The screen began to bubble and boil as the familiar silver door rose from it's depths, the thick purple chains corroding and breaking apart as the door opened up and bathed everything in dark purple.
From the tainted light, came a single red eye that glared at the screen before the door slammed shut and everything became static, a crumbling rose symbol appearing every so often as the title began to form.
The Ruinverse: Chapter Thirty, Valian Volcanism.
Xxxxxxx
-Remnant, Sanus, Sumire-
ZAP!
BOOOOOOM!
Thunderous sounds, unearthly to all within the small village, rang across the sky, tainted by a blackness greater than the most vile Grimm, as ash and pumice falling upon the earth like drops of rain, a thick gray blanket of the toxic material covering all in its path.
The streets were barren of all its citizens, animals laying dead on the roads due to inhaling the toxic air, and, for all the world, was seemingly abandoned to the putrid storm above.
But in a small corner of the village, ramshackled and on the brink of structural collapse, was a small white building sporting a sign that read 'Doctor Ali Babwai's Clinic' on it right on the metal door.
As the camera moved towards the inner workings of this rundown clinic, a rather clean office with some cobwebs near the corners, the sounds of groaning could be heard near the back room, which was covered in blood, ash and blackened bandages.
On the rectangular bed, was a tall woman covered in thick diluted white bandages that made the figure look more like a decaying mummy than anything else, especially with the dried blood near the eyes and mouth areas, who groaned in pain as her left arm, coated in thick burns and infected pus covered scars, was being rebandaged by the local doctor.
"Almost done." said a tall tan skinned man with short black hair, dull gray eyes, slim red glasses, wearing a red short sleeved dress shirt, a long white coat that hung from his shoulders, blue jeans, and black loafers, as he tightened the bandage with one hand and applied some water to the arm with the other. "Just try not to move."
"Ah…mmmaaam."
"There." he said while carefully placing the now bandaged arm back down on the bed, his eyes glazing over his work to locate any imperfections. "I'm sorry for the patchwork job, but given I'm just a poor doctor, this is the best I can do."
"Ah…I understand." the woman groaned, coughing a little as fresh blood formed near the mouth. "Cough! It's…hard, given…what happened."
The man looked at the blood before sighing and walked to a nearby desk, where a fresh roll of bandages were stored in the second drawer. "Perhaps, but I still have no idea what exactly happened in Vale. There was an ash cloud, yes, and a quake that destroyed part of Sumire's walls, but besides that, nothing."
"Cough! Makes...sense. It was so sudden...nothing could be done to warn the others." she groaned while coughing heavily, causing the doctor to move quickly towards the bed, carefully unwrapping the bandages to reveal a heavily burned lower jaw with small patches of tanned skin in between pale scars. "There was nothing…anyone could do."
"I see, but what about you?" he asked while wiping the blood from her lips with a wet cloth, the thunder outside becoming more frequent. "You seem to be knowledgeable of Vale's fate, despite only appearing on my doorsteps just five hours after the quakes."
"...I can't say."
"Oh come now." the doctor said with a huff. "You can tell me, it's not like anyone else is here to mock your word over theirs. Besides, it might pass the time until someone launches an evacuation of the village."
"I don't know."
"Don't worry, I won't judge you."
"...fine." the woman said while coughing a little. "It's not like it matters anyway…I'm going to die."
The doctor raised an eyebrow at this while taking a seat on a nearby chair, crossing his left leg over his right leg. "Tell me your story, from the beginning."
The woman, feeling weaker with every passing second as blood began to form near the hands and neck, coughed once before painfully turning her head in the direction of the doctor. "My name isn't important, nor is my past, but…I was there when everything went to shit."
BOOOOOOOM!
"It was a quiet day, nothing special at all. Just people minding their business, the poor scrounging for food, and would-be Huntsmen running about with scythe guns." the woman said as the thunder outside began to increase in intensity, the weight of the ash and pumice caused the wooden roof to groan and crack. "For many, this was a normal day. But for me, it was just...business as usual."
"Mmm, it sounds like you knew about the Huntsmen lifestyle, you were one weren't you?"
