I've tried to keep to Thursday and Sunday uploads, but the next chapter may be delayed.
In better news, I am really proud of this chapter! If you want some background music for the fight scene, I recommend 'Wave of Darkness' from the KH3 soundtrack. I listened to that on repeat to boost myself while writing it!
Yang stared down the mass of pulp that used to be a Grimm Ursa. The beast had managed to cut a piece of her hair off, and she gave the monster what it deserved. Shining red eyes turned to another Ursa nearby. "You want some too!?"
Shtick
The remaining Ursa froze up and fell over. A black blade stuck in its spine. A ribbon stretched from the blade's handle to the hand of the blade's wielder close by. A girl with long black hair and a black bow. She stepped forward and sheathed her sword. "Hey, partner. My name is Blake Belladonna."
Yang's first instinct was to say a sarcastic and cocky remark. Before she could throw out whatever line her brain had written up, a different instinct quickly overpowered it. "Oh, no..."
Blake was trying very hard not to be offended. "Something wrong?"
Yang quickly realized her mistake. "No no no! I'm sure you're fine, great even! I… I was just hoping to partner with my sister."
Blake's offense dissipated. "I don't have much family, but I can understand wanting to partner with someone you know and trust."
"Oh, thank the gods," Yang sighed in relief, "I thought I seriously messed up our friendship before we even had one! I'm Yang Xiao Long, by the way!"
"Good to meet you," Blake smiled.
"I guess we should be looking for that temple now?" Yang suggested.
"I saw it as I fell," Blake mentioned, "I believe it's this way."
"After you, partner!" Yang followed Blake through the forest.
They strolled in comfortable silence through the forest. Yang couldn't tell what was on her new partner's mind, but she very well knew what was on her own. I'm not partnered with Ruby, which means Ruby isn't partnered with me. Which means Ruby is going to have to keep secrets from whoever she does partner with now. Crap.
They broke the tree line and walked into a very large clearing with a stone structure in the center. "Oh, wow, here already?" Yang remarked, "That was easy."
"Well, it's not like this place is very hard to find," Blake agreed.
The pair stepped into the small ruin to see chess pieces set upon pedestals. Yang looked over them until a golden knight caught her eye. "How about a cute little pony!?"
"Sure," Blake smiled and shrugged. "So, what's ne-"
"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"
Both girls turned toward the scream to see a blond boy hurtling out of the tress. He landed hard on the ground and rolled limply for a few feet. They ran over to him to see if he was alright. Blake did a quick visual pat down, "I think his aura took the brunt of the hit. He must have had a lot, but I doubt there's much left after that."
"Ugh..." The boy opened his eyes. "Pyrrha…? Pyrrha!" He jumped to his feet to stare at the treeline. Yang and Blake looked as well.
The forest was shaking. Trees were falling over like they were being bulldozed. "What exactly threw you?" Blake asked nervously.
A crimson haired woman broke through the bushes, running like her life depended on it. The trees along the treeline were uprooted by massive claws that threw the solid trees – trunks, roots and all – toward the gathered initiates. Blake pushed her partner out of the path of the tree. She then used her semblance to create a disposable 'shadow clone' to kick off of, pushing herself out of the tree's path in the opposite direction to her partner.
This left Yang sprawled on the ground, alone, staring down the monster that tore up an entire section of the Emerald Forest. She had seen Giant Deathstalkers before, in diagrams and on television. This was at least twice as large as anything recorded. Six massive armored legs punctured the ground as it walked. A pair of devastating pincer claws that looked like they could cleanly shear steel. And a huge black stinger, thin but powerful with Grimm-like smoke coming off it. There was also something on the creature's face plate. An icon of some kind, a black heart with a red cross within it. Yang could have sworn she had seen that symbol somewhere, but where?
There was no time to ponder that as the creature struck. Its stinger flew faster than anything that size had any right to, directly at the blonde. She didn't have time to move. She shut her eyes. The air in front of her displaced and she heard the stinger hit something. But… did it hit her? She opened her eyes slowly. A fearful tear fell free only for those fears to be immediately assuaged. A red cloak filled her view.
