Here's Part 2 of the notes. Looks like I'll have to make Part 3. This was where the story was going to become larger in scope.
Fallout
The airship ends up above the deserts outside Vacuo, which makes a rough landing on the ground to initiate repairs. The Liset, now out of power, falls off the airship and crashes into the desert. Tenno cuts off Transference and reemerges from the pod.
Ordis apologizes profusely, which Tenno just ignores. She picks up the data chip Lotus gave her before dying and asks Ordis to play its contents. Ordis protests as Lotus wanted privacy while making its whatever was on it, and Tenno counters with "But she's not here right now, is she!?" and guilt trips Ordis into accessing it.
The chip contains a recording of Lotus addressing the Syndicates to rally the Tenno and lead them to Remnant's solar system and how to get there through Charon. The video contained code to force itself through the Orbiter's Void communication system, where it would reach its destination near instantly.
Thankfully, Tenno had a spare landing craft, a Mantis she built long before initiating the Second Dream. This is based off the progress I made in my account, after all.
Tenno and Hunhow exchange some hateful dialogue here before she shuts him away.
This is where the Lotus' death starts to sink in for her. Tenno spends hours grieving, and Ordis begins scanning Remnant.
Her Chroma Warframe is still on the airship, slumped over and unresponsive.
The refugees on the airship look at the Warframe as repairs proceed. Ruby vaguely feels Tenno's presence in the Warframe. Everyone else doesn't know it belongs to her.
When Tenno finally forces herself back into the Transference pod, it's evening and the airship has docked in Vacuo city. Chroma's sudden awakening startles the people inspecting it.
Regrouping
Chroma disembarks from the airship and runs into Glynda, who is directing refugees with the help of the Vacuo city police. Everyone present is startled by the Warframe suddenly dropping of the side of the airship.
Tenno speaks through her Warframe, confusing Glynda and everyone else present and demands to speak to whoever is in charge. The Vacuo Police direct her to the middle of the city, which has a spire similar to Beacon, but with a blue light instead of green.
In fact, the middle of the city looks eerily similar to Beacon's architecture.
Glynda asks Tenno if she had seen Ozpin, which Tenno replies with "He's gone,". Glynda somberly nods and says she then must assume leadership of Beacon's students and refugees, or what is left of them. She then asks Tenno if she can accompany her to see the leader of the Vacuo people (I don't know what this position is called, is it mayor?). Tenno reluctantly agrees.
Glynda and Tenno walk through Vacuos streets as the sun goes down. Tenno makes observations about the people being mostly Faunas and the odd architecture.
At the entryway to the Vacuo Mayor's office, Glynda knocks on the door, which opens instantly. The Mayor (who kinda looks like Zero from Drakengard 3, but with blue eyes instead of red, and dressed far more reasonably) is talking on her scroll and comforting the hysterical woman on the other end. She paces her desk a few times before laying eyes on Chroma.
Her demeanor changes instantly, and clicks her scroll closed.
"Glynda Goodwitch, was it? I need to ask you to wait outside for a moment."
Glynda, obviously, becomes confused at this as she holds a higher rank than Tenno. Tenno herself doesn't like this either, but gestures for Glynda to go with it.
Once the door closes, the Mayor instantly closes the distance with Chroma and points a suddenly produced sword at the Warframe's chest.
"I know that handywork anywhere. The curves, the bulk, everything about you I recognize. This world does not belong to you, Orokin scourge." The lighting fixtures in the walls begin to blink, and the room shakes slightly. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't destroy you right now. You have five seconds."
Tenno's mind shifts to panic mode and spits out the first thing that comes to mind.
"Lotus was killed by Hunhow." As soon as the words left her mouth did she regret them, but they were the right things to say.
"Hunhow! What do you know about that!?" The Mayor closes more distance with Chroma and presses the sword's blade to the Warframe's neck.
Tenno's panic subsides just enough for a rational thought to surface. "We have a common enemy! The Grimm just destroyed all of Vale!"
