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 Seventy Five, The Fall.
Xxxxxxx
-Remnant, Sanus, Vale-
Woooosh.
The wind blew across the gray sky as everything…was leveled to the ground, great buildings of man crumbled and left standing on metallic frames, concrete raised from their foundations and forming great hills of artificial stone, burnt trees lining once great pastries of man.
This was Vale…and it was completely destroyed.
As the camera moved across the dusty wasteland, the broken bodies of mechanized Atlasian Knights and Paladins lined the ruined roads as the charred bodies of humans and faunus were buried in the rubble, pieces of weaponry and clothes sticking out while burning fire flickered weakly from once bustling homes and hotels.
Silence filled the desecrated capital of the Valeian Kingdom as the camera inched closer and closer to Beacon Academy itself, home of the Huntsmen and main communication point of the entire Sanus continent.
Yet in place of a castle, was a ten mile deep crater, hardened stone and metal jutting outwards from the crater's sides like grizzled unnatural trees, as a strange viscous orange gas billowed outwards from its center.
Crack.
Crack.
But lo, near the left most portion of the crater, a small mound of marble and steel began to move, inch by inch as a yellow energy flared from underneath.
Crack!
CRACK!
"YAH!" Yang cried out as she punched the debris off of her, her body covered in dust and blood, as she panted heavily due to her aura being nearly exhausted. "Oh, gods…I thought I was going to suffocate!"
"Ow."
Her eyes widened as she looked down, seeing her partner, Blake Belladonna, laying near her feet as her right eye was sliced down the left side. "Blake! Are you ok!?"
"Ugh….besides being tackled to the ground by you just when…he was about to stab me." she groaned while standing up and holding her eye with her right hand. "I'm…managing."
The blonde brawler smiled before noticing the wasteland around her and paled in shock. "Oh…gods. What the…wait, the explosion!"
"What explosion?"
"The one that nearly killed us, the one that made me jump in to save you." she said while feeling dread entering her heart. "It did all of this…oh gods."
Blake stared at the crater, the orange gas rising higher and higher into the sky as she felt the hairs on her ears stand on end. 'What is this feeling? The danger has passed yet…I feel like we're in terrible danger.'
"Oh gods Ruby!? She was on top of Beacon's tower!" Yang gasped in horror as Blake placed a hand on her right arm.
"We need to find any survivors. To get a better picture of what exactly happened here."
"I know what happened! It was a Grimm!"
"What Grimm can cause all of this?" the faunus said with a deadpan expression as Yang was left speechless, unable to come up with a concrete answer. "Anyway, we need to find survivors, get them out of here before the Grimm regroup and outnumber us."
Yang nodded before looking at Blake's weapons, now completely broken at the blades, as she looked at her gauntlets and noticed they were cracked. "Yeah…we might be unable to fight back. But that doesn't mean I won't punch them into last Yangsteryear!"
"Yang." Blake said while facepalming with her left hand, only to wince in pain. "Ah ah! Pain!"
As Yang tried to comfort her partner, she heard a loud 'scream' of frustration…coming towards her from behind.
"AH! Stupid leg!"
"Wait, I know that Scheeme anywhere!" Yang said before turning around. "Wei-oh my god! What happened to your leg!?"
Screet.
Screet.
Screet.
"Ah!" Weiss groaned in pain while dragging…her now ice covered stump of a right leg, which went from her upper hip to her toes in a crude human-like leg design, across the ground as she moved towards her team. "Damn it! Damn it! This is harder than it looks, or feels!"
"Weiss! What happened to you!?" Yang yelled while Blake felt a twinge of guilt enter her heart, feeling somewhat responsible for her condition, even if it wasn't rationally her fault.
"Ah! Ah...the airship I was on was destroyed by a giant blast of orange energy! I was the only one to get out of the flaming rubble!" she yelled while placing herself on a fallen pillar, her leg forcibly pushed to the side as blood dripped from the hip area. "Ah…had to…cut my own leg off! With a shard of glass too!"
"Well…that sucks." Yang said, while trying to make light of the situation, and failing miserably. "But hey, you have a new leg-"
"This one hurts! I had to use my own semblance to make it and by the gods, it HURTS to move it!"
"Please relax." Blake said while moving towards the Schnee. "If you don't then you'll lose a lot more energy, and blood, mostly the blood."