"Perhaps, I never saw it that way. It was just, well, another crappy job for a girl with nothing else to lose." she said before coughing, causing some blood to form near her nose. "COUGH! Ugh..would've been fine just up and leaving the business, but fate changed it."
The doctor nodded while eyeing the ash outside, noting that the blanket of the toxic materials was slowly rising to about two inches, possibly more.
"The entire city, from the docks to the very center of Beacon Academy…was burned. Liquid magma and superheated gas erupted from the ground, destroying everything in its path." she said as her right hand clenched a little, blood and pus busting out from the bandages as the doctor quickly moved to change them. "It was a nightmare. Skyscrapers falling into a red hot maul, people's brains busting from the inside before being turned into fuel for the pit, and…then the clouds."
"Clouds?" the doctor asked while pulling off the bandages near the fingers, revealing blackened nails and exposed carbonized joints. "What do you mean clouds?"
"I mean…the clouds of toxins, hotter than any Fire Dust ever mined from the ground. Then, came the fire, oh gods, the fire. So many flames, so much destruction. And they were the size of Atlasian Drones!"
The doctor, feeling unnerved by the idea of fireballs the size of robotic automatons, especially the ones Atlas used for war, carefully replaced the bandages, making sure not to break the carbonized joints in fear it might create more trouble for the lady.
"Everything was gone in an instant. I…was only able to escape thanks to being on the outskirts of the city, an airship bound for Vale from Haven." she said while coughing louder, her jerking causing her right thumb and middle finger joints to snap off, revealing nothing but painless blackened bone. "COUGH! COUGH!"
"Careful, we don't need you to expire on us." he said while putting the bandages on the stubbed fingers, feeling terrible that this woman is literally falling apart and she didn't even have nerves to register with anymore.
"COUGH...oh…this was supposed to be…an easy…job." she muttered to herself, blood dripping from her mouth before soaking into the bandages. "Get in, get out…nothing like this. Nothing…like this."
"Hush." the doctor said while feeling sympathy for the girl. "Don't worry, you're safe for now. This 'storm' will end eventually."
"I'm…not afraid of th..e…storm. I'm…afraid…of the..q..ueen…" she said before her body became limp, her fight for survival reaching its final, tranquil end.
As the doctor closed his eyes, moving back to silently pray for the mysterious woman's soul, he heard the roof creaking with the weight of several pounds of ash, seemingly about to break.
ZAP!
BOOOOOM!
'A pity.' he thought while lightning flashed near the windows. 'If she had lasted longer, maybe help would have arrived. Still, I better make sure her body has a proper funeral…once I get out of here with the body that is.'
Rumble.
His eyes widened as the ground began to quake, slowly growing in intensity as the very roof started to crack, the walls shaking off its foundations and objects began to fall upon the ground. 'What? Another quake?'
Rumble.
Rumble.
RUMBLE!
RUMBLE!
CRACK!
CRASH!
The doctor stumbled as books, glass instruments and several bookshelves crashed upon the floor, the earth beginning to open up as he quickly ran out, just in time for the floor to give way.
SPLAT!
Sending everything into a pit of molten lava, including the mysterious woman's corpse, her green hair sticking out of the loosening bandages as she fell and was instantly melted into oblivion.
"Shit!" the man yelled, rushing out of his clinic just as the building began to fall into the pit, ash filling his lungs as tried to breathe. "COUGH COUGH!" 'What is going on!?'
RUMBLE!
RUMBLE!
As fissures began opening all across Sumire, destroying everything in its path, the sounds of screams rang out, all snuffed out by the magma or by falling balls of superheated obsidian.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
And then, the sound of a beastrial howl, filled with anger and malice, rang across the village, the doctor's ears ringing in pain as he clutched them, blood dripping from the inner ears.
CRACK!
RUMBLE!
As the doctor's eyes began to fail him, he noticed that plumes of flames were racing across every flammable building still standing on solid earth, a trail of lava forming from the east and right towards his direction.
RUMBLE!
RUMBLE!
'Shit!' he thought before noticing something in this distance, a figure, obscured by a massive cloud of toxic gas that raced towards him with great neck speed.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
RUMBLE!
CRACKLE!
And in an instant.
