My new story featuring Lord Felwinter has come out, so check my profile for that if you're interested in a more traditional crossover story.
If you've done Wrath of the Machine, you'll probably recognize some mechanics I'm gonna implement but it'll mostly be an altered version with some similarities, because the actual boss fight isn't very interesting to read about.
Also, get the theme song ready. Phase 2, specifically. You'll know when to put it on.
Edit: I realized I was writing in the past tenth for like the first eighth of this chapter before switching to present.
Before deploying into what Ironwood called "The Red Lands" in pursuit of Saint-14, team RWBY were requested to the weapons lab of Atlas Academy.
A kind old man who called himself Pietro introduced himself, before going straight into the details of the upgrades he did to every team members' weapons. He led them into a laboratory that wasn't the most well-kept. Various parts, most of them for guns and the rest for other weaponry, along with the occasional discarded tool, lay strewn about in a disorderly fashion.
Ruby nearly trips over a the barrel of a torn-apart sniper rifle with a blue koi-fish decal on the side of the thin white barrel housing, at least thin compared to other snipers of this size.
"Aw…" she mumbles, kneeling down to pick it up, brushing her hand over the cold metal construction. It looks meticulously disassembled, with only one half of the barrel housing actually present, the actual barrel and magazine were missing. "Hope you served well, little buddy."
"Ah, Ruby Rose! The upgrades I had for your weapon were the most ambitious I have ever had the pleasure to implement, though it mostly wasn't my idea," Pietro says, beaming a smile as he picks up Crescent Rose from a workbench that was next to the fallen sniper rifle. "You can thank your new friend Crimson for them!"
Crimson appears from behind Pietro and floats to the side of his head, her flight pattern a bit cheery. She tilts her shell and winks with her one eye. "You'll love it, I promise."
"Oh, you didn't have to, just a regular tune-up would've been fine…" Ruby puts down the white sniper rifle on the workbench before taking Crescent Rose from Pietro's hands. She gives it a once-over, to check for any visual changes in its folded form. For some reason it feels…charged, like she's in tune with the exact frequency of power it could dish out, which is a lot. This makes it feel entirely familiar, even though the weight was on the heavier side, which she would normally mess with her melee abilities with the weapon, but this one felt right.
After her somewhat speedy examination, the only thing she noticed was a new white accent that replaced the black of the original barrel housing and a new button above the magazine holder.
"It was quite an intricate and beautiful upgrade, in fact. Crimson was there to guide me on how to make it work, seeing it was my first time working with the weapons from the Undying Mind," Pietro says, before some color drained of his face and his eyes widened. "Oops, perhaps I shouldn't have said that." He chuckles and regular joyous attitude returns.
"Other than the white and this button…what did you actually do?" Ruby asks, raising an eyebrow.
"I'll give you some info on the sniper rifle we had to butcher to augment yours," Crimson says, and is about to continue but stops herself upon hearing Ruby's gasp. "What?"
"You had to kill that white one to upgrade mine? It was so pretty!" Ruby exclaims, a bit saddened that a perfectly good sniper rifle had to be decommissioned for hers. She looks at the now seemingly mangled one on the table. "Did it at least have a good life?"
"I…wouldn't know, it just showed up one day. It looked like it had a ton of use on it, so in terms of longevity, this is actually a downgrade."
"You're not making it any better!" Ruby says. "But go on." Her attention refocuses on her weapon, and her mood goes back to its usual cheerfulness.
"Anyways, the gun we used was called the Izanagi's Burden. From surface appearance, it looks like a regular, chic-design sniper rifle. However, it had the possibility of loading up to four rounds together into a hyper-charged single round that…" Crimson's voice somewhat drowns itself out in the end as Ruby's eyes starts shimmering at the possibilities the new upgrade put on the table for her. "Hey, are you even listening!?"
"…No," is all Ruby can say. "So…Crescent Rose can do that too?"
"I was hoping you got that based off of the explanation alone, but yes. It can do that, Pietro, you can take over for the second part."
"Oh, of course! The quick-config Dust interface was created by yours truly—" Pietro does a little introductory bow for himself. "And combined with tri-Dust rounds, also designed by me, allows for quick, on-the-fly switching of Dust element to accommodate any situation or obstacle that presents itself for you!"
"That sounds like an ad," Crimson says flatly.
"It sounds great, though!" Ruby says, pressing the new button and hearing an audible click before it lit up orange. She presses it again and the color changes to blue, then again, for it to change to yellow. "So, I can switch like that, cool…really cool." She chuckles, a devious hint in her voice. Her mind exploded with possibilities.
"Of course, the system is backwards-compatible, meaning if you prefer to load Dust rounds the old-fashioned way, you are still able to do so!" Pietro's excitement sounds like it's growing by the minute. "Whenever you have the chance to put your weapon into action, do record some footage for me."
