Under the glare of the foreign sun, the air trembled and the ground shuddered; the uneven cliff to the side crashed down in an avalanche of rocks and soil. A gigantic crack appeared in the middle of the field and then a dozen more spread in all directions. The infernal screech that filled the air gave a new, triumphant pitch, and finally, a massive Grimm burst to the surface. It took the form of a snake that was a knot of snakes that were made of more snakes, merging and splitting and twisting without rhyme or reason, slithering over themselves in a nauseating shift of vivid colours and inky, depthless void. The dance of its movements was mesmerising and captivating; all the more dangerous with the occasional mouth filled to the brim with teeth, and rough, edgy bone plating surfacing from the insides and getting devoured back into itself.
"You sure it's a Typhon? I expected it to be a bit… bigger." Yang looked down at the monster from above.
The ground shook violently again and another snake out of nightmares pierced the sky. And then another. And another.
"Ah. That's more like it." She punched her fists together eagerly.
The beast twisted its heads towards the pillar of ice and let out a reverberating roar out of its many throats. The forest behind them filled with howls and shrieks as other, smaller Grimm answered the call. The Hunt was on.
"Any ideas?" Blake dubiously glanced at Gambol Shroud and then back up at the beast before them.
"We need more gun." Ruby transformed Crescent Rose into rifle mode and fired a high-impact round into the head nearest to her. It didn't seem to notice.
"What it needs is a really good punch to the face." Yang deployed her own gauntlets and set herself on fire.
"Does it have a face? Lets go find its face," Ruby unfurled the scythe back to full length and blurred towards the beast. One of the heads reared back and lunged at her, while the rest dived at the dais and its remaining occupants. Yang and Weiss shared a glance and jumped high into the air, boosted by white glyphs under their feet. The ice crumbled under titanic impact, sending shards hurdling everywhere. After a moment, though, they changed directions and swarmed the Grimm like flies, instead.
Weiss pivoted with a pirouette from one glyph to another and brandished her rapier in a wide gesture. The storm of fragments gathered in a stream and made another pass, impaling and cutting and shredding the Grimm in a torrent of razor sharp splinters. The pitch-black sludge that covered the beast washed over the damaged areas - and consumed most of the ice without a trace.
One of the heads unraveled into hundreds and reached out to Weiss from all directions, cutting her off from any thoughts of escape. That was, until they started to fall off one by one, stuck from seemingly nowhere.
"They're surprisingly easy to cut," Blake shared from the underside of the glyph they both stood on. Gambol Shroud whooshed again, its energy blade glowing softly, and a whole swathe of Grimm tissue was sheared apart, creating an opening. The girls jumped ahead, eager to break out of the surround, except that their opponent seemingly counted on it. One of the bigger heads blindsided them from underground and opened wide its maw to swallow them both.
A meteor fell from the sky, unbearably hot and blindingly white. It smashed into the Grimm and through the Grimm, exploding like a supernova on impact and burning away its flesh in a radiant inferno. The ground upheaved from impact, sending waves of dirt and stone in all directions.
"Miss me, sugar?" Yang sedately followed after the retreating tentacles and severed stumps out of the crater, a blaze springing up after each step.
The Typhon responded with another roar, enraged. One of the heads reared back and fire blossomed in it's jaws. Another spit a glob of darkness the size of a car right at the girl.
A snowflake blossomed in its way, growing in elegant fractals and spreading, building upon itself until it provided a shield to block the attack fully. Whatever the substance was, it slid off without a mark left behind; when it hit the ground, however, it burned right through it, obliterating hard rock without a trace and disappeared into a tunnel of darkness.
"Grimm boogers? On our first date? I am not amused." Yang sped up until she was running full tilt straight at her enemy, easily clearing the gap in one wide stride. A tentacle whipped from the side, but the girl ripped it apart without much effort and pushed on.
The heads shifted again, melding and splitting again and again, until the head with the huge ball of fire in its jaws came to the fore and harpooned it at Yang. She slowed down, gathering the flames strewn behind her into a tight spear with a wave of a hand and launched it towards the orb with a gesture. Two projectiles met with an eye-searing flash and fire was born. The air itself combusted, the firestorm forming and expanding to fill the whole clearing - and then it collapsed, spent, just as quickly. A gust of wind carried the smoke away moments later, and a picture of desolation opened before their eyes. What little tufts of grass survived before, were burning cinders, now; the rock itself gained partially melted sheen. Only the alien ruins to the north remained untouched and unbothered among the devastation.