"..." she sighed while looking at the ruined school with a sad expression on her face. "I can't believe it, everything is gone…completely destroyed."
"Yeah."
"Weiss, did you see Ruby?" Yang said with worry.
"No, all I saw was a blinding flash of light, then burning rubble." Weiss said while not noticing a figure crawling out of a nearby debris 'hill'. "It was horrible. So much…blood and organs…"
Crack.
Crack.
Blake's ears twitched as she took notice of the debris. "Wha-"
CRACK!
"AAAAAHHHHH!"
Yang's eyes turned a dark red as she saw one of the perpetrators of the collapse of Vale, the one that nearly killed her team, erupting from the broken rubble like an angry Beowolf.
The dreaded Adam Taurus, leader of Vale's White Fang.
And…he was screaming in pain?
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" The bull faunus cried out as he held his eyes in pain, blood dripping from his forehead as Yang, Blake and Weiss looked stunned and a little confused, although for the Belladonna and Schnee, they were actually terrified of him.
"What the?"
"AAAAHHHHHH! MY EYES!" Adam screamed as he pulled his hands away from his face, revealing bleeding eyeless sockets in place of his normal eyes, a SDC brand covering most of his left eye. "MY EYES!"
"Oh gods." Yang muttered in shock as Adam continued to scream in pain. "The blast must've damaged his eyes."
"Yeah…" Blake muttered while feeling conflicted between sadistically chuckling at his misery and being empathetic to her former partner. "But what should we do with him?"
"Do with him!? You can push him into the crater!" Weiss screeched in anger. "He was the one that caused all of this! He was the one that tried to KILL us!"
"True." Yang muttered while Adam continued to scream, running about like a headless chicken. "But he isn't causing anyone trouble, just…acting like someone ripped his eyes out."
"That's also true." Blake grumbled. "But once he's done screaming, he's going to hear us and then attack us again. And it will be hard when our weapons are shattered and our aura is nearly depleted.
"AAAAAAHHHHH!"
"Just shut him up or something!" Weiss groaned in pain. "The screaming isn't helping with my missing leg!"
As Yang was about to wake towards the bull faunus, she noticed that he was stumbling towards-
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
The edge of the crater, which he fell into as the screams died away into an empty silence.
"Well….that solves one issue." Yang sweatdropped while feeling a little bad for the faunus, but not by much.
"Yeah, but it doesn't help with our current situation." Blake said while her ears twitched, having heard the loud 'splat' from within the crater's depths. "Like, how exactly are we going to move Weiss out of here?"
"I can always hold her." Yang said with a smile.
"And have you peek up my skirt or worse, break my prosthetic ICE leg!? No!" the Schnee yelled with a flustered tone. "I'm not letting you do that Yang Xiao Long!"
"Relax, I'm careful as Schnee."
"Puns aren't helping your cause!" Weiss yelled before noticing that the entire area…was starting to become covered in a layer of orange gas. "Oh great, fumes. What next? A Dust explosion!?"
"I don't think this is fumes. Or even normal gas." Blake said while sniffing the air, feeling a chill going down her spine. "It smells…off."
"Maybe it's from the generators?" Yang suggested with a shrug. "Or maybe leftover…dead guy stench?"
"Yang, we haven't seen any corpses."
"True…say Weiss." she said while looking at her sister's partner. "Did you see any dead bodies when you came here by chance?"
"Well…no. Didn't see any corpses since getting out of the wreckage, and when I did take notice of them I didn't see them again." Weiss said with a groan of pain. "I've been trying to not fall unconscious for a few minutes, it takes a lot of concentration."
"Then…where are the bodies?"
Wooooosh.
A chill ran down the spines of Team RWBY as they looked rather perplexed and terrified at the notion of a corpseless wasteland.
However, as they tried to think of a rational plan of action, Weiss noticed that Blake's eyes were starting to…gain orange cracks near the eyes.
"Blake? Are you feeling alright?"
"I…I feel fine." Blake muttered while cracks began to form near her lips, her body twitching slightly before blood oozed from her eyes. "AAAAAAAHHHHH!"
"BLAKE!"
The faunus screamed in animalistic pain as the cracks slid down her face and started covering her body, orange energy leaking from said cracks as Weiss' body began to experience the same affliction.
"What the!? It burns! IT BURNS!"
Yang's eyes widened in terror as she saw her team, her friends, bleeding out from their eyes before suddenly-
Crash!