"Ruby!" A smile found Yang's face. The young girl held Crescent Rose horizontally, one hand on the handle in the other supporting the top of the blade. The point of the stinger dug into the side of the shaft, but no matter how strong it was, it wasn't going to break a Keyblade any time soon.
That's not to say it was easy. Ruby felt her muscles struggling against the sheer strength behind the stinger. She pushed herself, and managed to knock the stinger back and away. The creature geared the black spire for another attack and launched it toward her. Better prepared, Ruby swung at the offending appendage, knocking it aside for it to bury into the ground inches from Yang's leg.
Ruby turned to her sister. "Are you okay!?"
"Yeah..." Yang nodded.
Ruby roughly pulled her sister to her feet, "then it's time to go." She looked around to see Blake and called out, "That means you as well! Come on!"
Blake didn't even have time to let her shock stall her. The monster pulling its stinger out of the ground quickly kicked her fight-or-flight into high gear and she ran after her partner and the strange red girl. Soon enough, the heiress Schnee also fell into step beside them as they ran. "What's going on!?" Weiss was quick to ask.
"Yeah, what kind of mutant Deathstalker is that!?" Yang added.
"Yang," Ruby spoke calmly, "that's not a Deathstalker."
"Well, no duh," Yang nearly laughed, "How mutated can something be and still be considered..." Her worlds trailed off as a realization hit. She knew where had seen that symbol before. From a book, but not any book from Remnant. One of Ruby's books. That thing is a Heartless. "Oh crap. In that case, what do we do, Rubes?"
"We keep running," Ruby spoke in no uncertain terms.
"What!? No!" Weiss objected, "I still need a relic!"
"Is that really more important than your LIFE!?" Ruby scolded. Her tone of voice alone shut the heiress up.
"Um, running might not be option!" Blake cut in, prompting the other three to look forward. They skidded to a stop just short of a massive ravine separating the Emerald Forest from the cliff they launched off of.
"Great..." Ruby sighed.
"How tough can one Grimm be?" Weiss shrugged, "The school would have cleared out anything truly dangerous."
"Tell that to the forest it cut down like it was a front lawn," Blake shot.
The four girls turned and saw the Heartless still advancing on them. Ruby used a low-magic skill that allowed her to gauge her opponents strength and remaining energy, Scan. There was a bit of damage from when she redirected its stinger, but she might as well have spit at a tidal wave for all it really did. "I don't know that I can do this, Yang. I've never taken on something this big without Master Kairi with me."
"Do you two know each other?" Blake caught on, looking between Yang and Ruby.
Before she could get an answer, pink explosions littered the Heartless from behind. Ruby managed to peek around the creature to see the blond and crimsonette from earlier, as well as someone with short dark hair and green clothing next to a girl with orange hair, pink clothing and a grenade launcher. The pink girl waved at them, shouting, "We've got your back!"
"You've gotta be kidding me!?" Ruby's hands went to her head.
"I'm guessing we're not letting them fight that thing alone?" Blake asked, not bothering to hide the slight fear in her voice. The Heartless slowly turned to face the new aggressors.
"Well, eight of us might a have chance," Ruby planned desperately, "As long as we don't let it focus on any one of us for too long. But it'll take a while..."
"Why are we listening to her?" Weiss suddenly cut in. "She's not even a student!"
"Yes she is," Yang's brow arched, "what makes you think she isn't?"
"She's too young!" Weiss shouted.
"She was invited by Professor Ozpin," Blake defended.
All three girls turned to face her, and Blake realized she made a mistake. Ruby was the one to ask, "Yes, but how do you know that?"
"I… may have overheard your discussion with him last night," Blake confessed meekly.
"You're saying this child is actually attending, actually my partner, and… and..." Weiss's demeanor suddenly softened. "And she was personally invited by the headmaster?" That changed the heiress's entire outlook on the young girl. Perhaps she was luckier than she had spent the morning assuming. Even Pyrrha Nikos couldn't get in early.
