Chapter 4- The Ancients
They made it back to the entrance, both teams reunited with each other. The two hours were already up and Professor Ozpin would expect them soon. Each pair returned exhausted and with the things on their minds that their partners told them.
"Should I break it to her?" Blake asked Yang.
"No. Not yet…" she answered.
"Should I give it to her?" Weiss asked Gavin, holding up the locket.
"No. She doesn't seem to be in the mood yet. Just keep it with you for the meantime." Gavin answered.
"Should I tell your sister the truth?" Stephen asked Ruby.
"No. I can't bear to let her know." She answered.
From the balcony at Ozpin's office, Professor Ozpin and Professor Goodwitch were watching the two teams return to Beacon. They've already seen JNPR return from their trip into the forest and they were patiently waiting for SMG and RWBY to return. Mostly Ozpin was waiting patiently. Glynda on the other hand seemed unhappy that the two teams returned late.
"They're two minutes late. Maybe they shouldn't have gone out at night where the truly terrifying Grimms are out." Glynda told Ozpin.
Ozpin didn't respond. He was completely focused on something.
"Professor Ozpin? What's going on?" Glynda asked, looking very concerned.
Ozpin still didn't respond. He could see something moving in the trees, shaking them as it moved towards the two teams. It seemed big and Ozpin seems to know what's coming. He rushes towards the edge of the balcony and tries to call out the two teams.
"RWBY! SMG! Get out of there! Now!" he yelled, but couldn't catch their attention.
The two teams notice Ozpin yelling from the balcony and began to wonder what's up with him. They couldn't hear what he was saying so they were puzzled by this.
"Is Professor Ozpin mad at us or something?" Ruby asked.
"I think so. He looks pissed." Weiss answered.
"Well," Yang said, "maybe it's because we're-"
Before she could finish, something bursted from the sea of trees behind them. It let out a devastating roar at them and stood up. The creature stood tall, as in very tall, in front of the two teams. The creature had the shape and similarities of a T-Rex except in a more Grimm perspective. It was covered in a lot of bone plating and had lots of spikes growing out of them. It snarled at the two teams, who just stood in sight of the creature before they activated their weapons. Ozpin was speechless at the sight of the large dino Grimm, so was Glynda. The creature let out a devastating roar that pierced through the ears of the two teams. The roar even reached all the way to JNPR's dorm room. All four of them woke up once they heard the roar.
"Guys, what was that?" Jaune asked, slightly scared.
"I think it came from outside." Pyrrha said.
"It looks like a Grimm has come to the school." Ren said, preparing his weapons.
'Let's go break it!" Nora said, lifting up her grenade launcher.
They grabbed their weapons, exited their dorm and ran to the source of the roar. Meanwhile, RWBY and SMG were still standing at the sight of the humungous dinosaur Grimm. It gave them an angry look and snarled at them.
"Guys!" Stephen yelled, snapping his friends back to reality, "Are we gonna kill this thing or not?"
They nodded and began to attack the creature. The dino Grimm attacked them with it's jaws, but they dodge it. Ruby unsheathes Crescent Rose and shot the face, but the bullet bounced off. Weiss fired a Dust fireball at the creatures face, but it seemed to do minimum damage. Blake fired Gambol Shroud at the face and the blade went through, but the creature shook it off along with Blake.
"Godamnit! The creature's strong alright!" Blake said.
Ruby notices a large hole in the plating behind the creature where large bone spikes are protruding from. It exposed some flesh and some tissue as well.
"Weiss! Launch me!" Ruby told her partner.
Weiss casts a Dust glyph under Ruby and sent her flying. She used Crescent Rose's blast to send her towards the creature and lands on one of the spikes. She dodges the tip and jumps towards the weak spot and jabs the blade into it. The creature roared in the moment the blade went through its soft tissue. It tried to shake Ruby off, but she held on to Crescent Rose for as long as she can. The creature shook Crescent Rose from its wound along with Ruby. Yang watched as Ruby fell to the ground from the dino Grimm's back. Her aura spiked up and her eyes turned red.