"Bullshit! The Grimm are your creation, you Orokin scourge!"
"What are you talking about! The Orokin Empire has been dead for centuries!"
The Mayor pauses at this, then slowly lowers the sword. "Who are you, really?"
"I am Tenno. My kind destroyed the Orokin Empire at the heart. The Lotus reawakened us four years ago. Hunhow called her 'Natah'"
The Mayor is taken aback by the revelation. "Hunhow killed his own kin? Oh, how the mighty have fallen..." She paces around her desk for a moment. "You can call me Lily." The door opens and Glynda walks in. "What I am about to tell you both does not leave this room, understand?"
The Grimm
The Grimm, as the people of Remnant call it, are not a supernatural force created by a pissy God. The Grimm are an early prototype of the Infestation that plagues the Origin System.
While the Infestation has similar properties of a biological Grey Goo, the Grimm don't use existing matter to create itself, but rather each cell of the Grimm is a very small, albeit slow, energy-to-matter transformer that can change its composition to suit the needs of the creature it is a part of (hardening into white bony armor, black for malleability and absorbing light, red to hold energy and acting as rudimentary muscles and nervous system).
That is why whenever Grimm are slain, they appear to dissolve into nothing.
Unlike the Infestation, the Grimm are highly damaging to Sentients.
Samples of the prototype Infestation were thrown out for not working fast enough to combat the Sentients during the Old War. These samples drifted through space for years, until they found their way to Remnant and took hold.
Over time, the prototype Infestation grew itself by consuming the energy of the planet. Where would the most energy on any given planet exist? The core, obviously.
Down the Infestation went, absorbing the core's vast energy supply, and multiplying to cataclysmic numbers.
Gravity on Remnant gradually increased as this process occurred, leading to life that was much stronger. The Grimm also used to be completely red from all of the energy it had absorbed.
Suddenly, a massive burst of energy inside Remnant occurred, and the planet suddenly had a Moon, although the teleportation of the planet's core out into orbit was imperfect, leading to its shattered appearance.
This massive energy spike caught the attention of the Sentients of Tau Ceti. Four massive Sentients were dispatched to investigate the system, and were tasked with eliminating anything Orokin in nature.
What they found was a planet with sapient life on the verge of collapse, barely held together by an enormous mass of Infestation-like nanomachines. The Sentients knew they could not defeat something that large and powerful, and reinforcements were not available. The best they could do was containment, so they set themselves down at equidistant points from each other, and projected an enormous dampening field to slow down the Grimm's advancement. The collective mass of nanites could not enter too far into the suppression fields before losing contact with the central hive mind and dissipating.
In response, the proto-Infestation started to construct animal-like proxies to withstand the dampening field; the creatures of Grimm. These creatures had neural networks mimicking biological ones, but were optimized and tasked for killing.
The people of Remnant had started to migrate to the Sentients' anchoring points and began to build cities. Since the Sentients had been tasked with killing anything Orokin in nature, and these people, Humans and Faunas, were not part of that directive, they could be used to defend the Sentients as they upheld the suppression field.
The people needed an energy source, and fast, so the four Sentients fragmented their energy into crystalline forms, placing it in easily noticed places by the people (have a look at an Eidolon Shard). This crystalline energy source came to be known as Dust. The people advanced at an astonishing rate, happily building cities under the watchful and protective shadow of the Sentients.
Aura and Void
The people of Remnant had access to this unknown source of power unique to each individual. While it held none of the poisonous properties of the Void, it manifested from the same "place".
There exists a fourth spatial dimension that consists of nothing but energy (there's a video that can help visualize the fourth dimension called "4D Toys" by Miegakure). This dimension affects the third dimension differently depending on the solar system's gravitational strength and lifetime. Longer lasting solar systems will manifest larger and more physical elements (the Void in the Origin System) and more subtle but direct influence in younger systems (Aura and Semblance). This is also how the Sentients get their power and became sentient in the first place (Tau Ceti).