Crash!
They fell to the ground, lifeless as the cracks continued expelling the orange energy, the orange gas slowly condensing around the blonde, who covered her mouth with both hands to keep the gas from entering her body.
'What is up with this gas!? How…wait, is this why there weren't any bodies around here!?' she thought before noticing something rising from the crater, moving closer and closer to her general direction.
Woooosh!
Wooooosh!
'What the…no.' Yang thought as her eyes widened in shock and horror, for the figure that moved right above her was….too familiar to her. 'It…It can't be. It can't be!'
"We are." said the dark yet feminine voice of Ruby Rose, her eyes covered in orange cracks as her…head, coated in orange gas, was the only thing remaining of her body. "Fall. We are incomplete."
"R-Ruby!?" Yang cried out as her eyes began to ooze with blood, orange cracks forming from her lips as the head of her sister looked at her with a monotone expression.
"We are Fall. We are many." the head said as the bodies of Weiss and Blake rose upwards, their voices the same as their team leader along with their expressionless faces. "We desire to be whole."
As Yang's mind began to slip, memories and skills leaving her like a leaking pool, she saw her hands expelling orange energy from the deep cracks erupting from her very body.
"We shall be whole once more."
'Ruby…' Yang thought before her head slipped downwards, only for it to rise again with the same expressionless face as her team. "We shall be whole."
"We shall be whole."
The camera zoomed back a little as the bodies of Team RWBY looked at the screen, their bodies glowing a bright orange as thousands of shadows dotted the landscape behind them, all sporting glowing orange eyes.
"We are Fall." they said at once as the screen began to flicker with static. "We are incomplete."
SWUISSSH!
ZZZAISH!
"We shall be whole once more." they said all at once before the screen went black.
Xxxxxxx
Name/Designation Title: 'Ruby Rose'/The Fall (The Fall Ruby Rose- TFRRRWBY)
Age: ? (Main Host is considered 15)
Affiliation: Ultimate Evil
Dimension: - 010001001- 30 TFRRRWBY
Abilities: Enhanced strength, speed, durability, adaptability and agility, Silver Eyes (Enhanced by overloaded Fall Maiden powers), high marksmanship, Huntress training and knowledge, scythe handling and knowledge, sniper rifle handling and knowledge, HCSS handling and knowledge, limited hand to hand combat skills, limited martial art skills, Dust handling and knowledge, memory absorption, body possession (via Fall Maiden powers and gaseous form), knowledge absorption, semblance absorption, aura absorption, miasmakinesis/gas manipulation (via Fall Maiden powers/gaseous cloud-like body), hive mind (grows with each entities' minds consumed), metaphysical immortality (exists in a gaseous/magical form), extremely high magical pool (via overloaded Fall Maiden powers).
Semblance(s): Petal Burst/Speed, Various (due to hive mind).
Bio: In this timeline, during the Fall of Vale, Cinder Fall appeared in Beacon Academy's Vault and shot one of her arrows at Amber, the current Fall Maiden, during the transfer sequence with Pyrrha Nikos….yet she aimed not for the lungs but the heart. This single action spelled disaster for Vale itself as when the arrow pierced Amber's heart, it caused the Fall Maiden power to overload and explode like a nuclear bomb, destroying not only Beacon Academy but the city of Vale and every single city along the Sanus coastline, leaving very few survivors in its wake, which includes Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna, Adam Taurus and Weiss Schnee. However, unbeknownst to any of the survivors, the Fall Maiden power, now unbounded and fused the many humans, Grimm, faunus and machines coughed up in the explosion into a single cloud-like entity called The Fall, has been consuming the consciousness of anything left in the blast zone, hoping to become 'whole again' by absorbing the individual minds into its gestalt consciousness while using the lifeless bodies as puppets for it to spread outwards into the unaffected portions of the world, the powers and memories of each mind consumed at its beck and call. Utilizing the body of Ruby Rose, whose Silver Eyes actually HELPED fuse the cloud of magical energy into its current form, as the main component for the shared consciousness, The Fall began to pick off the survivors and, over the course of ten years, consumed the last sentient beings in Remnant. Unrelenting, never resting and metaphysically immortal, the Fall is the perfect storm for this version of Remnant...a clear reminder that one action can devastate the world in odd ways. So remember kiddies, always aim for the knee!