"Ummm, you do have our back, right!?"
Ruby refocused at the pink girl's cries. "There'll be time for this later. Right now, we have work to do!"
The pink girl in question had morphed her grenade launcher into a greathammer to defend herself against the creature's massive claws. It wasn't often Nora Valkyrie admitted she was in over her head, but perhaps just this once she bit off more than she can chew. At least those other four girls were coming to help them now. Hopefully someone had a better idea than just swinging and hoping soon.
Blake pulled out her blade, making sure the ribbon was secure on her arm. She tossed the blade to Yang. "When I say so, jump." Yang affirmed with a nod.
The pair ran past the creature. Blake dug her heels into the ground and held the ribbon taut. "Jump!" Yang had guessed her partner's plan, and used a blast from her gauntlet to aid her propulsion. The blonde swung a wide arc around Blake, letting go of her sword at the right moment to fly right past the Heartless's claws and at its head. She landed fist-first, firing two rounds right onto its emblem. Unfortunately, this also bounced Yang right off the monster. She fell aside between its legs, and had to roll out to avoid being skewered by its stride.
While the creature was distracted by the blonde, Blake ducked between its legs on the other side and approached the face. She drew her sheath from her back, which itself was sharpened into a cleaver. With a blade in each hand, the bow-headed girl carved into the beast with rapid strikes. The monster had enough of people attacking its face. It scurried backward and lashed out at Blake. Blake barely avoided the stinger by jumping back with a shadow clone, before using another to jump upward over one of its claws. Its other claw found its mark as she was in the air, however, and she was thrown backward and sent rolling across the ground.
Weiss and the crimsonette, Pyrrha Nikos, rushed the beast next. Weiss created a path of glyphs for both her and Pyrrha that sped their movement. They were blurs as they charged weapon-first, Weiss with her rapier and Pyrrha with a spear. The Heartless made to cover its face with its claws, and the two girls were forced to attack the appendages to try and open its face back up. The heiress powered her blade with Dust while Pyrrha relied on her raw strength through her weapon to damage the claws. They didn't seem to be doing any visual damage, but the creature did slowly reveal itself once more.
Ruby took her turn next, running past her partner and the crimsonette to take advantage of the opening they made. The Heartless tried to scurry away again. Not having any of that, Ruby opted to jump onto the monster's faceplate and raised Crescent Rose. The Heartless started to shake its body, and Ruby had to defer her assault in order to hang on. Sensing that shaking alone wasn't doing what it wanted, the Heartless once again displayed its impressive speed to spin as well.
It kicked up a gust of wind that pushed everyone back, and Ruby was sent flying off it toward the trees. Ruby was quickly heading for a bad meeting with a tree trunk, but quickly realized how she could turn this around. Red Flowmotion energy enveloped her. She struck the tree Keyblade-first and began to twirl around it, picking up speed. When she kicked off, she was a glowing red blur heading straight for the Heartless. She held the point of her weapon ahead of her and began a horizontal pirouette, and drilled into the side of the creature's head.
The Flowmotion energy died, and Ruby kicked off the Heartless to try and escape danger. One of the claws came directly for her anyways, and she held her Keyblade up to guard. Ruby bounced off the claw's attack and was propelled away, landing on her feet and sliding backwards across the ground. As Nora and her green-dressed friend, Lie Ren, passed her on either side, she Scanned the Heartless again. She was surprised. They had done more damage to it than she thought they would by now. Not enough to fill her with bold confidence, but enough to give her hope that they may all survive.
Lie Ren possessed a pair of small SMGs that did little more than annoy the monster, but annoy was all he wanted to do. He jumped through an open claw, ran across its back, weaved between its legs, all while peppering it with useless bullets. All to keep its attention away from Nora, who was running around its right side. Apparently, the hammer-wielder was tired of attacking the beast the same old way and took aim for one of its legs, blasting it with a grenade as her hammer-head-launcher connected. Ruby, still Scanning, watched a large chunk of the Heartless's energy suddenly vanish. "Haha! I broke its leg!" Nora cheered.