"I'll try my best-"
"Attention, Team RWBY are requested to hangar Alpha-Two for deployment in t-minus ten minutes. I repeat, Team RWBY are requested to hangar Alpha-Two for deployment in t-minus ten minutes," the PA system's robotic female voice reminds.
. . .
The dropship smoothly hummed in the background.
"Mission is simple. We drop in, link up with Ember-One, and stick together to get to Ground Zero before Saint-Fourteen does, otherwise it's mission failed and we can say goodbye to Mantle, and ourselves." Harriet stands in front of Team RWBY, who are all seated on the seats attached to the walls of the Manta airship. "This section of Mantle is incredibly dangerous; at least a dozen Huntsmen have died to exposure to nanites." She slips on a full-face respirator with a hard, clear material as a visor.
"When we approach Ground Zero, these respirators have to be on constantly. The concentration of nanites there can kill you within minutes," Harriet says, her voice slightly muffled. "Your Scrolls are designed to withstand the interference present in the area, so communications should be secure. Anything else I need to cover?" She turns to Marrow, and slips off her respirator.
"Should we talk about the actual threat we're going after?" He suggests. "Saint-Fourteen?"
"Right, Saint-Fourteen is an extremely dangerous, and extremely unstable fugitive. If we are to take him on, it's with all of us." Harriet sounds angry, thirsty for blood. "If we're unable to capture, then we are allowed to kill. Understood?"
A moment's silence.
"…Yes ma'm," Team RWBY says, with varying levels of energy, trending towards the low-end.
"Good, the key to making it out of this place alive is to stay together," Harriet finishes, sitting back down. "We drop in a minute."
"Sounds like staying alive is our first priority…" Blake mutters. "I don't like this."
Ruby shoots her a reassuring smile. "Hey, we'll make it, just like every other time."
"If it makes it any better, I know this part of Mantle like the back of my hand. There's no way Saint-Fourteen is gonna get to G-Zero first," Marrow says. "And it'll be round two, we're gonna kick his ass."
Ruby thinks his confidence is misplaced.
"Round two?" She asks.
"We've had a run-in with him before," Harriet says, her tone indicating that she doesn't want to talk about it anymore.
A red light comes on, accompanied by a harsh beep. Harriet stands up, and slides the side door open.
"It's go time," she says, nodding to Team RWBY.
All four stand up, nod at each other before getting a running start to their aerial insertion.
. . .
Everyone lands relatively together. Some on rooftops, most on street-level.
The city is deathly quiet. Ruby is unnerved by the artificiality of it all. Everything is dead; like Kuroyuri. She's waiting for the Grimm to pop out from between buildings any second now.
"Keep an eye on your Scrolls, nanites can hit your Aura without you even noticing," Harriet points out.
Ruby takes out her new Scroll, padded with rubber edges and feeling more like a brick than her first one. It could retract itself into a more compact form factor which showed basic Aura meters of her teammates.
"I don't like this place…" Yang mumbles on comms.
"Feels like every step we take is closer to death," Blake answers. "Looks like there was a fight here pretty recently. A lot of bodies on the rooftops."
"Heh, you were always a poet, Blake…" Yang snorts to herself.
Ruby rolls her eyes. "Weiss, how are you holding up?"
"I'm fine…I remember hearing my dad talk about this sector. He was trying to keep offices open and was protesting the evacuation order. If only I could show him this, but I still don't believe he would understand." Weiss sounds regretful, and somewhat resentful. "To think that people were being slaughtered and all he cared about was his bottom line."
"Sounds like the Schnee Dust Company to me," Blake quips.
"Yep, very in character for my father," Weiss says, before going silent.
"Focus up, we might have trouble. I'm not detecting Ember-One's signal in her hideout."
"That's not good, is it?" Ruby takes out Crescent Rose, unfolding it only to its gun form. She scans the street in front of her.
"Not at all. Either she's dead, or left. We told her to stay put," Harriet says gravely. "Yang, Blake on the rooftop, everyone else with me. We breach on my go."
Ruby nods and follows Harriet, with Weiss at her side. They go up a few flight of stairs leading to a closed door. They all stack up on the wall next to it, with Harriet in front.
"Breach in three, two, one, go." The Ace-Op punches the door open and goes headfirst. Ruby uses her semblance and speeds into the room, landing in a corner of the room with Crescent Rose ready to shoot anything that could be considered an enemy.
Weiss and Marrow followed behind them. Blake and Yang broke the upstairs door and moved quickly to clear their zones.
Ruby lowers her weapon upon realizing that there was no one here.
"She's not here," Ruby says, making her way to the wooden table with the hologram map of this section of Mantle.