This is also why Tenno accidentally performing Transference on Ruby didn't destroy Ruby's mind, or cause any adverse effects for that matter.
Obviously, none of this is canon to either universe; it's just how I link them together for the purposes of this fanfic.
"-and so, if the Grimm are not stopped, we could be facing a galactic crisis in mere centuries. With one of the four Sentient Guardians down and no longer projecting their suppression field, the Grimm will become stronger, smarter, and larger. They will attack Vacuo in unending swarms any day now." Lily faces Chroma. "What you did to stop the Grineer invasion has hastened Remnant's destruction, but the Grineer themselves would have done much more damage. With that, I hope we can come to an understanding, Tenno. We have a common enemy, one that can threaten the galaxy if left unchecked."
Ordis silently contacts Tenno, "Operator, I can confirm the information given by Lily. The Grimm have a similar architecture to the Infestation, but are different in function."
"Do you have a plan to combat the Grimm if it should come to all out war?" Glynda asks.
Lily shakes her head, "Ozpin was the wisest of us four, but even he withheld information from us, and would claim the Hunters he was training were the key to defeating the Grimm. You should know how stubborn he can be, Glynda, but he also was the one to suggest withholding information from the population regarding the true nature of the Grimm. We wouldn't have this much support from the people if it wasn't for his decisions.
"But to answer your question, no, we do not have a plan."
Cinder
Cinder didn't die when Beacon collapsed. She was going to be a bit of a recurring antagonistic force all the way to the climax.
There were many things Cinder figured out about herself and the world of Remnant. One of them being her Semblance, which was the ability to control mindless Orokin constructs, like the Infestation, or the Grimm.
Another thing she figured out was the suppression field upheld by the Sentients stopping the Grimm from expanding further. Cinder could control individual creatures, but not the whole organism just below her feet. To get to it, she had to destroy one of the Sentients, a task completed by Tenno to combat the Grineer Invasion.
Cinder controlled the monstrous Grimm that now occupied Vale, molded and compressed its "biomass" into a much faster form (think the Beetle Queen from Risk of Rain 2, but much larger and with enough insectoid appendages on its back to make a centipede jealous), performed Transference on it, and infused it with massive amounts of Void energy.
She created a makeshift Warframe, basically. This has an adverse effect on her appearance, as she now has these writhing, pitch black cracks in her skin and Grimm matter snaking around her body.
With her newfound strength, she tears apart smaller settlements all over the world, including the island of Patch.
One Month
Over the next month, Tenno, RWBY, JNPR, and the Vale refugees would set up a life in Vacuo. Characterization happens here, evacuation plans get formed, stuff happens with Emerald, Mercury, Neo and maybe Roman, and Ordis begins setting up orbital support platforms with Tenno's stockpiled resources.
Tenno tells team RWBY some things about the Grimm when they start asking questions. Things along the line of 'The Grimm are far stronger than your stories, theories, or legends depict them to be.'
A lot of little things happen in this time frame. Blame Rooster Teeth for being abusive toward their employees, especially the animators (exploiting a loophole when laying them off to skip on paying Severance, among other things). If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have had to cut this story short for moral reasons.
Dark Waves
The Grimm have finally amassed their numbers out in the deserts surrounding Vacuo. The horizon blackens and writhes with their numbers. A constant droning of their snarls and roars settles over the city like an oppressive auditory fog.
Evacuation plans are set in motion. The civilian airships had been retrofitted for movement over comfort, and their engines were also significantly upgraded. More civilians end up surviving the downfall of Vacuo compared to Vale.
Only two individuals stayed behind to slow the Grimm while the airships make their escape; Tenno and Mayor Lily.
Tenno has Chroma, Snipetron Vandal, Vaykor Marelok, and Orthos Prime, as well as the Elytron Arcwing. Lily has an energy weapon that can change forms in a fraction of a second.