"It's legs are a weak spot?" Ruby noted.
The blond boy, Jaune Arc, noticed this as well. He noticed that the plate Nora attacked had given and cracked. The leg it was attached to shook as if struggling to do its part to support the body. The boy, who had so far done nothing but shake in his boots with a weak grasp on his sword, caused Ruby yet more surprise when he laid out a strategy. "If we can immobilize it, we might be able to concentrate fire and do some real damage!" Ruby's surprise must have been clear on her face, because he followed up with an unsure, "Right…?"
Ruby nodded and took it upon herself to turn his strategy into a plan. "Hammer Girl! Keep attacking the legs! Yang, you're a heavy hitter, right? Help her! Everyone else, keep it from focusing on the two of them. Once it's down, load your strongest ammo and open fire on its face!" Everyone nodded. Ruby stared the creature down and settled back into her combat stance. "May our hearts be our guiding key..."
Yang used her gauntlets to launch herself forward. A claw came swinging to meet her as she ran. Bullets from no less than three different guns, judging by the three different colors of impact flashes, staggered the claw long enough to Yang to safely roll underneath it and continue to its left legs. In order to save her strongest ammunition for later, she loaded her second strongest ammo and began to beat upon the leg plates.
Ruby and Weiss ran forward together. As they didn't have traditional firearms to safely and cheaply attack from a distance, they moved in to occupy its claws from melee range. While Weiss was a competent melee fighter, her weapon wasn't designed for constant slashing against thick shields. The heiress found herself at a disadvantage. She was saved a few times when the beast staggered to Nora and Yang's systematic destruction of its primary support limbs, but one time the claw struck true and laid her out across the ground.
"Weiss!" Ruby was quick to see what had happened, as well as the stinger coming for the fallen girl. She dodged away from her own claw and rushed to her partners side with a straight-leg slide. She held Crescent Rose above them and cast "Reflera!" The stinger hit the light barrier and bounced off as it burst. Undeterred, the Heartless dropped its stinger once again. Ruby was in a better position this time and was able to safely push her partner away before rolling the opposite direction and allowing the stinger to pierce the ground between them. "Are you all right?"
"Yes," Weiss caught her breath, "Thank you Ruby."
"Fall back," Ruby ordered, "Yang and Hammer Girl are nearly done anyway."
Weiss nodded and the pair retreated together to rejoin the others.
After doing two already, Yang could feel when the plate of her last leg was about to give. With one last punch, she broke through and critically damaged her final assigned limb. On the other side, Nora was giggling and spinning with her hammer held out, coming closer to the final leg. Another pink explosion from her grenades crippled this last appendage. The Heartless could no longer support itself and collapsed limply to the ground.
"Now!"
Various clicks sounded as magazines were loaded, rounds were chambered, and Weiss spun her rapier's cylinder. Multiple small glyphs appeared around the heiress, and Ruby raised Crescent Rose straight in front of her. Bullets, grenades, small fireballs from Weiss's attacks and larger fireballs from Ruby's filled the air. The noise effectively covered up Ruby's repeated shouts of 'Fira!' All the while, the Keyblade wielder kept one eye on the Heartless's energy with Scan, watching it drop like a stone.
Guns were emptied. Ruby's magic power reserve ran dry along with Weiss's Burn Dust and a good portion of her Lightning. The air became still as the Heartless shuddered one last time, and collapsed. It faded quickly in a black cloud and a large, crystalline heart emerged from the smoke and dissipated into the air.
"Woah, what was that?" Nora stared wide eyed.
"Never mind that!" Yang quickly deflected, "We actually took that thing down! I seriously thought we didn't stand a chance! Half a chance!"
"It's all because of our teamwork," Weiss tried to take control of the scene.
"And Red here takin' charge!" Nora threw an arm over Ruby's shoulder while unintentionally decimating whatever hope Weiss had to place herself on top. "Seriously, if we're not already top of the class after this, I'm throwing tables."