"Why would she leave? She knows it's a death wish out there," Marrow mumbles. "Saint-Fourteen was here, too, wasn't he? He can't be far."
"What makes you think he wouldn't be far?" Ruby asks, brushing a lock of hair that moved into her line of vision. She looks over to the map, and her eyes lock onto a flashing red line that snakes through the streets of Mantle. "Looks like someone plotted out a path, to Ground Zero."
Harriet takes a look at the map. "Marrow, any idea if what's on there makes sense?"
Marrow takes a look, mumbles to himself before humming. "There is no way he would have plotted this out on his own. This is precisely the second-fastest route to Ground Zero, and from what I'm seeing, this is manually plotted."
"Why wouldn't he go through the fastest?" Weiss asks.
"A giant…thing has been spotted around the roads on the fastest way. It alone was responsible for the deaths of six Huntsmen," Harriet says, swiping in the air before bringing up the picture of a six-legged, centaur-like being that glows red. In the photo, it stands about three-quarters of the height of an apartment building. "Nearly twenty-six feet in height, calls itself Aksis, this thing is practically invulnerable and smarter than any Grimm we have ever seen."
"This would've been good to know in the ship," Yang points out. "So what do we do? We're obviously behind, and if we go the fast way, we risk getting killed by that…thing."
Harriet takes a breath and closes her eyes. "We have no other choice. If we encounter it, we run past. Either that, or we pull back and pay our respects to Mantle."
Yang looks like she wants to snap back, but backs down, obviously unhappy about the situation.
"And what about Ember-One?" Blake asks.
"She must have gone with him. Her helmet's gone," Harriet says. "Come on, let's go before they create too much distance."
. . .
Once on the road, the fireteam of six kept their eyes peeled for any appearances of this Aksis being. This entire place felt like Kuroyuri, except with an even more sinister feeling to it.
Ruby was especially uneasy, her finger a hair away from unloading the entirety of Crescent Rose's magazine into wherever a suspicious noise would come from.
"Don't worry, I paged Osiris, he'll be on comms soon." Ruby jumped at Crimson's voice in her head. "Sorry, you should have given you warning."
"Something wrong, Rubes?" Yang asks. Ruby shakes her head.
"I'm…I'm fine, just a bit jittery," she says, nervously chuckling. "This place gives me the creeps."
"Me too. If there's anything you need to talk about, I'm here," Yang says, flashing her sister a bright smile.
"Thanks, sis." Ruby returns with one of her own.
"If I had known Ironwood had thrown you all into a SIVA contaminated area without any prior preparation, I would have volunteered to act as tactical support," Osiris' voice comes in through everyone's earpieces.
"What is he doing on our comms?" Harriet asks.
"If you don't need my help, then by all means feel free to close the line. For those that do want to have a chance to survive and possibly defeat the Archon Prime, then continue listening." Osiris takes a pause. "There is one key to defeating Aksis: Using the very technology that empowers it against it. One of you will have to be exposed to the nanites. That one will have to be Ruby."
"What? Why me?" Ruby gulps, before steeling herself.
"Your body is the only one that can handle a charge and Empowerment without…a violent end, to put it lightly."
"Alright, what do I have to do?"
"Aksis will release a swarm of nanites from his body, you will have to run into it," Osiris says. "A cluster of nanites should form in your hands. You will feel powerful, but don't hold onto it for too long or you will be destroyed from the inside. With the charge, you will throw it at him which will stun him for a moment, allowing for a brief window for damage. While he is stunned, strike him on the exposed part of his back that will open up, once that's done, don your respirators and take cover."
"…Do you hear something?" Crimson asks.
"Osiris, hold on a sec." Ruby focuses her hearing, and stops in her tracks. She's hearing some sort of heavy pitter-patter, like a giant spider is stomping around the streets. The noises grow louder, and dangerously close.
"Cut the chatter, we got company!" Harriet exclaims through the radio. "It's the big guy! Get ready to move!"
A massive six-legged creature, the exact thing that was shown in the picture at Ember-One's hideout, turns a corner and rears its deformed and mangled body to the six Huntsmen and Huntresses. It screeches, making reverberations in the air before rushing them all. In its hands was some sort of two-barreled rifle that was eager to fire.
It fires red blobs into the air that would fall down, their trajectories haphazard but all with the possibility of hitting someone.
Ruby willed her legs to moved and quickly dashed away from the projectile that was coming down for her, narrowly evading the red fire that explodes into a swarm of the red nanites that fades away after a second.
"Return fire, give Ruby the space she needs!" Blake says. Volleys of gunfire is returned to Aksis.
"Weiss, I'll need your help getting close!" Ruby reloads her already full Crescent Rose, combining four rounds into one. She marvels for a second as her sniper rifle attains a blue and pink hue, before firing at Aksis' own weapon. The hyper-charged shot hits true, making the beast flinch, and stopping him for a second.
