Disclaimer: I do not, nor do I claim to, own RWBY or any other media that may be referenced. All rights belong to their respective owners. The only thing I lay any claim to are my OCs (which are still coming).
Jaune calls Oscar's scroll and thanks Oum that he picks up.
"Oscar! Listen, Rosa went to retake the skies, 'cause they were under enemy control, and the ship she went on just smashed into a cliff face. It blew up," he tells the boy on the other end of the line.
"Don't you dare say she's dead!" Oscar's voice says down the line.
"I'm sorry, there's no way she could have survived that. She's... she's dead," Jaune softly says.
He can hear the scroll being dropped on the other end as the boy screams like nothing Jaune has ever heard before.
He can hear guns firing and someone else picks up the scroll.
"Who are you and what did you tell Oscar?"
"I'm Jaune, I'm on his sister's squad. She... she died," Jaune tells them.
"Poor kid. To lose two loved ones in one day is a tragedy... He has gone on a rampage against the grimm. I will try and stop him from getting himself killed in his grief."
"Thank you. I don't think I could take it if he died too," Jaune admits. "What is your name?" he asks before they can end the call.
"My name is Arslan Altan. My team stayed to help defend Amity."
"Thank you, Arslan. Keep him safe."
"I will."
"It's just like Rosa told us," Nora gasps out. "A Wyvern."
"Doomed if we fight it, doomed if we don't," Ren tacks on.
"What's that flying after it?" Velvet asks.
"I... don't know," Nora admits.
"Those... are... scythes!" Coco slowly realises. "The Grimm Reaper is HERE! We have a chance at winning!"
Ren and Nora exchange glances and a nod. "Then we have to give our everything to this fight.
Rosa opens her eyes to the colossal thuds reverberating through the ground. She's laying in the wreckage of the Atlas Airship, and she knows that her job isn't over.
She tries to stand up and blankly notes the piece of metal impaling her.
A frown crosses her face before she yanks out the scrap metal, plastering a hand against the wound as she hisses in pain. Bringing her semblance into play, she manipulates the very cells of her body, forcing them to mend. Within a minute, it is nothing more than a scar.
No sooner is she ready to re-join the fray does she look up and see something she never thought she would ever see.
"A Wyvern..." she whispers to herself. "I guess, the Grimm Reaper is needed then."
Pulling on her semblance again, her appearance changes. She stows away her swords and pulls out her scythes. She doesn't waste time in going after the wyvern, which is dropping grimm-spawning tar.
She is the Grimm Reaper, and reap the grimm invading this kingdom she shall.
Oscar can't feel anything. Grief has settled into his bones, and he has to fight. Has to avenge his sister and Penny. These grimm, this invasion, they are responsible for his grief, and he will make them pay. He throws his staff/spear through another griffon and vaults over its carcass as he goes to dig his dagger into another griffon's throat.
He calls his larger weapon back to him but doesn't catch it, dodging it and letting it fly into yet another griffon. He jumps forward, pushing it further into the now wounded grimm, and relishes in its pain-filled screams.
He pants as it disintegrates and whirls around looking for his next target.
The leader of the team that stayed walks over to him and places her hands on his shoulders.
"You need to calm yourself," she tells him.
"What I need is to make the grimm pay," he hisses at her.
Arslan shakes her head sadly. "I did not know your sister well, but I do not think she would want you to get yourself killed in your grief. She would not want you to die."
"I DIDN'T WANT HER TO DIE!" he yells at her. "She promised she would stay safe! She promised she wouldn't get killed! And, and, and she DIED!"
Arslan draws him into a hug. She knows she should have asked first, but this broken little boy - because that is what he is, a broken boy who is so little in this big world - needs comfort. "She wouldn't want you to die. She knew the risks, but things can go wrong at any time. You have to understand that," she tells him. "She wouldn't want you to die."
The damn breaks and he cries. No, he sobs. His sobs wrack his body and the sound breaks Arslan's heart.
This is a boy who has seen too much death already, who couldn't take another loss, but was dealt one anyway.
"I... didn't... want... her... to... die," he manages to say between sobs.
Arslan has nothing to say to comfort this broken soul, so she says nothing, just holds him tighter.
Blake is still chasing after White Fang members when she hears a scream from inside the library. She turns at sees a figure she knows all too well.
"Adam?" she betrays herself by saying.
He turns to face her. "There you are, my darling."
She turns to run but is stopped when he speaks up. "Going to run again, my sweet? Is that what you've become, my love? A coward?"
"Why are you doing this?" she begs him.
"You and I were going to change the world, remember? We were destined to light the fires of revolution!" he tells her. He pauses and kills the Atlas student he has pinned on the ground. "Consider this, the spark."
Shame and anger flushes through her and she charges him, katana raised.
They meet in a clash of swords and sparks.
"I'm. Not. Running," she tells him.