"That's all you've got? Pathetic," Yang boasted, her hair glowing brightly. Another tentacle tried to skewer her from her right, this one covered in white spiked Grimm armor, but she stopped it cold with her own fist. "You're hitting like a..." A blur of white bone jotted out of the ground and sent her tumbling through the air, all across the field and into the river. The water accepted her gently, flexing to the bottom like a spring and carefully delivering her back to the surface.
And then it left her at the bank, and kept going up, and to the side, and up, congealing into a giant figure made of water, with a huge sword and tower shield of ice clutched in its hands. The harsh sun of Pandora filled the construct with bright glow and glint as it advanced in a lumbering stride upon the Typhon, relentless in its pursuit. All around her, she could see the process repeated, an army of knights rising from the river to march at the beast, until nothing but weeds were left to dry in the crevice.
James Ironwood rarely felt such worry and concern as he did right now. Despite his fleet's early arrival and general competence of the Crimson Lance, the fight was way too chaotic and shifted back and forth too much to plan and strategize efficiently. His ECHO-eye projected a holographic image of Pandora before him in the otherwise dark and empty room, marking the general location of the fleets and flagships currently orbiting the planet.
James Ironwood rarely felt such jubilation and adrenaline coursing through his veins. The battle demanded his utmost, and he matched it at every turn. One mistake was enough to get half his fleet outflanked or even cut off - such were the hardships of three-dimensional combat - but it merely added to the excitement he had long forgotten about. A dozen skirmishes he had to pay attention to simultaneously, and barely any time to make decisions. His hand moved decisively, and so did a few of his ships across the map, waypoints calculated by the military AI onboard for each of them according to his orders.
"The yoke of our oppressors shall never bind our wills!"
James Ironwood rarely felt such annoyance and irritation. A twitch of an eye and the decrypted message was junked as most others were before. The effort dedicated to intercepting enemy orders had a side effect of catching enemy propaganda as well. It also could not be avoided in case actual orders were hidden in it. The army could not operate without direction, after all, and he was best positioned to find and exploit any changes in enemy movements just as they were issued.
"Bridge, units twelve through fifteen request permission to engage enemy forces in close quarters, over."
Barely a thought, and a secure uplink was established.
"Relay orders: engage and retreat almost immediately. Units ten and eleven move up to cover them and deploy canopy shields. Units sixteen through eightteen follow behind and open up with the broadside on any pursuers. Split up and pace them as needed then. Do not pursue if they retreat. Bridge, out."
His fingers twitched again to support his word with markers and pointers. Reports flooded the field of vision dedicated to the task - mostly confirmation on orders being received and understood - and he shifted attention to another front. Bait and switch was a trick known across six galaxies, but it got old long before he did because it worked. Hopefully, Vladof forces would be just as green as they showed themselves to be so far and lose their advance forces here.
The Hyperion front hardly looked as successful. Shifting the ships that had been hit in the fighting to the middle for field repairs, Ironwood frowned as he accessed the damage. Either they were insanely unlucky or Hyperion had a weapon capable of lining up accurate shots in high planetary orbit over a vast distance usual for such engagements. Fortunately, projectile speed was still a factor and maneuvering out of the way seemed to help, so he quickly issued the order to constantly change position and direction for the Lance craft in that area.
Thin atmosphere around his own ship burst with flaming tracers, the only warning of hyper-accelerated rounds whizzing past. A few hit the layered shields, but none too strongly to break even the first. The floor under his feet rumbled as even the flagship hastened to obey his latest command; no questions or debate, but military precision from his navy. James Ironwood rarely felt such pride and gratification as he did right now, knowing how far ahead his own troops were, compared to Vladof's disorganised fanatics or almost robotic disinterest and lack of imagination among Hyperion personnel. Those guys would be burning Dust for little gain a long time before they would even think of changing tactics.
Another red warning flashed in the corner of his vision, this time from one of his own ships. Whatever the disturbance was onboard, it persisted throughout their brief stay over Pandora almost from the very beginning and now happened to shift from the cargo bay towards more crucial areas of the vessel. James felt a minute urge to take the field himself in his recently developed Paladin battle mech against this nuisance, but quashed it ruthlessly. He was exactly where he was needed at the moment, and a lot more depended upon his command then a single infantry engagement. He spared a movement of a finger to dispatch some of the obsolete AK-130 bots hibernating across the fleet; maybe they will slow intruders down until he had time to deal with the issue, personally.