Chroma takes to the skies while Lily weaves through the city. The Grimm breach the outer wall and pour into the streets. The battle that takes place here was meant to be as devastating to the Grimm's numbers as possible, and collateral damage was completely ignored.
At one point, an enormous Kaiju Grimm is spotted on the horizon, and Tenno made the rash decision to pour every joule of energy into the Elytron's Warhead. After launching it, the Arcwing detaches from the Warframe and falls to the ground. Tenno calls for Itzal to replace her Arcwing.
The Warhead flies true and strikes the Kaiju Grimm, and the resulting explosion annihilates everything for several miles and causes a sandstorm to blow over the city. Tenno and Lily clean up the surviving Grimm.
Sacrifices
Enormous red eyes appear in the sandstorm. A gigantic creature (that kind of looks like the Ether Drake from Stellaris, but with pitch black skin, bone armor, and a red membrane on the wings) parts the billowing clouds of dust, floating several hundred meters above the ground. It opens its mouth and discharges a titanic dark purple beam, destroying an evacuating airship.
Both Tenno and Lily know they can't hope to engage the Leviathan Grimm in their current state, but ignoring it would mean certain death for the refugees.
"Hah. It's been a long time since I last stretched my limbs." Lily says to Tenno before vanishing.
"Operator! The suppression field is falling!"
An earthquake, and the center of the city shifts, rises, and moves. The body and limbs of a massive Sentient emerge from the trembling ground (about the size of the Sentient's in the Plains of Eidolon lore). It's a majestic sight, and it terrifies Tenno.
A voice booms over the city, distorted and vaguely robotic, "I am Lindzie, Sentient Guardian of the Vacuo people," The Sentient begins to shift its body and limbs, "The Grimm have threatened my charges for too long." The Sentient's core shines brightly as all of its limbs point directly at the Leviathan Grimm, "Hear my Song, foul scourge, and may your kind lament knowing fear-"
The core shines brighter.
"-from this-"
The limbs pulse with energy.
"-moment-"
One flash directs the energy forward.
"-FOREVERMORE!"
A blue and white beam erupts from the Sentient, its strength double that of the Leviathan's own attack. It engulfs the Grimm, destroying its body and leaving the wings to fall to the ground. Lindzie unfurls her limbs and stands over the city.
The ground shakes once more, and fissures break open underneath the sand.
Grimm rush from the cracks like a spring, flooding the city in a pitch black tide. The ocean of Grimm form together underneath Lindzie, grabbing and pulling at the Sentient's limbs. Tau projectiles fly from the Sentient, striking against the unending waves of Grimm. It is no use. The waves never stop crashing.
Lindzie's limbs begin to crack and crumble as the Grimm climb their way up. Without energy, the Sentient collapses into the black ocean.
Tenno knows she is powerless to stop the Grimm from tearing Lindzie apart.
"I have become soft, Tenno." Lindzie transmits to the Chroma flying above, "My time with the people of Vacuo has made me weak. I shall give my life for their survival. They are your responsibility now. Do not let my courage be in vain."
Tenno flies off to regroup with the refugee airships, which have already flown several miles from the city. Soon after she regroups, a massive, blinding explosion erupts where Vacuo once stood.
Tenno and the Vacuo/Vale refugees make their way to Atlas.
Author's Notes: Keep in mind that all of these notes are an abridged version of my ideas for this story. If Rooster Teeth hadn't been a piece of shit company, I would have been able to continue this story properly and write more scenes with better pacing and detail.
The Sentients probably wouldn't have done anything remotely close to what happened in this story. They'd probably kill off everyone on Remnant and fight the Grimm head on.
Fun fact: Most of this story was imagined as a video game with cutscenes and modified Warframe gameplay. Imagine Platinum Games making Warframe's melee combat.
Also, yes, I had a Drakengard 3 phase when writing this.
Part 3 will absolutely, definitely, one-hundred percent, without a shadow of a doubt, undeniably be the last "chapter" in this story. See you then!
Reviews are always appreciated!