"You fucking hurt my sister!" she shouted.
She then launched herself into the air using Ember Celica and lands furious blows on the monster's face. The creature opened its mouth in an attempt to eat Yang, but Weiss immediately casts a Dust glyph muzzle around the dino Grimm's mouth, shutting it. Yang lands on the creatures head and begins to viciously punch through its bone mask. Stephen and Marco go for the unarmored belly in which they land furious blows and shots at the creature's stomach, but they did very little damage. The dino Grimm manages to get Yang off it's head and break free from the muzzle glyph. Gavin tries to provide cover fire from his vantage point using Bakunawa, shooting the unarmored parts on it's head. It gave off another roar which placed the two teams in their place, covering their ears to ease the sound. Ruby looks up and sees that the creature's mouth was wide open and ready to devour them. Ruby closed her eyes that way she won't see it coming, but before the creature can devour them, a pink explosion hits its face. From Gavin's vantage point, he sees Nora shooting grenade shells at the creature's face while Ren provided her support using his StormFlowers. The others see the two as Jaune and Pyrrha came over to them.
"What're you guys doing here?" Blake asked.
"We heard the roar and decided to drop by." Pyrrha said.
"Great," Stephen said, "We could use all the help we can get."
"Let's take it down." Ren said.
"Right." Gavin said, coming down from his vantage point.
The three teams look at the creature, who's still pulling itself together after suffering the flurry of fire from Nora's weapon. Ruby drew Crescent Rose and pointed at the head. Weiss rotated the revolver on her weapon and it landed on the red cylinder. Blake prepared Gambol Shroud in pistol form. Yang cocked Ember Celica and stood in a battle stance. Pyrrha switched her spear into rifle form and took aim. Nora and Ren aimed their weapons at the creature's face. Stephen changes Vorpal's magazine into the colored one and takes aim. Marco switches his weapon into its minigun form and clips the gas tank on. Gavin takes aim with Bakunawa and aimed it at the creature's eye. Every fires in unison, except for Jaune who was just standing there before he rushed at the creature. Explosions, gunfire and blasts cover the dino Grimm's face while Jaune strikes the legs. The creature was overwhelmed by the damage as it struggled to get Jaune to stop attacking its legs. The creature couldn't take it any more so it let out a heavy stomp which shook the ground and everyone else, causing them to cease shooting at the creature. Seeing this, the creature retreats back into the forest, leaving taken down trees in its wake. Ruby recovers her footing and looks at the fleeing Grimm.
Grimms usually fight to the death. Why'd this one flee from battle?, Ruby thought.
She looks over to her friends who also recovered their footing and deactivated their weapons. They looked at each other and began to wonder what that thing was.
"What was that?" Jaune asked.
"I have no idea." Yang said in between breaths.
"We better tell Ozpin about this." Gavin told them.
Ruby didn't know what to say. In her first few weeks in Beacon, encountering a Grimm like this was more like a suicide mission rather than a hunt. She looked at the ground and saw something. She picked it up and saw that it fell off from the creature's mouth. To her surprise, it looked like a piece of a white cloak, her mom's cloak to be exact as she recognized the details and the patterns.
Could it be…? Ruby thought to herself.
But she shook it off. Her mom died protecting her from a pack of hungry Beowolves, not from some killer dinosaur Grimm. She placed the piece in her satchel and followed her friends, who were just heading back to Beacon.
...
"Tyrant King." Ozpin told them. Teams RWBY, SMG and JNPR were inside Professor Ozpin's office, trying to figure out what just happened and figure out the creature that just attacked them. Glynda looked concerned; she didn't want the students to know about the creature they just encountered, but it seemed too late.
"What're you talking about?" Gavin asked.
"The Grimm you guys just encountered is known as Tyrant King." Ozpin explained, "It is a rather large Creature of Grimm that dates back to the ancient times, when Remnant was in prehistoric times and before mankind discovered Dust."
