A/N: Chapter 78 of REKT. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or teams of RWBY, they belong to Rooster Teeth and Monty Oum. What I do own are the characters and teams of my OCs: REKT, GTSY, KACE and DAZE. I also claim Ingrid, Teo, Reina's parents and aunt as well.

Special thanks to the reviewers and to the readers who Fav/Alert this story, I really appreciate it.

Chapter 78: Goodbye

Within the Ruins...

As I leaned against a thrown-out wall to catch my breath my Aura flashed briefly to heal a wound, the air was thick with vast amounts of smoke and debris. It was stifling and chokes out any minuscule amount of air that filters in from above. The chamber that I once viewed as something that would have provided shelter now collapsed within itself behind me; if anything, the piece I was currently leaning against was the only faction of the original left standing. Within my mind, the Aura used to illustrate my surroundings began to flicker, and I assumed that it was due to my fatigue or over-exertion of energy. I winced with annoyance as my right hand throbbed lightly, a soon to be a dragged out reminder of hindrance.

I can't stay here for long, I could only say it was only a miracle I alluded her...she'll catch up in no time. Not to mention her incredible sense of accuracy to pinpoint my location in a heartbeat is such a pain in the ass; I can barely land any counter-strikes or sneak attacks. Hauling myself to my feet I shuffled away, searching for a way back to the entrance.

Ugh, fighting within a tight enclosure was such a mistake. With all these attacks the entire structure collapses inward, and I will find myself buried with possibly no way out. Keeping my ears opened I trudged onward, feeling my surroundings by touch and relying on my other senses to conserve energy. The flickering of Aura within my head was an inconvenience, pulsating and fading in and out the more I pushed my body to its limit. Growling with annoyance I felt sluggish, my feet like cinder blocks sloshing through muddy water.

Perhaps it was the lack of oxygen coupled with the thick dust or the fact that I cannot accurately pinpoint my opponent that played a part to my foul mood. Another thought was the idea that my father's body was being used as a puppet, played and toyed with by the very woman I was destined to fight against. I am livid. I am angry with how my aunt could use another life as such, but deep down I was angry at myself for not being by my father's side sooner. However, the other side of the argument argues that I wouldn't have done a damn thing, thus giving my aunt two birds with one stone. The whole purpose of splitting up was to avoid getting found together, for me to improve myself and get stronger.

"Peek-a-boo." Because I was lost in my own thoughts for a split second, the menacing, almost in mock playfulness, voice in my ear with immediate before an Aura-encased fist made a home in my side, barely blocked by my arm that I lifted up subconsciously in defense. Before I had a chance to retaliate another fist smashed into my exposed cheek, sending me flying off to the side. The impact of my body hitting another solid wall before crashing through sent me reeling, and dizzy.

God I'll be feeling that in the morning, if I make it out of this battle alive.

"Little girl, oh little girl, you didn't actually believe you could escape me could you?" Her voice was taunting, and if I was any the wiser I would let my anger run wild, which is exactly what happened. Flipping my body over and letting out a roar I launched myself in the direction of what I presume to be my opponent.

"Where the hell are you punching?"

"Blegh!" A punch landed on my left cheek, and I countered with one of my own followed with an uppercut to the chin. I heard two pained grunt and smiled. The Aura slightly flickered into place, and I was able to see where my opponent was. Before it flickered out I laid into him, throwing everything I got as though this fight could be my last. I couldn't afford to make any more mistakes, and if I did, keep the errors at a minimum to reduce the overall impact.

"Ahahahahaha! That's it! That's it!" Her laughter continuously rang out, even while I traded blows with my father. Dust was slowly rising around us, but I refused to give even an inch, the flesh on both hands starting to tear just by force alone. The fist fighting occupied most of my concentration, that I missed the slight movement of the leg. My legs were swept out from underneath me, and a fist gripped the front of my clothes. The ground rushed up to meet my back, followed by my head meeting the walls. My body, a limp rag doll, was thrown left and right, but the hand never left my shirt; in fact I felt as though it tightened even further, subjecting my whole body to its control. A fist to the side of the face. A knee to the stomach. A head butt that had me seeing things. All I could do was hang on and try to counter whenever I could. At some point blood began to flow down into my mouth from a possible broken nose.

"Grrrrrrrrr…. Grrrrrrrr." The disgruntled, animalistic noise resounding deep within my father's chest pierced through the white noise and ringing ears. When the dust finally settles I found myself flat on my back, everything on fire and in pain. My limbs were broken in multiple places, but I counted my lucky stars that I wasn't completely dismembered. With all the thrashing that I received I had an inkling that my Aura was depleted to zero.