Not that the battle raged as fiercely as it did a minute ago, he had to admit after another sweep of the battlelines. The Schnee monstrosity moved away, following a badly damaged Dahl flagship as it tried to flee, peppering it with missiles, railguns, lasers and artillery bombardment from a stupidly overpowered rapid-fire Dust cannon. Most Dahl fighter craft have similarly abandoned their positions to reinforce the depleted cruiser defensive force.
"IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR!" The cybernetic espionage and communication suite kindly screamed into his brain a new bit of intelligence as soon as it was intercepted.
That doofus Torgue launched another devastating attack, against Vladof this time, and a lot of small one-man fighters veered off to pursue a retreating space-truck around the dark side of the moon. Judging from similar engagement by Hyperion earlier, only Torgue will emerge on the other side a few minutes later. James Ironwood rarely felt such anticipation and eagerness as he did right now. With the major part of small and agile vessels gone, both due to his maneuver earlier and Torgue's timely intervention, the Vladof's remaining fleet could be outflanked now; his hands orchestrated an unheard symphony only he could perceive in a mad dance of swift and precise movements.
As his main battleships moved into range and opened fire, he was finally able to pinpoint the feeling that permeated his whole being at that moment.
For the first time in forever, James Ironwood felt alive.
Blake was not having a good day.
The clones dotted around the forest were slaughtered en masse by the veritable tide of Grimm and massacred them in turn. The shadow residue they left enveloped bigger specimens, slowing them down for other clones to strike and take down, yet she was still ceding ground rapidly despite her best efforts. The front had buckled in many places and she hurried to reinforce those spots lest the beasts broke through. It was a stopgap measure at best. Another minute, and they will reach the outer edge of the trees, toppled and snapped by multiple blast waves from the big fight in the clearing. Another set of clones busied themselves to make a barricade from fallen trunks and bigger branches there, sharpening them into spears and digging them into the soil for the Grimm to skewer themselves upon. But after that, nothing stood between a horde of nightmarish monsters and her tired teammates who already had their hands full with a beast of legend.
A touch at the wrist, and she faded from view with the help of her invisibility suit. A thought, and a rapid series of clones took her all over the battlefield, giving her an update on all combatants.
Yang was the heart of a fiery tempest, her footsteps whispering the tidings of doom for anyone foolish enough to try and stop her march. Ruby, all but a blur, circling around the Typhon and bisecting tentacles left, right and center. Weiss, curled into a ball with her eyes tightly shut, combating information overload from the many minions she was directing far below her airborne glyph. And finally, the creature itself that Blake observed from atop some rubble beneath the cliff. Its constant nauseous screeching filled the air and its flailing limbs demolished the ground itself in an attempt to crush its opponents. The main threat, however, was in multiple heads reaching towards the sky, chaining a number of powerful attacks one after the other from above. Fortunately, most of those were directed at the water elementals hacking at the beast, but the number of knights have been steadily dropping for some time now and it was only a matter of luck before her teammates got hurt instead.
Speaking of which… a moment later Blake was kneeling atop Weiss' glyph, visible again. She whispered "move" and with a gentle touch indicated a direction. Gambol Shroud sung in her hands as they sped across the sky, dropping a number of pursuing Nevermores out of the air and gouging the wing of the diving Stone Talon. It tumbled past, trying, and failing, to righten itself all the way down, until with a thump it was splattered on the uprooted rocks below. "Safe", she murmured, and dissipated into shadows.
One of the main heads pushed past the veritable wall of black sludge the monster encircled itself with and opened its maw, preparing another strike. Ruby didn't waste any time and teleported right next to it, Crescent Rose on the ready to bash a few enormous teeth in. As if waiting for that moment, a vortex formed in Typhon's throat, hoovering all the air and dust into a pinprick, the torrent of air picking up Ruby from the ground and dragging her helplessly inside. Blake's clones appeared around the girl then, tethering themselves to the vicious teeth and holding out the onslaught, shielding their leader with their own bodies from the flaying winds and debris, until just as suddenly as it started, the pull stopped. Ruby disappeared in a flurry of rose petals and Blake followed suit as soon as she was able.
"That was… unexpected." Ruby took a few deep breaths, hands on her knees, the scythe falling to the ground.
