"Now's the time. Final Phase!"
Ruby felt her stomach drop, both from the unexpected ascent and hearing those words. Was Jet about to use Dark Ultimatum?
'Just spin in circles, and I'll take care of the rest.' Jet's telepathy sounded in her head. Spin around in circles?
She landed on her feet on the side of the blade of Midnight Rose, and turned to face Yang. She watched the pair, almost cautiously.
Ruby felt darkness gathering around her as Jet took her hand that wasn't grasping Crescent Rose. He began to whirl both himself and her, until they formed a dark tornado that swirled around them, before shifting Ruby so that they were back to back, spinning as one, scythe blades extended.
"Danse Macabre!" Jet roared, before he and Ruby, without warning, smashed into the blazing blonde. Ruby, for the life of her, couldn't see how much damage they'd actually done through the swirling darkness. To her relief, it faded quickly, but it unveiled a scene of devastation.
The vegetation around them lay like corpses withering moments past the moment of death. Standing on brownish grass, they saw hedges landing on the ground, their roots following moments later. A series of rose petals lay on the ground, as if they were the lifeblood of the slain souls beneath them. Black petals also swirled around them, like reapers dragging the unfortunate dead to the afterlife.
Blake and Yang lay unconscious, side by side, splayed out on a fresher patch of grass, which fenced in the dead like a quarantine against a disease. And they were in the centre of it all. Ruby watched, her heart frozen by either terror or awe, she couldn't tell which, at the wielder of this power as he bent down and scooped up a handful of the still grass, which crumpled in his hands.
"Death. I understand now." Jet muttered, almost to himself more than Ruby. He looked up, and noticed that Ruby hand her hands around her mouth. "What's wrong?"
"What… was…" Ruby struggled to speak, but then she was caught in a vicious retch, and barely had time to turn to the side before she was messily sick. With a curse, Jet immediately strode to her side, patting her back as she emptied her stomach.
"There, there. There's nothing to worry about." Jet whispered soothingly as she retched and sobbed. "I'm here."
"Ruby? Ruby!" Yang called from behind, and she felt him move aside to allow Yang to embrace Ruby. She felt sheer terror. She'd been touched by a power that by nature was the complete opposite to what she was used to. In that moment, she realised even as she cried into Yang's shoulder, that Jet had told her that a semblance was a blessing of Asmo.
That wasn't any part of life or light in what he'd done.
"So what was that semblance you used at the end of it?" Weiss asked.
She and Jet were perched on the balcony of their dorm, watching the sun set in the distance. Yang and Ruby were inside, the former still comforting the latter. Blake had, for the most part, disappeared.
"Tell me, Weiss, are you familiar with the tale of Asmodeus?" Jet asked in reply. Weiss scoffed, an irritating noise to Jet, but he wasn't about to speak out.
"That old myth? What of it?" Weiss scornfully replied. Jet frowned at her.
"My explanation comes from the view that it is neither myth nor mystery." Jet replied, doing his utmost not to come off as stern. "That power, Danse Macabre, is not a semblance. Semblances are blessings of Asmo, but the power I used came from death itself. It would appear that Ruby and I can use a power of Deus." At this, Weiss visibly gasped.
"First of all, do you even know what Danse Macabre even means?" Weiss queried. Jet could tell she was trying her best not to be scornful.
"No. Can't say I do." he replied.
"It means the dance of death. Based on what the rest of my team told me, everything around you and Ruby died." Weiss answered her own question. For some reason, that knowledge didn't elicit any gut feeling from him. Nothing.
"Why was Ruby so upset?" Jet asked, remembering how Ruby had been sick at the sight of the devastation.
"I think the grass that died had a special significance to Ruby." Weiss said, putting her hands in-between her legs. Something about the sight reminded Jet of something.
"How goes it with Neptune?" he asked, remembering that they fancied each-other, although he'd been caught up with Ruby to really notice. Weiss blushed a little.
"Why do you want to know?" she asked suspiciously, as Jet decided to get up to see Ruby. He turned back to her as he neared the balcony door.
"Just curious." he said, before entering the warm and considerably lighter dorm room.
