yache not give away everything, what with her piss-poor control over body language. After all, it bordered on simultaneously being still as a statue and subtly uncontrolled at the same time.
Glynda relaxed minutely. Her grip and stance were still incredibly tight, but the barely audible squeaking of stressed leather had subsided.
Ozpin peered at her for a few more seconds. "Interesting," he commented, taking another sip of his coffee. He stepped further into the small gap in the trees they had found the spider woman in. He stopped within a comfortable distance, not too close and not too far that he couldn't attack her. Even if his body language failed to be detected, he reasoned, this woman would certainly be capable of noticing tactical language.
Or, at least, that was his hope.
"I believe introductions are in order," he declared, gesturing to Glynda… who was watching him with slightly widened eyes, clearly consumed by the belief that he was crazy. Crazier. "This is my assistant Glynda. She's the Deputy Headmistress of my Huntsman Academy, Beacon. I am Professor Ozpin, Headmaster at Beacon. And you are?"
Yache gave him a courteous nod. "Yache, a student of linguistics and magic at the college of Gensokyo" At least I was supposed to go there, she mentally grumbled before continuing. "Pleasure to meet you."
She looked back for a moment, as if hearing something. Apparently not finding what she was searching for she shrugged, and turned back to the other two.
"I do apologize, but can we continue this talk elsewhere? Or, at the very least, in the process of going elsewhere? While I'm pretty sure I still have enough in me to deal with more Grimm, as I'm sure you do too, I think that all of us would appreciate if we didn't have to wreck more of this poor forest in the process," she asked in a polite, but yet again obviously somewhat miffed tone. Not at them, that was also pretty obvious, but mostly at the Grimm that seemed to, probably intentionally on Ozpin's part, infest this forest like fleas.
Glynda scoffed, looking around them with a keen eye. She peered into the darkness of the forest surrounding them as if she could actually see into it.
Ozpin smiled, and it was a kind smile… but there was also steel in it. "Until I am assured that you pose no active threat to my students, I am afraid we will have to continue our discussion here," he informed her gently. "Please understand, you have demonstrated Magic only seen during the likes of times long forgotten and a… disregard for trigger discipline." He moved his cane in front of him, still mostly relaxed, and sipped his coffee. "Glynda will defend us for the time being if any Grimm decide to approach us. So tell me. What's Gensokyo?"
"I didn't mean your academy, hell I'd take just leaving the forest in the first place, but I'm rambling again…" she sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, seemingly out of simple desire to have them not be flopping around. "I understand your concerns. I assure you that my disregard for trigger discipline is out of simple lack of any other choice. I never had much chance to practice combat outside of emergency measures."
"As for magic…" she stood there for a moment, thinking. "I think I'll start with Gensokyo. I've never been that good at remembering the exact dates so my apologies for being somewhat vague, but, uhh… a few hundreds of years ago… maybe a thousand? Not sure."
She looked aside before continuing, this apparently helping her to think. "Either way, sometime ago, Gensokyo was formed as an area for the few remaining capable users of magic. We were kind of lucky in that it is somewhat physically separated from the rest of the world by mountains, and then that separation was enforced even further via magical means, to the point that some people are afraid that if the ones who built the barrier went any further, the area would just pop off and float away."
She shrugged, smiling a little bit. "I think that it's just pointless fear, as we still have some issues with Grimm and whatnot, but who knows. I've still not finished my education so I can't be certain about the principles behind it. And now I might never get to do so, unless it's by rediscovering the further bloody science behind it by myself…" she paused, clearing her throat and her mind before continuing, "but I'm rambling again."
"I'd love to be more specific, especially since I'd prefer to return, but all I can say is that it's a relatively small area, a few tens of square kilometers somewhere… East-ish? The isolation's kind of gotten to us," she remarked, shrugging once more, "so unfortunately that's all I've got in terms of general knowledge."
Glynda started out Yache's information exposition extravaganza watching the forest around them. By the end of it, she was staring straight at the spider woman with a look of abject disbelief.
Ozpin, on the other hand, seemed… amused. And also fascinated. He stared at Yache for a few seconds, looked down and took a sip of his coffee as if to think, then looked to the sky that was barely visible through the Emerald Forest's canopy. "What shape is the moon?" he asked, almost out of nowhere.