"D…Dad?" My own voice came out in a cracked whisper, dry and weak. My physical body screamed and cried every time I attempted to move; even the slight twitch of my pinky finger sent spams up my arm. It was an absolutely horrible feeling, and knowing that my dad could snuff out my life with a single punch filled me with anxiety. "…Dad…please…"

"Begging will do you no good when you're right at Death's door." Raisa's voice was filled with excitement, she was definitely having the time of her life watching me struggle. "Oh how I wished your mother could beg for her life at my feet. But alas she did not….how infuriating it was, knowing that she laughed and taunted until the very end."

"Guh!" I grunted as my father's right foot came crashing down over my ribs, pinning me to the ground. Second by second pressure was applied, and I swore I could hear things other than my ribs breaking. It was getting harder and harder to breathe, so I was panting and wheezing.

"You share the same face as her at this angle….how grotesque. How asinine. How infuriating. But most importantly, how nostalgic." There was a drawl in the voice, similarly to how she was dragging out my death. She was playing with her food, and I was currently her premium chew toy. "How I'd love to be where you are, and shred you to ribbons with my own hands. But then where's the fun in that? Why not have dear old Daddy tenderize you a bit more? Not the nice, touching family reunion you were thinking."

"Ugh…fuck you, you psychotic bit-KUGH!" I only managed to speak briefly when the foot was lifted, but it came back down forcibly, pushing out whatever air I had left. I nearly threw up and blacked out from the pain.

"The puppy still barks even when beaten. Good. I wouldn't want you to break so early." Rikter's arms moved slowly out to the side, claws elongated and ready to tear into flesh. "Unfortunately, I'm running on a tight schedule and Salem demands my attendance. Therefore until next time, if you are able to survive this."

Dad, please. If there's a miracle to be had, it might be now! I prayed as hard as I could.

"Grrr….you…will not…" The broken voice that conveyed my father caught my attention. His arms were beginning to glow with whatever amount of Aura was left. I could hear that it took a lot of effort just to formulate the words. "You will not…my daughter…."

"Try as you might, you won't break my control. You never could." My aunt's angry voice spoke, a slight tone of surprise laced in the background. "I've had you where I wanted you all these years. You aren't strong enough now!" There was a slight pause, as if my dad was in a war within himself. Then, a wicked smile slowly appeared on his face, mockingly and somewhat eerie. The light reflected from his Aura-coated arms illuminated the dancing shadows on his face.

"Then you've made an error. And this time, it is the end of the road for me." His arms curled inward, and surged forward faster than I could blink. His chest was punctured and then a blinding flash of light.

Somewhere within time and space...

"So...it had come to this. Out of all the possibilities I had imagined I'm surprised how on the nose I was this time around. Your mother has and always will be better at engaging her sister's behavior, so she told me the probability of this outcome was higher than any of the other possibilities. Thus I have waited for you here for what felt like eons, because I had no idea when you'd come here." Rikter's voice pushed through what I assumed to be my subconscious. I glanced around in wonder and amazement, however my mouth may have been stuck in a frown. He laughed at my expression, a heartfelt, deep-belly laughter. "Confused to why you can actually see things with your eyes truly open? In this marbled reality anything can happen, therefore the laws governing the real world has no effect."

"How did you know to pull me here? Where are we exactly? Are we safe...from her?" I questioned, turning my head so I could take a good look at my father. He looked older than I remembered, but then again it had been a long time since the event of our past. His outfit was nothing like the one I saw while fighting, only a simple garb from neck to toe.

"This place is a distorted reality. Time flows neither forward nor backwards and so we are suspended within an animated space. Raisa has no power or authority here, although I have yet to see if she can worm her way in; you see, even though she had full control of my body and my Aura, I am still the original owner. Had she attacked you with her own power and body then this would be a whole different matter, and I wouldn't be able to appear before you like this. Now listen, I would have loved to say we have all the time in the world to chat and catch up, but that is sadly not the case."

"What do you mean? Didn't you say that time flows neither forward nor backwards?"

"You are aware of what Aura is correct? Aura is the manifestation of the soul. Therefore, in the case of you and I, we're standing as manifestations of our Aura, meaning that within this dimensional plane we are allowed to project ourselves into existence as long as we have the Aura to do so. It is something the real world doesn't have the technology for, cannot have the technology for until another couple hundred decades."

