A/N: Okay, here we go. There will probably be major plot divergence at some point down the line. Blanc has been defined in his abilities, except for his Aura. There's a poll up on my profile for the Semblance, so go vote.

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

-RWBYS-

-Chapter 5-

-Silver Shining-

The eight teenagers who would soon gain fame as the Hunters of Teams RWBY and JNPR were regrouping after their exhausting battle against a Nevermore and Death Stalker. They were all battered and visibly injured to greater or lesser extents, though none with major wounds, with sweat trails drying on their faces and making their hair stick close to their skin. The group exchanged exhausted grins, each pair holding up the chess piece they'd managed to retrieve. "Nice work everyone!" Ruby congratulated them, directing a massive, beaming grin at the other seven fighters. Several tears and burns marred her clothing, but for the most part she was uninjured. The worst wound on her was the cut the Nevermore had given her on the cheek.

"Yeah! That was really awesome; we really id it! We passed! YAHOO!" Nobody was surprised that Nora was the only one with any energy left. She was carrying Lie Ren's near-comatose body on her back, and was blinding everyone else with a thousand-watt grin.

"Of course we did! How could we fail?" Yang retorted jokingly, flipping her hair dramatically. Weiss simply rolled her eyes and turned away from the celebrating fighters, but a small smile cracked her icy facade.

"Um... Shouldn't we start back? I mean, we probably aren't getting a ride, so..." Jaune suggested, looking back towards Beacon Academy. Nodding ruefully, the entire group began to descend from the hill they had fought on.

They hadn't gone a minute before Ruby froze, looking around with wide, frightened eyes. "Has anyone seen Blanc?!" she demanded, her eyes and head rotating so fast she suffered from minor whiplash. Everyone else froze as well, looking at each other worriedly. After a few seconds, they realized no one had seen the sixteen year old speedster since landing.

"Nobody saw him."

Yang was worried. She genuinely liked Blanc when he wasn't flirting with Ruby or being a complete jackass. And even the flirting was okay so long as it was his sweet side showing.

Jaune was the second most upset, after only Ruby. Blanc was probably his best male friend at Beacon, and had been the main reason he and Pyrrha had met.

Blake was unhappy for her team. She'd never had a chance to talk to the silver swordsman, but she knew most of the other seven liked him a great deal.

Nora was not best pleased. She liked Blanc in a nonromantic sense, and the silver fighter had given her free explosives.

Lie Ren was comatose from overusing his Aura and acrobatics.

Weiss was torn between being happy that the albino-esque menace was missing, and worry on behalf of her partner.

Pyrrha was very upset. Blanc was one of the people she'd wanted to spar with.

None of them, however, held a match to Ruby's reaction. She simply expanded her scythe and told them, quite calmly, "We're finding him." She then marched off, cutting through an offending tree. The others exchanged nervous, worried glances, and followed her. All of them knew they'd die if they tried to dissuade Ruby from finding her friend. Well, maybe not die, but they'd be in pain.

Half an hour later, and even Weiss was starting to get worried. Blanc was still MIA, and that was not him. He should have appeared in a dull silver flicker already, a cheesy line on his lips and sarcastic grin in place. He hadn't.

"Ruby... Maybe he's already back at Beacon?" Yang quietly suggested, laying a comforting hand on her distraught sister's shoulder. The shorter girl turned, her silver eyes full of frustrated, worried tears.

Blake frowned as her sensitive hearing caught an odd pattern in the air. Heavy thumps, like massive wings. She tilted her head to try and determine the source of the sound. She held up one of her hands and hissed urgently, "Quiet, now!" Everyone else obeyed, not used to the quiet girl sounding so feral. Seconds later, her eyes widened and she yelled out a warning. "Nevermore!"

As soon as the warning was given, the monstrous Grimm appeared over the small clearing they were paused in. Everyone gasped in horror as they saw the creature's claws. Something was grasped in them. Something heavily bleeding, and wearing a shredded silver coat.

He was floating in a dark empty space.

There was no sound but the cold, biting wind.

It was freezing cold.

There was no light.

'So this is how I die. Beaten by a Nevermore. No shame there.'

'It'll make for a good story... wherever I end up.'

The boy's lips curled up in a pained smile.

'I've had a better life than I deserved.'

'I done a lot of things that weren't... quite as selfish as I thought.'

The void vanished, and memories played in front of the boy.

Parts of his past he'd forgotten.

Truths he'd run from.

'I've met some pretty decent people.'

'Yang, the psychotic cheerleader.'

'Jaune, who might become a Paladin.'

'The Ice Queen...'

'Red...'

'I doubt there'll be any more orphans like me with them around.'

Memories of his new friends played in front of the boy's eyes until they went back to his first home.

'But... I never made it up to them.'

'I never made their deaths worth anything.'

'Does that make my life a failure?'

Dark memories.

Corpses, blood fire darkness teethwrongdeathlossgonepainhurtrunhide

Dammit... I still wasn't strong enough.'

'Well, it won't matter much longer.'

'I doubt anyone'll care when I die.'

'It'll be... relaxing.'

Reality faded, and he started to forget his memories. A smile on his face, the boy surrendered his life.

'Goodbye, world. Goodbye, Beacon Academy. Goodbye, everyone.'

"-NC"

'Hn?'

"-ANC!"

'Someone's... calling me?'

"-LANC!"

'Someone's... shouting my name... who...' Ruby red eyes cracked open, narrowed as their owner tried to remember. It was important, he could feel it. The voice mattered. He gritted his teeth and fought against the soft, heavy mist to remember.

"BLANC!"

"Ruby..."

The boy's eyes shot wide open as his memories slid home.