"On it!" Weiss twirls her rapier and stabs it into the floor, summoning a series of glyphs that form a ramp of ice.
"Thanks!" She cries before firing Crescent Rose behind her, using the force of the bullet to propel herself forward and slide on the ramp. It curves downwards, before launching her into the air, where she reaches her hand into the swarm of red nanites, wincing as they all converge and try to eat her hand, before forming into a red, violently pulsating ball.
Ruby throws it at Aksis the moment it's in her palm.
The six-legged mechanical beast roars before its upper torso goes limp, exposing a white glow coming from a crack in its spine, surrounded by nanites.
Ruby dives into the cloud of red particles, and her breath hitches as they cling onto every single part of her body. She feels…charged, strong, like she could take this thing on in a fist fight and still win.
"Don't let it get to your head, just punch it in his spine and get some damage in!" Crimson warns.
Ruby shakes her head and dives onto Aksis' back. She charges a fist full of Arc mixed with the Empowerment of the nanites, before throwing her entire arm into Aksis' spine.
Aksis bellows strong enough to generate a force, before going limp again.
"Now, throw everything you have at it!" She screams.
The rest of her team are quick to work. Yang goes under and plants several explosives that blow up in a chain. Blake is unloading whatever she has in her pistol into its body. Weiss is freezing its six legs shut. Harriet is running circles around it while delivering devastating punches. Marrow stays back and fires from afar.
The entire period lasts around twenty seconds, maybe a bit less.
"Get away, it's waking up!" Ruby uses her Semblance to create distance. "Masks on and take cover!" She barrels through a window and takes cover underneath a table inside an apartment. She peeks out to see Aksis, with its two hands clawed up and in front of its face, charging a sort of pulse as unstable red pulses fire off from its body, before culminating into a blind explosion.
Once Ruby feels that it's safe to peek out, she flies out in a burst of petals, landing on the road. Her teammates stand by her side, weapons raised and ready to fight.
Aksis roars at them, its entire body looking like it will charge, but it instead begins to back away, fleeing at an incredible pace and a few seconds later, it's gone.
"It…ran," Weiss says. "Did we really scare it off?"
"Looks like we did," Ruby says, pleasantly surprised.
Yang doesn't buy it. "It looked ready to fight but it just…ran away. That's not right."
"It didn't look at all scared of us, maybe Ruby…but why would it do that?" Blake asks. "We couldn't do anything until Ruby did whatever that was!"
"Either it's smarter than we thought or…oh shit." Harriet begins running towards Ground Zero. "We have to move. Saint-Fourteen might already be close."
"Rubes, you definitely have to explain what you did." Yang slaps Ruby on the back, a wide grin on her face. "You were amazing!"
"Thanks, sis, but we better get moving."
/
Osiris watches the footage of Ruby Rose single-handedly stunning Aksis, allowing her teammates to put some fire into it, and then the Archon Prime running, not with its tail tucked between its legs, but because it had a bigger problem to deal with. He nods in approval before shutting down Crimson's feed of Ruby Rose.
"At least the girl is good at remembering advice," Osiris mutters.
"She's just like her mother," Sagira says. "Not to mention she's so adorable!"
Saint-14 was approaching the Replication Chamber at a surprising rate. Osiris kept tabs on his friend's location and silently wished him luck, somewhat annoyed that he had garnered such a bad reputation in Atlas.
Jaune, Nora, Ren, Qrow and the rest of those Ace-Ops people were sent to clear a landing spot for the Amity Colosseum.
It appears the general wasn't taking his advice to heart. Which was mostly expected. Osiris doesn't even believe that he would convince Ironwood of stopping his plans with The Undying Mind voluntarily.
"Here's that schematic of the Atlesian Knight-Two-Hundred you wanted," Sagira says, transmatting a rolled up blue paper in Osiris' hand.
"I appreciate that." The Warlock looked both ways before unrolling the paper, holding it vertically. He scanned the technical drawing of the innards of the robot soldiers that made up the bulk of the Atlesian army. His finger traced to the core, situated in its stomach where it is shielded by several layers of plating.
"Radiolaria core…" he mumbles, before rolling the sheet back up. "These people believe that The Undying Mind is merely a computer that obeys, and Atlas was in possession of it for centuries?" He passes off the blueprint to Sagira, who transmats it away.
Osiris rubs his forehead. "It appears we have quite a bit of work to do."
"Well, your work is cut out for someone of your stature."
Osiris chortles. "I suppose it is."
I'll say it outright, Osiris will be more a background character this season, but will still play a huge role. More of a focus on Ruby and her growing into her new Guardian abilities.