"Except for Atlas right? They do have the brilliant minds after all."

"Knowing them, I wouldn't be surprised!" That caused a chuckle to escape both our lips, which soon turned into full-on belly laugh. Honestly, it felt great out of everything that had happened. I don't even remember when was the last time I allowed myself to laugh so naturally. "I mean, they do have advance technology after all."

"Hahaha, Atlas. Now that's a place I'd only want to visit once and never again. The amount of racism and hate boner people have towards faunus...It took a lot of self-control not to punch the nearest bastard within an arm-length's away." He shook his head with snorts of laughter, almost as if he couldn't believe he stepped foot in such a horrid environment. "Your mother though, she wasn't afraid to hand the next racist jerk the fastest sucker-punch known to man. Not even kidding! One minute you'd be standing and the next you'd be in the hospital, that's how much damage your mother can dish out."

"I'd imagine the ungodly amount of complaints and reports the Atlesian soldiers would receive because of her actions!" I snickered, imagining stacks upon stacks of paper with some more littering the floor. "Must've been annoying trying to dismiss the jerks acting like they're the victims."

"This is Atlas we're talking about, we both know there's no such thing as taking responsibility." Rikter gave one last laugh before becoming serious. Knowing my father I knew well enough that whatever was coming next was incredibly important.

"Now I didn't bring up the topic of technology for no reason...You should know this already, but the fact that we're here means that I no longer exist physically, and your body is probably suspended within limbo."

"What exactly is that move you used?" I asked him hesitantly, feeling something akin to a light wind brush through my hair and nape. Subconsciously I ran a hand through my hair, feeling the threads slip through like water. "Both your hands punctured your chest with such a force that an astronomical amount of Aura just surged out, almost like an explosion."

"It's a suicide move, a deus ex machina if you will when things don't go as planned and can only be used once. However, the results can be astronomical depending on the amount of Aura the user is willing to pour in; you can relax, the nearby town is completely fine. I'd wager they'll feel something like an earthquake, one that wouldn't level buildings. Because of the Aura requirement I wholeheartedly forbid anyone in our village from using it; it is a forbidden technique that I kept away from the younger generation...your generation to be exact."

"What makes it 'forbidden'?"

"The technique puts incredible strain on the heart because it is the primary target; it's very hard to miss, but on the off chance that you do…you'll be the one dead. Once I had pierced my own chest, the amount of Aura that had been coating my hands surge immediately towards the heart, a tide wave rush that nothing can stop. The Aura condenses as small as it can within the organ, building up pressure like a volcano on the verge of erupting."

"...and so the heart is subjected to strain and stress until it can't handle it anymore. It shuts down completely, and everything else follows." I uttered, the gears within my mind whirling as I connected the dots. "Basically the user implodes from the inside out, the body acts as one massive bomb...with the amount of Aura becoming the catalyst."

"That's right, the probability of surviving is absolutely zero…or so I'd love to say if at some point in time you're able to perfect this technique and survive. There have been some before our time that sacrificed their lives trying to create the technique successfully with viable witnesses. And there are those that have been successful but received some type of backlash as payment; in the end the burden became too much to handle and the survivors decided to disappear for good. I can only assume that they choose to take their lives in solitude and away from prying eyes. Only records and documentations of those who witnessed the technique serve as proof of that period of history."

"How did you learn the technique if everyone whoever learned it ultimately didn't survive? I thought those files or documentations were locked away."

"I read the records left behind by the scribes throughout the generations under the watchful eyes of my father and my grandfather. While many had to beg and plead to have permission to even glance at the papers, I was next in line as head of our village and so the duty to know these documents was a given. I'll admit some of the words are quite hard to translate since the language used was completely tribal, but we were able to piece together enough to understand."

"I'd imagine there were a couple of test runs since this techniques wasn't so accessible to the public. Not to mention the rumors that began to spread around about the experimentation."

"Oh it was definitely in its experimental phase, a lot of guinea pigs were needed in order to perfect the technique. Those who survived the brutal regiment of testing – the ones who didn't have the heart as their intended target – ended up taking their own lives as I mentioned earlier because the aftermath was incredibly painful; sometimes seeking death acts as a last saving grace, a last salvation from the endless torture."

I opened my mouth to ask some more but something flickered off to the side that grabbed my attention. Rikter himself was just as attentive, his eyes honed in on the slices of white lines crawling all around us. The rumblings came next, followed by the shattering of glass as the world peeled away; the cracks widening and partitioning to let light shine through.

