ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST
CHAPTER ONE
"Every life started somehow, somewhere." - Irena Arc
A woman with long black hair over her right eye and burning ember eyes stared down at a kneeling girl with crimson hair and emerald eyes, an arrow in both the redhead's heel and chest as she struggled to breathe. A massive Grimm Wyvern was perched, growling, on the tower outside the shattered windows.
"It's unfortunate you were promised power that was never really yours. But take comfort in knowing I will use it in ways you could never imagine." Cinder said.
"Do you believe in Destiny?" Pyrrha asked.
"Yes." Cinder replied as she placed her hand on Pyrrha's cheek.
At that moment, Pyrrha's right arm surged upwards, a black glow sputtering around a cracked spear blade in her right hand. The blade plunged deep into Cinder's chest, who gasped in pain and shock. The Wyvern wailed in shock as well, pushing back off the tower.
"Well I don't." Pyrrha said in return.
Cinder stared down at Pyrrha, then stared incredulously at her profusely bleeding chest, before screaming in anger with her hand lighting up with fire on Pyrrha's cheek, both eyes releasing flames at the same time. At that moment two things happened, Pyrrha glowed and burned away into a pile of ashes on the ground, while a girl in red and black with a giant scythe suddenly rushed into the room through the broken window only to witness her friend get burned to cinders.
"PYRRHA!" Ruby yelled in anguish.
With her quickly fading vision, Cinder whirled to face Ruby, but paused in shock and fear as Ruby's eyes began to glow with a very bright silver light. The Wyvern wailed in fear and began to fly away, but Ruby's eyes suddenly flashed brightly with the Silver Light flowing outwards like rapids through a canyon. Cinder cried out in pain but quickly fell silent as she was tossed off of the tower, the giant Wyvern roaring in pain with its tail becoming coated with stone and its movements slowing down, though it still managed to fly away in one piece.
As this happened, the Grimm all around Beacon Academy as well as in the City of Vale down below began to scramble in disarray, the Huntsmen and Huntresses fighting them beginning to get the upper hand, pushing them back away from the injured behind them.
Holding her riding crop, Glynda Goodwitch arrived at the top floor of Beacon Academy to recover Ruby, the purple glowing elevator screeching the entire way up. She ignored the softly glowing pile of ashes nearby in favor of getting Ozpin's most prized student to safety, the elevator screeching again on the way down, once more surrounded by a purple glow.
Weiss Schnee yelped in surprise at Beacon's landing pad as she stabbed a retreating Griffon, only for it to spit out the terribly wounded form of notorious thief Roman Torchwick, his signature hat nowhere to be seen and his clothes torn up with dozens of teeth marks. The Griffon flew away in retreat with many other older Grimm the moment it noticed its kin being pushed back and slaughtered.
Adam Taurus yelled the order to retreat once the White Fang lost the support of the hacked Atlesian Knights and the Grimm, hundreds of Faunus bearing the symbol of the White Fang booking it out of Vale, hundreds more getting caught and detained by law enforcement before they could do so.
Atlas soldiers all across Vale began dragging away the faulty robots to be scrapped or reprogrammed, many more helping the Hunters around them to defend the citizens of Vale. Some citizens began kicking the inactive robots to take out their anger somehow.
Once the Grimm were taken care of, Huntsmen and Huntresses as well as Atlas soldiers scrambled to rescue those trapped in buildings and most civilians moved to help get the injured to a safe place to be given medical attention.
Using emergency signal repeaters, a broadcast was send to every Scroll in Vale and Beacon. Through it, Glynda Goodwitch spoke to the people, informing them of the hacking of the Atlas forces by White Fang spies and the beginning of the rebuilding efforts. She called for peace between Vale's citizens and the Atlas soldiers and asked them to work together as they both were victims of the attack. Morale across the city rose marginally.
Soon afterwards at Beacon Academy, the able bodied students gathered in the remains of the amphitheater as the soon-to-be Headmistress Goodwitch called for an assembly. She informed them with heavy melancholy of the deaths among them, including the former Headmaster Ozpin and the top scorer of the first year students Pyrrha Nikos, leading a moment of silence. She then informs them on a slightly lighter note of the death of the mastermind behind the attack as well, Cinder Fall having been confirmed to be deceased at the bottom of Beacon Tower. Afterwards, the Headmistress headed back to Beacon Tower to attempt to gauge the damage.