Ruby shrugged out of Nora's grasp, not liking the sudden attention. "D-don't forget it was his plan," she quickly gestured to Jaune, "All I did was… flesh it out!"
"It was?" Jaune sounded genuinely surprised to be given any credit at all. A smile grew on his face. "I guess it was, huh?"
Ruby backed away from the group. She felt another arm invade the space across her shoulders, and looked up to scowl at the arms owner. Her sister was unfazed by the glare. "Proud of you, sis."
Ruby's gaze softened. She looked around to make sure no one was listening before quietly confiding, "Yeah… but I had to go all out against that Heartless. A lot of stuff I was hoping to keep under wraps. Non-elemental magic, Flowmotion… If we end up in more battles like that, I don't know how long I can keep things quiet. I knew coming here was a bad idea..."
"Hey, things'll look up," Yang assured. "I mean, the only chance we have of running into something like that again is if we're out in the wild, right? First years spend almost the entire year on-campus. We don't get missions 'till the second semester. And you might be gone by then. Oh, hey partner!" Yang watched Blake break away from the larger group and walk their way, and announced it for Ruby's sake.
"Partner, huh?" Ruby smiled.
"Indeed. I take it you're Yang's sister?" Blake asked.
"Allow me!" Yang jumped away from her sister and made a dramatic show of things with exaggerated movements and accents. "Blake Belladonna, meet Ruby Rose. MmmRuby, my partner Blake!"
Ruby shook Blake's hand with a "Good luck."
"Thanks," Blake grinned.
"Ruby!" Weiss called out hurriedly. She jogged over to the young wielder and grabbed her hand. "We still need a relic! Now that that thing is gone, we can go back to the northern temple! Let's go!"
"Relic?" Jaune asked. "Relic!" he realized, and took off. He was shortly followed by Pyrrha, Ren and Nora.
"Ah, kids these days, right?" Yang smiled.
"They are all our age," Blake pointed out.
"Ruby's younger!" Yang countered.
"And arguably more mature than half the others we just fought with," Blake argued. "If I didn't know any better, I'd have guessed she'd already been at Beacon for a few years. Where did she train?"
"Very far away," Yang answered vaguely. To brush questions off, she shouted at the retreating initiates, "HEY, LAST ONE UP THE CLIFF IS A ROTTEN EEEEEGG!"
"We already have our relic," Blake reminded her, "Doesn't that put the others at a serious disadvantage?"
"So we're sure to win!" Yang grinned smugly and started jogging away, "Come on!"
Blake smiled, shook her head and made to follow her partner, but couldn't help taking a look back Ruby's way. Two days ago she had finally managed to convince herself the girl that fell from the sky was some kind of sleep deprivation hallucination. Yesterday the girl was standing in front of her once again, talking about meeting real princesses.
After following her all day yesterday and learning nothing, she should be happy she finally managed to get some solid information today. But what she knew only left more questions. Just who was Ruby Rose? Maybe being partnered with her supposed sister would be the best way to sate her curiosity.
Beacon staff weren't the only ones watching the fight with interest. A ways down the cliff side the students were launched from, another observer stood. A long black coat with a wide zipper and elaborate silver drawstrings hung tightly from their thin, seemingly male figure. A low hood kept their features indiscernible. A young, androgynous voice spoke to itself…
"So… There is a surviving Key Bearer on this world. They were all supposed to fall."
The figure turned on their heel to step away, crossing one arm across their chest to hold the other.
"They were all supposed to fall, I don't know if I can deal with this..."
Darkness seeped out of their arms, shoulders and back like steam. As it passed by their ears, it sounded to them like whispers. Their grip on their arm tightened.
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense... I'll just have to follow my darkness… hehe… hehehe..."
A portal of darkness burst out of the ground, a Dark Corridor. They stepped through the black oval, which closed behind them. The last evidence of the person's presence was a briefly lingering sound of uneasy laughter.