He smirks at her from behind their crossed blades. "You. Will."
"You're wrong," she tells him, and their fight begins.
He's shocked when she matches him blow for blow, she's grown so much stronger since she abandoned him, but he doesn't let it show.
He manages to catch her by surprise with a kick, and he pins her to the ground with his rifle. "I'm right, you will run, but not before I make you suffer for betraying me, my love."
Weiss and her group have managed to group up with Nora, Ren, team CFVY and a few others.
"We're being overrun," Weiss exclaims.
"That isn't exactly news," Nora retorts. An airship touches down in front of them and about thirty more students pour out.
"Need a hand?" Sun asks.
"Kid, any help would be greatly appreciated at this point," Coco tells him.
He nods and they get to work pushing back the grimm even as rubble begins to fall from the tower behind them.
A scream comes from their left.
Cinder waits at the top of the CCT tower in what used to be Opin's office. She watches with glee in her eyes as the Wyvern flaps its powerful wings towards her. It crashes into the building and she coos at it.
"Ssshhh. This is your home now," she tells it. She takes a few steps back and uses her powers to smash the window. "We've already won this battle."
It squawks at her but makes itself comfortable nonetheless.
"Jaune, we have to help! They need us!" Pyrrha begs.
"We have to stay here," Jaune reminds her. "You aren't well enough to be fighting, and we can't lose anyone else! We can't lose you too!"
"If we stay here, other people will die!" she yells at him.
Jaune is silent for a moment before he speaks up, his voice shaking. "I can't lose you. I trust in our friends to defend the people of Vale, but if you... if you died because I let you go fight while you're still unwell, I wouldn't be able to deal with that. I would feel like I'm to blame for your death, and I can't lose you. We've already lost too many people."
She doesn't know what to say to that, so instead she just sits down on a bed. Jaune sinks down next to her and places a hand on her cheek.
"I've never had the courage to say this until now, but... I love you, Pyrrha. You've always had confidence in me, even when I didn't. You are an amazing huntress, and you could have had anyone for a partner, but you chose me, a stupid guy who snuck his way into one of the four most dangerous schools in the world. At the dance, you were one of the two girls who I chickened out of asking, Weiss was the other, but when she said that guys only ever liked her for her family name, I realised I was in that boat with her. So I stopped being interested in her. Ever since then, you are the only girl I've had my eyes on, and everything, and I mean everything you do has me falling even further in love with you," he tells her.
"You... love me?" she asks, eyes brimming with tears.
Ever so gently, Jaune presses his lips to hers. When he pulls away, he gives his reply. "I do. I didn't fall in love with the three times Mistral Tournament Champion-"
"Four times."
"Whatever, that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is you. The you that is always so concerned with making sure others are okay. The you that can't stand bullies. The you that has food fights with our squad and can laugh when you lose them. The you that is terrible at throwing things that aren't metal. The you that apologizes for everything you think you've done wrong. The real you. That is who I fell in love with," he says.
She smiles at him and laughs even as the tears begin to fall.
"I'm sorry," she says softly.
"For what? Crying?" he asks.
She nods.
"Don't be," he tells her, wiping the tears away. "You don't have to say sorry for crying."
"I know." She rests her forehead against his and sighs, just breathing, existing in that moment.
In that moment, she could almost imagine that the invasion isn't happening around them, that Rosa and Penny aren't dead, that the school isn't swamped with grimm and attacking White Fang members. She can almost pretend that it is just the two of them in a world of their own.
"Just in case something bad happens and we get attacked here, would you be my girlfriend?" Jaune asks her. "My partner in more than just fighting?"
Pyrrha weakly nods against him. "I will."
Adrenalin fading, she drops off to sleep not long after, and Jaune lays her down on her bed. He then moves into action. He pushes another bed against the door to keep it from opening and then opens the window.
He grabs her spear/rifle and aims it out of the window.
Looking down the scope he looks for a target, a grimm he can shoot so that he can contribute to the battle. Targets are easy to find, and it only takes him five shots to figure out how to best aim from a distance.
He gets to work firing at the grimm.
"This could have been our day! Can't you see that?" Adam yells at her.
"I never wanted this! I wanted peace! I wanted equality, and this isn't equality!" she yells back at him, stumbling to her feet.
"What you wanted, isn't possible!" Adam taunts her, catching her bullets with his sword before knocking her back down again. "But I understand, because all I want is you, Blake." He kicks her weapon out of her hands.
Her back aches from all the rough movement, and she can feel blood running down her back from a reopened scar.
"And as I set out upon this world, and deliver the justice mankind so greatly deserves, I will make it my mission to destroy everything you love," he tells her, practically crooning in her ear towards the end.
"BLAKE! WHERE ARE YOU?!" Yang's voice yells out as she comes into view of them.
Adam looks over and smirks. "Starting with her."