"It's adapting to our tactics." Blake turned around just in time to see the vortex head raise itself far above the melee and swivel towards the approaching flame storm. "And now it's going after Yang", she realised with horror. Her sharp eyes focused on the tiny globe the size of a nut that sped like a bullet from the creature's mouth, so dense and fast it curved the debris behind itself in a vortex. The rush of fire hid the impact point from view, but the blinding flash and blast wave made it irrelevant. The firestorm wobbled and collapsed a moment later, washing over the earth and scorching it further. In the middle of white-hot wreckage a figure tumbled through the air and Blake made her next move, Gambol Shroud already mid-motion when she burst into smoke.
The ribbon on her weapon caught fire despite Aura coating. The overwhelming heat Yang radiated seeped into everything on some basic level that even the soul itself was unable to withstand. Blake redoubled her efforts to redirect the human comet into the beast before the string snapped. She could feel her arms almost tear out of sockets at the strain. With a final growl she finished the turn and collapsed on the steaming ground to try and regain a bit of breath.
"You okay?" Ruby appeared out of thin air next to her, concern clear on her face.
"Sure," Blake rolled her shoulders back and forth and scrambled towards the gun part of Gambol Shroud laying nearby. The strip around her ears made an excellent substitute for the ribbon - precisely why she wore it in the first place - and she hurried to repair the damaged weapon. Ruby opened her mouth, clearly not convinced, but Blake cut her off. "We have no time to waste," she declared and disappeared into shadows once more.
Indeed, the forest jumble shifted all the way to the barricade already. She replenished her diminished forces with new clones, setting them up in the trees just as much as at a ground level to try and stem the tide with crossfire. Her body ached from Semblance overuse, her Aura dwindled from constant physical strain, her gun had less reach with the new cloth. Blake paid it all no mind. She would watch over her team and protect them, always, no matter what, just like she promised. A blink, and her perspective shifted yet again.
Those strange doors that were not doors smoothly broke apart and slid away, the first time in a millennia of disuse, yet no worse for wear, revealing a grand chamber cast in a violet light inside the cavernous mountain. Raven cautiously stepped through, her hand resting on the sword hilt, her senses expanding to cover the vast opening and her instincts readied to both attack and defend as needed.
Nothing moved in the ruins.
She stopped for a moment to admire the majestic sight, trying to imagine the broken spires and toppled buildings as they were before, when Eridians yet lived and flourished. Bigger than any human dwelling on any planet they settled, it dwarfed even the Remnant Kingdoms in size. The population of this underground metropolis must have been tremendous.
Nothing moved in the ruins.
The tattoos on her left side flared with brilliant blue light, and her next step delivered Raven right on the first step of the triangular obelisk dominating the plaza before the alien city. It felt… improper… not to make her ascent over the floating steps in her search for knowledge and power. As if the whole city could observe her and judge her and decide her fate based on this little ritual.
Nothing moved in the ruins.
The Eridian writing near the top proved to be as enigmatic as it was on the scraps humanity was able to find here and there; even the best Remnant specialists dedicated to the task have been stumped in their attempts to decipher it. Raven circled around the obelisk, looking for anything that may catch her eye or call out to her Siren heritage. It was almost until the other side from the entrance that the writing changed.
"It can't be..." Her hand reached out to trace the hieroglyphs covering the wall. There was no mistaking it, no other possibility remained; the stick figures depicted here were familiar. Human. People she met, people she knew of, people she liked and hated and many more, besides. Finally, her hand reached the center of the picture, the symbol of an upside-down "V" in a circle. At her touch, it lit up with an otherworldly glow.
Something moved in the ruins behind her.
Ruby glanced around the battlefield with worried eyes, trying to spot the familiar black shape darting around, but as usual, it proved futile. Blake would be seen only when she wished to be seen and not a moment sooner, nor later.
A step, and the reality around her tore like tissue paper under the pressure of her will. Another step stretched into a run, and a run turned into a dash so rapid that the background blended into a swirl of colors. There was a point to Yang's nonchalant and yet steady advance; likewise, Blake's stunt was orchestrated, a basic trick perfected long ago. Now that their roles have been completed, it was Ruby's turn to exploit a gaping hole left behind an overcharged Yang barreling at high speed through their target. Crescent Rose whispered in the wind as she spun like a corkscrew behind her sister, shredding the scorched insides into mincemeat and her Semblance only speeding her up as she went.