Glynda looked at him with disbelief at that.
Yache thought for a moment before responding. "Mostly a sphere with chunks missing and floating, depending on the month. Though I'll give you that it occasionally goes either bloody red or sapphire blue. I think that it's something to do with the barrier doing something prismatic to it with magic, but again, can't be sure. Will have to look at it now that I'm outside, might be interesting…" she considered, before interrupting herself once more, deciding to make a mental note of it instead. Which she'd probably forget, but that's besides the point.
Glynda sighed and shook her head, clearly deciding to stop paying attention to their conversation. She returned to the scanning of the forest. The clenching of her jaw betrayed her annoyance, though.
Ozpin studied her a bit more, seemingly taking in everything she rambled on about. It almost looked like he believed her, the discerning and intense look on his face somehow saying that he agreed with what she was saying.
Then his next words tore that rug from under her.
"You are a very accomplished misdirector, Miss Yache," Ozpin informed her gladly, fully complimenting her skills. It was almost like someone congratulating their opponent in a game of chess for a highly skilled move. "You know just enough of Remnant to make it sound like you come from here, or at least fit wherever you do come from into a narrative capable of fooling most people."
Glynda snapped straight back to Ozpin, her eyes wider than Yache had seen them. She stood straight up, and the leather of her riding crop started squeaking again.
Ozpin leaned over and looked Yache straight in the… eyes. "However, I know for a fact no mages except myself and Salem survived," he flatly declared.
While she was expecting that her story wouldn't pull through, which was the very reason she wasn't even trying to pretend that she's from around here, it was simply natural that she would get nervous after having it so flatly pointed out to her, and it showed, though less in her facial expression and body language, and more in terms of her breathing getting a bit faster, as well as the way her legs got a bit weaker, barely noticeable to most people unless they paid attention.
He straightened back up, brushing off his shirt… with his mug, and then took another sip. "I don't know where you come from, but it's not Remnant." He looked at her and tilted his head to the side slightly, narrowing his eyes. "In your favor, though, the fact that you were willing to try and spare me the mental alarm of learning that speaks volumes for your true disposition."
With that Ozpin turned around on his heel and started striding off into the forest. "Come, Miss Yache. We can speak further in my office."
Glynda watched him go, flabbergasted. Once he was a little ways into the trees, she then looked at Yache. She looked resigned and her lips were set in a long-suffering grimace. She was obviously used to Ozpin pulling shit like this.
"Behave yourself," she flatly declared, not relaxing one bit. She gestured in front of her with her riding crop, a quick clap of the air adding emphasis, and then stood to the side to wait for Yache to pass in front of her.
While definitely rather nervous by now, Yache still had enough composure and understanding of how out of her depth she was to shrug and simply go after Ozpin, giving Glynda what was supposed to be an apologetic look.
"For what it's worth, most of what I said was the truth. I just didn't think that talking about other worlds is a good idea when you're trying to not seem like a threat." She paused for a moment, before shrugging once more. "Or a lunatic, for that matter."
Glynda scoffed. "You may not believe this, but a world traveller is not the strangest thing we have encountered recently," she deadpanned. "You can make it up to me, at least, by helping me repair the forest you broke."
"Noted, though it might take a while," Yache responded, trying to look at least mildly embarrassed, though it didn't quite work. "If nothing else, it's going to need a lot of replacement earth, judging by the scarring I left around the place. And the less I talk about the trees, the better for your nerves," she coughed, now genuinely embarrassed.
From up ahead, in the dark, the howl of a Beowolf sounded. A quick swish through the air and the howl cut off, a gurgling, strangled sound replacing it.
"Glynda," Ozpin called back, sounding unamused. "We may need to clear out the Forest soon."
Glynda just sighed, raising a hand to her forehead. She was clearly trying to massage a headache away. "Yes, Ozpin, I'll get right on that after I put that forest back together."
"Your assistance is appreciated, as always," Ozpin fired back. He was still not visible in the thick foliage of the forest, and yet his voice carried back. That voice detailed just how amused he was by Glynda's response. He must have been intentionally keeping
trees between himself and Glynda and Yache, possibly to return to that Mysterious Headmaster vibe he so enjoyed.
The squeaking of the leather of Glynda's riding crop was likely music to his ears.
To Yache, though, it was, at best, death metal.