"AHHH-"
The doctor, known formerly as Doctor Ali Babwai of Sumire, had his brains melted, his body carbonized, and his organs liquidized until he was nothing but a skeleton, blackened by the might of the pyroclastic flow, Remnant's most destructive force of nature.
RUMBLE!
RUMBLE!
As the bones fell to the ground, the lava consuming the leftover carbon in the process, the figure moved closer and closer to the position of the former clinic's location.
This being a ten foot tall deep metallic onyx skinned young woman with long blazing yellowish-orange hair with dulling red tips that dripped to the ground like molten glass, a cowlick sticking out on the top of her head, pure white eyes that glowed with the intensity of a sun, a H cup chest and large ass, thick orange-red stone that covered her body except for the back and front as a V shaped opening exposed her rear and breasts before ending near the groin, long flaming claw-like nails that blazed with intense yellow flames, cracked jagged lines on the shoulders, back, arms, chest, hips, legs, and sides of her head that expelled a thick aura of blazing red flames, long taloned feet covered in bright red liquid metal, and expelling a thick cloud of black superheated soot from her mouth and nostrils as her expression was filled with inhuman aggression and a single instinctual goal.
The destruction of everything.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" she howled with rage as the screen became clouded with smoke, obscuring everything as the world of man melted away into the fiery embrace of this queen of fire's wrath.
Xxxxxxx
Name/Designation Title: Queen of Fire (Valian Volcanism Yang Branwen Xiao Long- VVYBXLRWBY)
Age: 17
Affiliation: Ultimate Evil.
Dimension: - 199999909- 02 VVYBXLRWBY
Abilities: Enhanced strength, speed, endurance, agility, durability, and longevity, Huntress skills and knowledge (nullified by feralization), hand to hand combat skills (limited by feralization), damage absorption (via semblance), heat and fire manipulation (via semblance), heightened aggression, self repairing armored hide, heat immunity, cold immunity, volcanic fields manipulation (mobile), ash manipulation, ash generation, thermal manipulation, volcanic adaption, volcano generation (limited), magma manipulation, magma mimicry, lava generation, poison cloud generation, smoke secretion, smoke mimicry, eruption inducement, earthquake generation, volcano physiology (armor), environmental manipulation (subconsciously), magma embodiment (limited), fire embodiment (limited), soot manipulation, soot generation, feral mentality, limited sapience, limited immortality (needs magma and aura to survive), eternal youth, aura absorption (via magma or direct touch).
Semblance(s): Burn (Permanently active)
Bio: In this timeline, when the continents first formed, an extremely large magma chamber, about seventy miles deep, would form under the Sanus continent, right in the spot of the future City of Vale, and in the intervening centuries, small quakes would occasionally stir under said city. However, due to Grimm attacks and the Fall of Mountain Glenn, these quakes went undetected and thus, during Team RWBY's infiltration into a White Fang Valian Sect's rally, the mother of all eruptions took place right under their feet, the magma chamber expelling its contents into a massive supervolcano that destroyed Vale and Vytal, caused ash and smoke to billow into the atmosphere and plunge the world into an ice age. Without sunlight, all life on Remnant faced extinction as survivors of the supervolcano's initial explosive power and pyroclastic flows fled into the outskirts of their Kingdom, unable to comprehend anything that just happened. As the other Kingdoms closed their borders and prepared for a life without sunlight, the Queen of the Grimm, Salem, became frustrated at this natural event and, having lost her chance at the Relic of Choice and the Fall Maiden, decided to use her newly ignited fury to eliminate all life, regardless of species or personal worth. However, unbeknownst to the wider world, a single being survive the volcano's initial blast, that being Yang Xiao Long, who, standing in the middle of ground zero, utilized her semblance to protect herself from the flames but instead was infused with the supervolcano's full power, causing her mind to snap as her fury drove her to burn everything in her path, her semblance unable to turn off. Fueled with magma and her body encased in superheated rock armor, humanity and the faunus began to fear the wrath of the two queens of Remnant, one with an unmovable army of darkness and the other one having the blazing power of a thousand suns. In the end, life will either suffocate by poisonous gasses, be mauled by monsters or burned by fire…and neither sound peaceful.