"Wait a minute." Weiss said, processing Ozpin's explanation, "Are you saying we just encountered a Grimm that should've been extinct?"
"Actually, no one said that it was supposed to be extinct." Ozpin told them, "It fact, no one even knew it was still alive, until…" Ozpin paused, but Glynda took over for him.
"Until we found it." Glynda admitted.
"Wait, what?" Yang said, shocked at what Professor Goodwitch said.
Glynda sighed and continued. "It's true. We did find it, but the problem was it was an accident…"
*(Flashback in Glynda's POV)
It was during our youth, when we were still active hunters. Ozpin, Ruby's uncle, Qrow and myself were part of a Grimm Research Institute hunting team in order to get extra credit. Our mission was to find new, undiscovered Grimms in Forever Fall. During our trek around the forest, we noticed a large tunnel in edge of the forest, next to the mountains. The tunnel lead to an underground cave which had some Dust crystals coming out from the walls. We entered it and we saw that the tunnel used to be inhabited for it had a significant amount of cave paintings. They all described the same thing: Three dinosaur-like Grimms will terrorize the world and doom mankind and no hunter or form of Dust can stop them. It sent chills down our spine but we just thought of them as some sort of myth or ancient legend. We then found that the tunnel was a dead end, a large wall of ice, rocks, thick vines, and Dust. Qrow swung his scythe at the wall, but I stopped him because I felt that there was something not right behind that wall. I casted a barrier on the wall that way nothing could get in or get out, but little did I know what would happen next when Ozpin found a door, a small wooden door that led to the other side of the wall.
I told him not to go in, but he insisted on going in anyway and what he found shocked both me and Qrow. Hanging on three pillars were three dinosaur-like Grimms, encased in plenty of Dust crystals. They were asleep and I thought best not to wake them up. Qrow thought that he could use some Dust and he tried to mine them off the creatures. Ozpin found another cave painting on the ground while Qrow was mining off the Dust from the T-Rex Grimm. The painting showed the same creatures in the previous paintings except it showed them being captured and encased in their weakness, Dust. Ozpin and I cried out at Qrow, who was mining off a large crystal on the T-Rex Grimm and in an instant, the Grimm woke up, shook the Dust crystals off it and attacked us. We just stood in sight of the creature as it roared and rushed towards the other two Grimms. It let the Triceratops-like Grimm out first then freed the Pteranodon-like one after. They rushed towards the wall and tried to destroy it, but we decided to attack them and stop them from escaping. We launched all of our best attacks at it, but it didn't seem to damage them one bit. I tried to use the Dust crystals that subdued them as a weapon using my Dust wand. It damaged them, but their bone plating was too strong to withstand any more strikes from my weapon. Ozpin and Qrow did their best to fight of the other two but they were outmatched and they destroyed the wall as well as the barrier I casted. They escaped the tunnel and went their separate ways and we had no choice but to report this to our superiors what happened.
*(End of flashback)
"And, that's it." Glynda finished, "The Grimm Research Institute then tasked us to find them and report on their locations."
"So, it was Uncle Qrow's fault that these things went loose?" Ruby asked, concerned of her own uncle's well-being.
Glynda was about to agree with that statement, but Ozpin cut her off. "Technically, it was my fault. If I hadn't found that door and if I hadn't listened to Glynda, none of this would've happened." Ozpin admitted.
The room fell silent as the three teams became speechless at what they heard. Ozpin was right, he found the door and he was the one who decided to go in and see what was inside and that was what led Qrow to mine off the crystals subduing the three dino Grimms. Ozpin felt nothing but guilt. He found these monsters that would doom mankind in the future or now and the worst part was there were three of them.
"Where are they now?" Ruby asked, breaking the silence.