"What's happening?" I asked him.

"My consciousness is crumbling away, much like how this spatial world is beginning to collapse. I cannot be here long before my Aura vanishes completely. This is where we part ways for good, I will not have any other means of contacting this world. It's time to say our final goodbyes."

"Huh?" The anxiety gripping my heart was swift, and I was reminded of the situation. Raisa would've won and kill me instantly using my father's body. In a last ditch effort to save my life, Dad took control and used a technique that was forbidden in our village. He and I are now suspended within a distorted plane, where our bodies are projections maintained based on the amount of Aura. The white cracks running around us reflects exactly what Rikter said: his Aura was disappearing and thus the world will disappear as well. "Wait…wait! There's still so much I want to ask you!"

"I know, and I'm sorry I couldn't prolong this meeting any further." My father smiled knowingly, reaching out to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. "Go home, kiddo. Back to the very beginning. In my study room there's something hidden away that will explain things I didn't have time to explain."

"If you had something that important in your possession, how come Raisa never found it when she came over?" I asked him. "She probably combed through our home very thoroughly by now, since we left. There's no way she wouldn't with that nasty behavior."

"I'm sure she tore the house apart, would surprise me greatly if she left anything standing. But let's just say, your aunt never takes the time to comb through everything with a critical glance. A force of habit of being impatient since your mother has always been the one with the sharpest eyes, able to notice a hair out of place. I have full faith in you since you were blessed with your mother's eyes." Placing a hand on my head I couldn't help but wish this moment could last a bit longer. As the world began to crumble away and the white light beginning to envelop us, he gave me one last smile. "Despite what happened in the past, I'm incredibly proud of you. I couldn't possibly ask for a better daughter."

"I-I love you Dad. I love you so much!" I choked out, knowing that if I didn't say it now then I will never be able to say those words again. And he'll never get to hear it either. I quickly placed and hand over his, given his gentle hand one last squeeze. "If you see Mom on the other side, please tell her I love her too!" His smile grew a bit bigger in response.

"I'll definitely let her know. Gods speed kiddo."

Within the Village...

KA-BOOM!

"What the fu-!?" Dalton, jolting out of his seat from where he had been keeping watch, rushed outside as others stood around watching as some kind of beam of light rose into the air. Soon it disappeared as soon as it had appeared, multiple clouds of debris carried by the winds rushed through and knocked over items and people as they rushed for cover. The land visibly quaked, rocking violently for a good ten minutes before simmering down. The results didn't look too well, but as long as it wasn't a life, whatever was lost can be salvageable

"Everyone all right?! Everything's accounted for?"

"What the hell just happened? An earthquake?"

"A pillar of light rose before disappearing in a flash! Almost like a tower of beacon!"

"It came from the ruins! Something bad must've happened!"

"Someone should go and check it out!"

"We're heading there immediately! If we're not back by dinner, send another scout party!"

There was chatter everywhere as everyone tried to make sense of what happened, some with perplexed expressions on their faces while others were just looking dumbfounded and bewildered. Dalton and his team quickly rendezvous to the entrance, a couple of desert-traversing animals in tow. Without missing a beat the first scouting party led by Dalton rushed out, dust kicking out behind them.

"I remember someone making their way over, do you think they're all right?"

"Knowing Reina, she should be okay!" Dalton had to shout over the rushing winds, keeping his eyes peeled when they rounded the bend. The group immediately noticed the change in the atmosphere, the thick smoke and a drop in air quality. The beasts they were riding on made disgruntled noises, and ran up a rising hill. At the top, the whole group stopped to survey the area.

"Holy shit, what the hell happened? The ruins are actually in ruins!"

"It's almost as if two colossal Grimm were fighting it out here. Unbelievable."

"Years upon years of ancient history, completely wiped. Talk about a waste, our town was actually looking forward to explore even more."

"Wait, everyone on their guard! There's a shadow approaching from the distance!" Everyone watched as a shadow approached. Once they were able to see who it was, Dalton signaled for the others to stay put and urged his beast forward with the click of his tongue. The spirit of Rikter met the young Huntsman halfway, lowering my body onto the sands and took a few steps back. He watched as Dalton quickly hoist my body over his beast and turned back, the other Huntsmen following suit once their leader returned. Knowing that I was in good hands, my father was finally able to pass on, leaving nothing behind but a small indention in the sand where he stood. A gust of wind later and the indention was completely filled and buried.