Yang and Ruby sat atop the former's bunk. As Jet approached, intent clear in his mind, Yang pried herself from her sister before she leapt down from the bunk. She faced Jet with serious lilac eyes.
"We need to talk. You. Me. No-one else." Yang growled.
Jet exited the room without an argument. Yang followed, and the two leant against opposite walls of the corridor. Yang reached inside her pocket and pulled out some of the same grass that was in the field during their fight. "Know what this is?" Yang asked, aggression plain as day in her voice.
"Grass?" Jet replied sarcastically, though he maintained a steady voice. Yang approached him before she did something he wasn't expecting.
There was a sharp 'crack', and a searing pain on the left side of Jet's face. He spun as he fell, landing painfully on his side, his wings thankfully out of the way of his falling body. Rolling onto his back, he felt his arms being pinned by two burly yet feminine legs, and gazed up at Yang, who held the grass up to his eyes.
"To you, it's grass, to me, it's grass, but to Ruby, this is the most sacred plant life on the planet. It's called Illyana, and it grows on the site of her mother's grave. You helped her kill a large patch with her own hands. Stupid." Yang muttered, before throwing a punch at Jet's face. It connected, and he felt blood rush from his broken nose as a furious flame was added to the pain already present. "Why are you so powerful if you can't see what you're doing?!" That did it.
"ENOUGH!" Jet roared, before firing off the most powerful red pulse he'd unleashed to date. Yang was blasted off him, smacked into the roof, before landing with a thud in front of the now standing Jet with a resounding groan. She glared at him, and tried to rise, but he trapped her with dark glyphs, which bound her arms and legs to the floor.
"You forget who I am, Xiao Long." Jet said in a dark but calm voice. "As imperfect as I am, Ruby loves me for the person I am. I made a mistake trying out that move where we were, but it was just that. A mistake."
"A mistake that hurt her more than your weapons or Flux!" Yang yelled in response, trying to break free of the glyphs that held her.
"Be that as it may," Jet conceded, now pouring his blue healing aura on his face, and letting Yang see his nose reform and the red mark from the slap fade, "attacking me was not a wise choice. You want to know what makes me so powerful?"
At Yang's silence, he continued. "Two things. My variance in abilities. I can hide in darkness, heal myself, and much more. The other is Ruby. She's what forms the drive in my life, and I won't let you attempt to punch me away, not when I can heal my wounds and simply overpower you or trap you."
"I'll let you go, but don't expect to pass through this door," he gestured to the dorm room door, "until after I'm finished with Ruby. You'll know the end result." With that, he released the glyphs binding Yang, and walked through the door, closing it behind him.
Jet wasted no time in reaching Yang's bunk, where Ruby lay curled up in a ball. He stood on a dark glyph that allowed him to watch over Ruby, like a silent guardian. He reached over, and grasped her in a hug, before gathering the limp girl in his arms, and moving to the dorm room window. As he reached it, and sat Ruby in his lap, the pyjama-clad girl started whimpering softly.
"Shh. It's ok." Jet whispered soothingly, stroking the girl as she shuddered into his shoulder. He gazed off into the setting sun, holding his lover close, emerald eyes glowing in the deep red light of the sun. "We need you, Ruby." Jet continued, then closed his eyes, focussing on an internal struggle.
Weiss approached the dorm room, but something stopped her. Putting her ear to the door, she heard someone singing, and assumed it was Jet. She listened to the song he was singing, but she didn't recognise the language. She whipped out her scroll, and set it to translator mode.
"Cum omnes tangebat animum,
Divini fructus et folia, radices, omnia,
Immundum mollibus ardet in sole,"
A pause
"Nunc autem abscondam,
The tempestas acredit,
Erant autem in via sedens,"
Another pause, and the sounds of Ruby's whimpering ceased.
"Nunc tene,
Nunc tene,
Non dimittet,"
Deep breathing
"Quod per gradus impetus,"
As the song finished, Weiss suddenly realised that she'd heard this song before, and later, realised that he was singing in an ancient language that hadn't been heard in a long time.
She read the translation, and let out a gasp.
It was a song that, if Jet was following the ancient culture's traditions, did not bode well for the future…
To be continued...