"Each dinosaur Grimm left for a different location," Ozpin answered, "Tyrant King is residing in the Emerald Forest considering that you all fought him there." The students nodded and Ozpin continued, "The Triceratops Grimm, Horned Overlord, was sighted in Forever Fall, but we couldn't determine where it exactly is in Forever Fall. The Pteranodon Grimm, Winged Master, flew towards Sky Tower Mountain, were it was last sighted."
"So, is there any threat among them yet?" Ruby asked again.
"Not for the moment. No one except you guys has seen them so far." Ozpin answered, "But if the three of them were to get together in the same place, it would mean devastation for mankind."
Ruby fell silent. Man had a winning streak against the Grimm for generations and now three dino Grimms with such immense power are loose in the world at it would mean that man's winning streak will finally break. Ruby wanted to stop these creatures, but something in her heart told her that it's too dangerous for her to fight these things alone and if she did, the results would lead her to her death.
"Go get some rest, guys." Ozpin said, "Everything will be alright tomorrow."
"Of course." Ruby said.
Everyone began to exit the office silently, but Ruby looked back. Ozpin was staring blankly at the night sky from his balcony while Glynda was talking to him about something. Ruby still couldn't understand what was going on, but she has too otherwise something bad would happen. She closed the door and regrouped with her teammates back to their dorm room.
...
The next day may have been a weekend, but the staff insisted on one class before the students can go out for the weekend and class brought some sense into the students that they were, obviously, in school. Team SMG and RWBY had their first class together that day and it was Grimm Studies with the moustachioed Professor Peter Port. Every day, the professor would bore them of his constant tales about his youth and past exploits, something his students hated. And after his story, the lecture came along and bored the students even more. Ruby tried to keep her eyes open. Weiss was obediently taking down notes from the professor's lecture. Blake looked like she was paying attention but she really isn't. Yang tried to keep up with what the professor was saying but couldn't. Stephen drew down the professor's Grimm sketches and Gavin and Marco were just listening.
"Now let us move on to our next topic." the professor said, continuing his lecture, "There are six classes which identify the ferocity of a certain species of Grimm which was developed by the Grimm Research Institute. There are the class one Grimms, which are incredibly weak and pathetic and that is the Beowolf. The class two Grimms are slightly less weak than the class one Grimms, but still show no threat. Only the Ursa has earned a spot in class two, nothing else."
Stephen rolled his eyes at what the professor said, "The class three Grimms are a threat for novice hunters but a piece of cake for the experienced. These Grimms are the Taijitu and the small Boarbatusk. The class four are the more dangerous kind, having advanced skills that other Grimms do not exhibit. In addition, most of the class four Grimms are quite rare, namely the True Beowolf, Ursa Major and the Boarbatusk Titan. Also, three of the new Grimms were just added to class four and they are the Shadow Stalker, Bull Leaper and the small Fate Spinners."
Weiss' skin shivered when Port mentioned Fate Spinner, still remembering her previous encounter with them, "Now next on the list," Port continued, "the class five Grimms are the terrible ones as well as the most feared. They are normally the large and powerful ones that have already been considered the worst of the worst. The Grimms on this list are the Nevermore and the Death Stalker, but just recently it included the Terror Bite and the larger form of Fate Spinner which is the Fate Spinner Extreme. Lastly, there are the class six Grimms. So far, there are no Grimms under class six, but there were some on this list but were removed due to extinction."
Ruby woke up from her daze when Port said that there were once class six Grimms and decided to ask a question after class, "Now then," Port continued, "we move on to the next topic which are the new Grimms that have been identified as of now." Before the professor could continue, the bell rang and the students began to stand up and pack their things, "Okay class," Port said, "be sure to read to read your textbooks about the four new Grimms and I want an essay on them before the Vytal festival. Class dismissed."
Ruby stood up and packed up her things as Yang called her over. She came up to Yang, but she looked back at Professor Port, who was grading some papers.
"Yang, I'm going to ask Professor Port a question. Think you could wait for me?" Ruby asked her sister.
"That's something different, lil' sis." Yang said, smiling, "Okay, sure."
While Yang waits for her sister by the door, Ruby approaches Professor Port, still grading some papers.