He stands up and stabs her through her abdomen causing her to cry out.
Yang turns and practically flies towards them, right arm pulled back to deck Adam in the face. Blake watches in horror as a sickening *snick* sound filled the air followed by Yang's scream as she falls to the ground.
Adam had cut off Yang's right arm.
Blake forces herself to her feet and puts herself between Yang - who has passed out - and a leisurely approaching Adam.
"Why must you hurt me, Blake?" Adam asks her, before swinging his sword at her... only for her to turn out to be a shadow.
Adam turns and sees Blake hurriedly carrying Yang out of the library. He doesn't chase, he lets her run. He can always find her again.
Rosa flies towards the Wyvern and throws a scythe ahead of her, looking on in satisfaction as it rips the Wyvern's membrane-like wing.
It screeches and she collides with it, clinging to it for what seems like an eternity. The Wyvern grapples wildly, pulling the top of the tower away from the rest of it, sending rubble and debris falling to the ground below where Rosa can see students - members of her squad - fighting against the grimm.
She turns her attention to the top of the tower where a woman coos to the wounded Wyvern that Rosa is clinging to.
Rage fills her. This, this is the woman to blame for all of this destruction. She hefts both scythes in her hands and leaps upwards so that she is level with the Wyvern's neck, then she propels herself forward and spins, her scythes ripping through the massive grimm's neck and leaving the body to fall down the back of the tower.
She doesn't stop there though, she lands on what is now the top of the tower, the upper levels and roof completely torn away, and stares down the woman in front of her.
She centres herself for a moment before she speaks.
"I did not come here to reap the lives of people, only the grimm; so I will give you this one chance to change your path. Your invasion is finished. Cross me again and I will reap you indiscriminately to the grimm," she says lowly.
"I have already won," the woman dares to challenge.
Rosa shakes her head. Her Abuela's words echo in her mind, and she knows exactly what she has to do. She pushes all of her aura into it, and when she opens her eyes, white light spills forth from her eyes and illuminates the entire kingdom.
The screeches of thousands of grimm are like a choir of the most terrible degree, but it is a melody that Rosa will never forget.
When the light fades, the woman is clutching at her face as she flees, but Rosa doesn't pay her any mind. Her attention is on the sight of black ash rising from all over Vale, the sight of countless people in shock as thousands of grimm just... disappeared into ash.
For the most part, she is pleased with herself, but part of her is afraid.
She's just announced herself to the world.
There had already been rumours that the Grimm Reaper had the legendary Silver Eyes, rumours she had fuelled to spare her civilian side, but now, here is the proof. An entire city wiped clean of Grimm.
The hunter will become the hunted, but she will not bow down to anyone. She will not become prey.
'Only a fool hunts a hunter and treats them as prey,' Rosa thinks as she falls to her knees, trying to catch her breath. She doesn't have any energy to move from her position, so, as much as she wants to join her friends down below her, she can't. She will just have to wait.
Weiss turns to look at where the scream had come from and there lay Nora, clutching at her legs, trapped beneath the rubble that is falling from the tower above them.
"NORA!" Ren yells, rushing to her side, slicing open an ursa's throat when it tries to get between him and the love of his life.
"Ren," the ginger-haired girl whimpers, "it hurts."
Coco's team rushes to their side and Yatsuhashi lifts the rubble up and moves it far enough that Ren can pull Nora out from underneath.
Across the courtyard, Blake stumbles into view, an unconscious Yang in her arms.
"Blake!" Weiss calls out. Blake looks at her and loses her momentum, leaving her and Yang to tumble to the ground.
"Weiss. Please, Yang needs help!" the faunus begs.
Ren exchanges a look with Nora.
"Go help them, I'll be okay for now," Nora whimpers. Ren nods and rushes to his squadmates' side. Velvet passes him bandages and a bottle of disinfectant and he gets to work on stemming the bleeding.
"Weiss, I need you to cauterise the wound. She'll bleed out if we don't," Ren orders after disinfecting the wound. Weiss nods lamely and points Myrtenaster at Yang's... Yang's stump. A small steady stream of fire comes from the tip of her weapon and it licks at the bloodied mess where Yang's arm used to be.
Once cauterised, Ren bandages the stump, three times, and moves to treat Blake.
He bandages her abdomen and disinfects both the stab wound and the bleeding gashes on her back.
"It isn't as good as proper medical attention, but it will hold you both until we can get you to the hospital," he tells Blake. He waits until he sees her nod before he rushes back to Nora's side.
Before he can reach her, the world goes white around them. A white so blinding that none of them can see anything.
When it fades, the grimm are gone.
Ren doesn't question it, instead focusing all his attention on Nora.
Qrow sighs. It's over.
Oh, he doesn't delude himself that his fight is truly over, but this invasion, that is over.