And then, the darkness suddenly parted on the other side of the beast. Dauntless, Ruby activated the teleporter she left behind and charged into the breach again. One side to the other, again and again, until it had no guts left to tear apart - or, at least, that was the idea.
The first sign of trouble came at her fifth run, when the scythe glanced from bone in a place where meat was just a second before. On a sixth try, the hardened plating sprung up everywhere inside the creature, sharp edges threatening her every move, and on a seventh, her momentum died completely from inhuman resilience the beast suddenly possessed. Ruby activated the teleporter one last time to get out and away from the sludge that was quickly filling what gaps had remained.
Unmoving and disoriented, she was an easy target for a follow-up strike. Another tentacle lash from the Typhon almost looked lazy, yet hit like a train, catapulting her away from the beast. Adjusting her flight path with a shot, Ruby twisted in the air to get a good angle on the cliff and run it down towards her teammates.
"That thing's like a jelly, shrugs off anything I try," she complained to Blake as they dug Yang out of the broken and collapsed cliff face. The ground shuddered as the Typhon hammered another water construct into wet puddle, and a stream of rubble showered them from above. Barely any knights remained to distract the Grimm. Ruby sliced another rock in half and jammed the butt end of her scythe to lever it out of the way. Finally, a groan reached their ears.
"Yang in there, sis!"
A fist in a golden bracelet punched it's way through the surface, followed by another. The blond crawled her way out into the open, and Ruby released a sigh of relief.
"Philistine. It's a waste if you can't make it a punchline." Yang squinted at the sun. "By the way, where's Weiss? It doesn't look like a reigny day without her."
Blake silently pointed upwards, where a line of glyphs stretched into a makeshift ladder. A few jumps and a short time later team RWBY was finally reunited.
"You know, it would be a grand idea if you've devised a plan to deal with the Typhon before my Dust runs out." Weiss still looked a bit cross-eyed, her hands jerking in phantom movements, yet the tone left no doubt as to her feelings. Ruby glanced at Yang, in her dusty and torn clothing, clearly past her best moment, and then at Blake, the Faunus' resolute glare not hiding the exhaustion she felt.
Ruby hesitated. It was apparent that the rapid pace they set was wearing her teammates down. They would still fight, if needed, but tired people made mistakes… and against the opponent they had, a single mistake was all it would take. The beast let out a triumphant shriek, having finally finished with the constructs, and the heads pivoted to the girls with uncanny precision.
"No worries. I can take it up another notch." A smirk made it to Ruby's face, her Aura flaring at some internal prodding. She grasped deeper still, into the very essence of her being, of what made her, her. Reality broke as she stepped forward, and then it broke again and again as Ruby continued to apply her Semblance, inscribing her will onto the material world around her in waves of shattered dimensions.
For it is in passing, that we achieve immortality.
Another step took her beyond the glyph's edge onto thin air high above the battlefield, and yet she did not plummet. Unimaginable forces pulled at her, tearing her asunder, and yet the glowing Aura kept her whole.
Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all.
Space bent around the girl and light traveled in unnatural ways through it. New rules governed here, and still she continued to press her power forward, mounting the pressure until all veneers of substance and imagination mixed into fine powder that she molded with determination into building blocks of her new existence.
...Infinite in distance and unbound by death...
She could feel the deep weariness creeping into her very soul for this violation; a heavy price swelling to be paid later. She cared little for it, now.
...I release your soul...
With a snap, it all returned back into focus down below - the Typhon, the scourge of Grimm pouring from the forest, her teammates taking a stand against the tide - and a little extra, that she carried with her from the beyond.
...AND WITH MY SWORD, PROTECT THEE.
A single step took her a long distance, a gigantic white cloak now flaring dramatically over her colossal form. The great monster rose to match her, and Ruby whirled the immense scythe with a tortured scream of air flinching away from the lethal edge. Where her steps touched the ground, it evaporated; where the titanic blade passed, nothing remained, erased from existence as completely and utterly as it possibly could. Skeletal hand guided ethereal Crescent Rose yet again, and now it was the Typhon that felt its fatal touch - and recoiled in agony, unable to bear the mark of death the blade delivered. A monstrous chunk of flesh fell with a ponderous thud onto the ground, irrevocably severed and abandoned by the retreating monster.
Ruby followed, implacable and resolute, her mother's words urging her on.
Hey, Marcus? Why am I glowing like that?