"Umm, Professor Port?" Ruby asked hesitantly.
"Yes Miss Rose, is there something on your mind?" Port asked.
"Well… are you sure that there aren't any more Grimms under class six?" Ruby asked.
"Hmm, normally that's a question Stephen would bring up, but I'll answer it. Yes, there are no more Grimms under class six because they're all extinct and there is one Grimm that was under class six for a short time until they deemed it mythical instead, thus removing it from the list."
"What about the Ancient Grimms?" Ruby asked.
Port fell silent, pondering why Ruby asked that question. He stood up and began to say something.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." Port answered, dodging the question.
"You know what I mean, professor." Ruby told him.
Professor Port sighed. He had to tell her about the Ancient Grimms or else she'll be persistent and continue to ask him.
"Yes, they were in class six and some people knew they'd actually be put under class six." Port said, "But, in order not to cause a panic, those who classified them, one of which was me and Ozpin, decided to remove them from the list and keep their existence secret, but it seems their existence is no longer secret when you and your friends encountered Tyrant King last night."
"Wait. How do you know about that?" Ruby asked, eyeing the professor.
"Ozpin told me as well as the other teachers." Port answered simply.
"Then, is there anything we should do?" Ruby asked.
"My advice, don't engage them." Port told her, "If you happen to spot one, run away and don't let it see you. No one has managed to kill one of these monsters and it's best if you don't. You want to be alive when you graduate, right?" Ruby nodded sadly, "Then, don't fight them." The professor said simply.
He walked out the door, leaving Ruby saddened and distraught. Maybe the professor was right, maybe she can't take down these creatures and doing so would be suicide. Ruby then came under thought. Was she upset that she couldn't take down one of those dinosaur Grimms? Or was her sadness formed because she found a piece of her mom's cloak that fell off from Tyrant King's mouth?
No. My mom was killed by Beowolves, not by some dinosaur. Ruby thought to herself.
Yang went inside the lecture hall and came over to a moping Ruby. She wraps her arm around her sister's neck and looked at her.
"C'mon sis, let's talk." Yang said, smiling to comfort her.
"I appreciate the enthusiasm sis, but I feel like I should handle this on my own." Ruby told her sister.
"Don't say that sis." Yang said, "If you have problems, just ask me to help you. Don't worry about what you're thinking of, just talk to me and I'll cheer you up." Yang said. She kissed her sister on the cheek and smiled.
"Thanks, sis." Ruby said as she hugged her sister and her sister hugged her back, "I feel so much better now." She told her.
"That's great, but we better get going. The guys are probably waiting for us." Yang said.
They run off to their next class before the second bell could ring.
...
Beep…Beep…Beep
The man picked up his scroll and looked into his inbox. Ozpin left him a message and wondered why. He just sent it to him now at around two o'clock, during class hours in Beacon. It was even a voice message. The man wondered about this and began to play the message. Before he did, he checked his office to see if anyone was listening or watching. He played the message and Ozpin's voice echoed the room.
"Hello there, Qrow." The voice of Ozpin said, "I received the message you sent me before and sorry for the late reply, but there are bigger problems than her right now. Last night, Tyrant King attacked eleven of my best students. They survived but were nearly killed in the fight, but the point is that they're making their presence known and it could disturb the peace in Beacon or in Vale. Meet me at the balcony given to the Beacon staff during the Vytal Festival which is two days from now and make sure your nieces don't know you're here. I'll be looking forward to this very soon. See you then, Qrow." The message ended.
The man got up, put on his hood, picked up his scythe and proceeded out the door, telling his secretary that he'll be gone for the next few days.
End of Chapter 4
a/n: Uploaded this one early that way I can squeeze in time later on. Also, I think I did really well for a longer chapter and gave a low down on the three ancient Grimms as well as all the OC Grimms I created. Besides, you'll be seeing a lot of them soon. So, anyways, reviews and other questions are always appreciated, just no spam as always.