He is comforted by the white light, having seen it before, unleashed upon the world by Summer Rose, and he wonders briefly what caused his long-lost niece to activate this power for the first time, but he is surprised at just how effective it was when the light fades.
He had expected that most of the grimm would just be encased by a thin layer of stone or frozen in ice that they would break free from, to spread the light so far must've taken everything out of that Silver Eyed warrior. So, to see that no grimm are left, he cannot reconcile this with his niece.
There is no way any Silver Eyed Warrior could have done this on their first attempt. So then... who?
Jaune nods to himself when he sees that the grimm had been destroyed. Whatever that light was, he is thankful. Too many have already died tonight, more would have died without that light.
He puts down Pyrrha's rifle and then gently shakes the girl awake.
"Come on, it's all over. Let's go join up with the others," he whispers.
Blearily, Pyrrha nods as Jaune gently presses her weapons into her hands. He scoops her up and carries her out of the building. She doesn't stay awake for long, instead burying her face into his chest as she clutches her weapons like a lifeline.
"I've got you," Jaune tells her just as she drops off into sleep again.
It takes a full twenty minutes before Rosa can revert her appearance to the one her friends know and drop down the back of the tower.
Her legs are still shaking, and she uses one of her swords as a walking stick as she hobbles around to the front of the tower. As she gets closer, she can see Yang passed out on the ground, Blake sprawled out and clutching her abdomen, and Ren tending to Nora's clearly crushed legs.
"What... what happened?" she asks, tears forming behind her goggles.
Weiss' head looks over her and then the Schnee heiress visible double-takes. "Rosa?"
Immediately, a dozen heads look at her.
Among them is Oscar, who tackles her in a hug. Registering that it is a hug, Rosa wraps her arms around him.
"You're alive," he sobs. "I thought... I thought you were dead."
Rosa pulls him off her and looks him dead in the eye.
"I promised that I wouldn't die, didn't I?" she tries to joke. Oscar lets out a hiccup.
"Not funny," he mumbles.
"I know. I'm sorry, Ojos Avellana," Rosa mumbles back, tucking his head under her chin as she pulls him back into a hug.
"You're forgiven," Oscar mumbles into her shoulder.
They stand there like that, just the two of them holding each other in the wreckage around them, for a few minutes. It's a comfort, knowing in the most primal way possible that the other is okay. Reassuring themselves and each other that they're okay. It's something that they both need so badly at that moment in time.
Arslan walks over. "He cried himself to sleep while we were still in Amity. He managed to miss the light that destroyed all the grimm," she explains to her.
Rosa forces her facial features into confusion. "What... light?"
"You didn't see it?" Weiss asks.
"No, I didn't. I only woke back up fifteen minutes ago," Rosa lies.
"It was this... white light, and it was blindingly white. I couldn't see anything. When it faded away, the grimm, all of them, had turned to ash like some miracle. I've never seen anything like it," Weiss tries to explain.
Rosa hums to herself. "That... that sounds like what I saw happen in the tunnels at Mountain Glenn. Did the Grimm Reaper show up? Maybe they're responsible?" she suggests.
"Maybe," Weiss concedes. "The Grimm Reaper certainly showed. They decapitated a Wyvern."
"That sounds... intense," Rosa forces out.
"Yeah..." Weiss trails off and looks over her shoulder. "There's something you should see."
Rosa follows Weiss and is shocked by what she is shown.
"What happened to them?" Rosa asks.
"We don't know. Blake showed up carrying Yang, and they were both pretty badly wounded. She didn't say what happened. Nora though, her legs got crushed by debris falling from the tower," Weiss explains as they look at the three girls lying on stretchers. There are other stretchers laid out, Pyrrha is laying in one of them with Jaune sitting at her side, and Rosa plops down onto another of them.
"Do you mind if I take a nap? Today's been... a lot. I don't think my aura's managed to recover much after the airship explosion," she asks.
"Go ahead. We're all heading to the hospital to get checked over and get any necessary treatments once transports come to pick us up. You'll just get moved along with everyone else," Weiss tells her.
With that, Rosa lays back and lets oblivion overtake her. She wasn't lying when she said it had been a long day after all.
A/N: Welcome back to the Grimm Reaper, hope you enjoyed this chapter. Once again I was late getting this out (I got caught up with uni and then with my job and didn't even remember until about 30 minutes ago that I hadn't put this up) but hopefully this makes up for it. I know I've said it before, and I will say it again, but things add up differently. Sure, Penny and Ozpin still died and Yang still lost an arm, but Pyrrha is alive (woo Jaune gets to have a relationship), Nora is going to have some issues with her legs, etc. etc. and these things do add up.
Anyways, let me know your thoughts with a review, or drop me a PM if you want and/or need someone to talk to. Otherwise, I'll see you next week (hopefully on time) with another chapter.
- RebeccaMagic9