The short girl with the oversized farm tool. The tendency to babble when she was excited. The cute blush. The odd lack of walking ability. The smile. The bright silver eyes.

Blanc's eyes shot open as he let out a furious, feral howl that made the Nevermore flinch. The eight teens looked up in hopeless hope at the near-dead boy.

'I will not lose! I have something now!' Blanc's mental locks were shattering as he threw everything he had into killing the Grimm and surviving. 'I WILL NOT LOSE THE PEOPLE I LOVE EVER AGAIN! I WILL NOT LEAVE THEM!'

Normally, Blanc could beat a Nevermore only if he could build momentum. He lacked the arm strength to make Argent Ward do telling damage, and the razor sharp blades could only do som much on their own. But he wasn't normal at that point. His survival instinct had kicked in full force as he his realization he had people to live for again hit him. His unconscious willpower ripped apart the ironclad locks he kept on his abilities. He felt his power well up inside him, his soul begging him to use it. He grabbed a hold of his essence and forced it into his body. He gritted his teeth as the searing pain of his suicidal power flooded him.

The observers flinched and covered their eyes as brilliant silver light blazed out of Blanc as his Aura was finally unleashed. The tattered young fighter was bathed in silver radiance, like a star going supernova.

"Ruby!" Blanc slashed at the Grimm's restraining talons. Argent Ward's blades were glowing like suns, flooded with Blanc's soul, and the dual longswords cut through the hard scales like they were made of butter. A heartbeat later and Blanc had vanished, hurtling earthward so fast the only sign of his passage was the trail of radiant silver he left behind him. He flipped around a meter before he hit the hard dirt, his feet sinking a full six inches into the earth. With a ferocious snarl, he launched himself skywards at the Grimm. He hurtled past it, lashing out as he did so and drawing blood. Holding his left blade in a deathgrip, he shifted the other into its magnum form. Seven shots rang out, only force being emitted from the handgun's barrel, launching him back at the bird.

Blanc continued his assault, his sole blade flashing about like an enraged bolt of lightning as the teenager used his magnum's force-only rounds to weave a pattern around the Grimm. Blanc grimaced as the blade failed to do enough damage to slay the demonic crow/raven hybrid. His tactics adjusted accordingly.

The earthbound watchers blinked as the spherical weave of silver threads vanished from around the Grimm, the silver light flickering rapidly to strike the bird's wing joints.

Blanc hit the silver switches on both halves of Argent Ward. They shifted and unified, their frames and blades flowing seamlessly together. Four seconds later, he was holding a large, two-handed claymore. Shoving the agony further from his mind, Blanc made his move. He launched himself from the ground, screaming skywards so fast there was a visible disturbance in the atmosphere around him, arrowing towards the Grimm. A slash rent the Grimm's armored neck as Blanc blazed past it. He flipped almost fifty feet over the Nevermore, and used his blade as a reverse springboard. The bloody swordsman flashed past the Nevermore. Argent Ward's unified form was heavy, and its edge was further honed by Blanc's Aura. It bit into the Nevermore''s head and continued unimpeded until it had split the bird in half. Black blood and feathers rained from the skies.

"Oh, my..." Blake.

"WHOA!" Yang and Nora.

"No way..." Weiss.

"Was that Blanc?" Jaune.

"That was..." Pyrrha.

"Zzzz..." Lie Ren.

Ruby watched as Blanc landed, still glowing bright silver. Tears of relief and worry flooded her eyes and trickled down her cheeks, contrasting with her relieved smile. "Blanc..." she whispered, vanishing in a shower of rose petals as she tore across the forest to the swordsman's landing site.

Blanc stifled a scream as he collapsed, retracting his claymore into its components' stored forms before he could cut himself. His cuts were mostly healed from the years of bottled up Aura being forced out, but they weren't what was paining him. He knew his limits. He could normally manage three minutes of his Aura, and he'd only used it for a third of that. But he had been borderline dead before he called on it, so the backlash would be worse than usual.

He gritted his teeth in preparation and let his Aura fade. A scream of agony ripped its way out of his throat as the silver glow waned, the pain he'd been holding at bay slamming home all at once. The screams continued, growing more and more hoarse as Blanc writhed on the forest floor in agony. His veins were filled with molten lead, his bones being ground slowly into sand, his organs being filled with fire, his head being bashed by a warhammer, and his lungs being scalded with frozen agony. Tears began to trickle out of his eyes as another scream worked its way past his efforts to stop it, ripping apart Blanc's throat on its way.

Some part of him that wasn't being shattered with pain realized that someone had his head in their lap and tears were falling on his forehead. There pain continued for almost five minutes, but the screaming was done by three; Blanc's lungs and voice worn out and unable to do more than whimper through gritted teeth. He ended up on his side, tears leaking out of his scarlet eyes and his body curled up in the fetal position.

"Blanc? Are you..."

He grimaced as he managed to turn onto his back to find Ruby's familiar face looking down on him, worried tears streaming from her eyes. The silver teenager managed a small, exhausted smile for the person who'd called him back from his grave. "I'll... be... fine..." he croaked through his dry, torn throat. His grin returned slightly, and he painfully lifted an arm to wipe away Ruby's tears. "C'mon, Ruby... You were... turning Red..." His hand fell as the last of his strength faded and the pain began to take over again.

He was vaguely aware of the others moving towards him from their places around the clearing, worried relief clear on their faces. They also looked awed and frightened. Before his vision faded to black, Blanc saw Ruby's face crying over him again. "Please, Blanc, hold on... Don't die, okay?"

Don't worry, Ruby. I'm not going anywhere. I promise... I'll always be... at... your... side...' Blanc's thoughts trailed off as consciousness left him.