Atop Beacon Tower, a softly glowing pile of ashes began pulsing with faint Silver Light. A red Aura came off from the shards of what appeared to be some red and gold weapon at one point, moving to the pile of ash. Small red flecks of dust floated up the side of the tower from a dead woman's body in some crushed bushes below and added to the ash pile, the dust glowing with a faint orange Aura. The broken gears in the tower began to flake apart into small bits of dust, also adding to the glowing pile of ash, each fleck of dust glowing with a faint green Aura.
The ashes began to change color, becoming something closer to brown rather than gray. The ashes moved, seeming to become something closer to a uniform texture, starting to shape into something humanoid in form. After a few minutes, that humanoid mass of ash, blood and glowing light turned into a young girl, no older than nine years of age, with long crimson hair flowing over the right of her face and tanned skin. The girl yawns and opens her eyes, both a startling silver in color, before stretching and sitting up, dazedly looking around her.
A green eyed, blonde woman with a lone curl of hair framing the right side of her face let out a long, bedraggled sigh as she walked at a brisk pace under the ashen sky above her. A couple graying strands can be seen among the tresses of golden blonde hair.
"So much senseless death today, and for what? Power?" She asked herself.
This woman is Glynda Goodwitch, now in line to be Headmistress Goodwitch of Beacon Academy following the unfortunate death of Headmaster Ozpin. She is currently walking quickly to Beacon Tower for the purposes of observing the damage across Beacon, to note the problem spots that require her attention immediately as well as the overall condition of the school.
"And the elevator is still broken. Even more use of my Semblance, my Aura is not infinite." Glynda grumbled.
She stepped into the broken elevator inside the tower, whipped out a riding crop from her boot and a purple glow surrounded the elevator. The box began to screech loudly as it was forced to rise up the tower despite its warped shape. Upon arriving at the top of the tower, she replaced her riding crop in her boot and stepped out, looking down at her Scroll tablet and getting ready to take notes.
"Okay, the office structure is destroyed, needs rebuilding. Elevator shaft needs to be redone, elevator box needs replacing. Windows shattered, frames need replacing. Brickwork falling apart, needs patching up. Furnature destroyed from Nikos' fight with Fall..." Glynda began before trailing off as her eyes noticed a young girl sitting, unclothed, on the floor.
Glynda rubbed her eyes with a closed fist and looked again, realizing the girl is actually there, more so that she seems familiar somehow, but she can't recognize who the girl is. She looks around the office again, only now noticing the absence of the cogs that used to perpetually turn above Ozpin's office. The girl closes her eyes and fell onto her back, having fainted. Glynda shut her Scroll and ran to pick up the girl, wrapping her in her cape.
"Okay, need to get you to the infirmary." Glynda said to herself.
Glynda jogged back to the elevator, brandished her riding crop and went down to ground floor, the girl seeming to be asleep in her arms despite the loud screeching from the elevator. She jogged her way over to the main building, through the halls and pushing aside debris that still needs to be cleaned up, arriving at the infirmary to hand the girl over to Professor Peach for a checkup and perhaps treatment.
"Who are you?" Glynda asked, puzzled, watching as the pink haired woman went about her duties.
"Could you repeat that?" Glynda asked, bewildered.
"The girl seems to have genes from four distinct sources. The ones I can identify are from Ruby Rose, Pyrrha Nikos and Cinder Fall. And from public records, she doesn't exist." Professor Peach replied.
Glynda sighed deeply, feeling an impending headache on its way.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
A/N: So, this girl. Who is she? And who is the 4th source of her genes? I think we can tell what physical features help us distinguish whose genes are whose, that being the hair is Cinder's, the hair color is Pyrrha's, the eyes are Ruby's, but who gave her that tanned skin? You got a hint before the girl was born, and you'll be getting hints all throughout the story until a very important character or two makes their return to Beacon.
So, a reaction between Ruby's Silver Eyes, Cinder's residual Aura and blood, Pyrrha's residual Aura and her ashes, but the office's cogs as well? What might this mean for this little girl? Stay tuned, hopefully my depression stays away long enough to write a chapter two for once in my life. It already took me 5 days before I chose to upload this.