Chapter One
Sunrise
The darkness dared encroach on her last living memory, smudging the image immemorial of Blake. Usually, the amber swirling in her eyes tried its best to remain stoic but often grew cold when on duty, having seen too much and erased too many lives under Ruby's command. Now, however, she could also taste the undistilled fear dripping from it as her body failed in her arms.
The Railgun, a technique she hated for its name alone, ran rampant through her body and exacted a toll of scorched Aura pathways, muscles, bones, and nerves: all of it culminating in a charred corpse barely clinging to life. The pain from her first use of it faded away, replaced with the bliss of having burnt the neural pathways entirely and leaving nothing but a slowly spreading numbness to claim her limbs.
She couldn't muster the strength to inspect the damage, barely able to keep her eyes open long enough to take in the dark Grimm essence streaking across the iridescent sky. The suicide technique granted her the mercy of stripping her numb, leaving her last moments clear of pain and conflict. Yes, she was leaving Blake and Yang behind to deal with the fallout of the invasion, but she wasn't leaving without having done her duty to the people, and wiping the abominations of the Primordials. Ruby trusted her with this for a reason, sparing Yang from having to make the critical decision of annihilating the southeast of Vale. She might've been able to limit the sphere of her destructive potential, but these beasts were tanky and agile as all hell, costing Ruby half her vision to take down one of them.
Her own life, next to the price of millions of lives, was nothing and she paid the price happily to keep her partners alive. That little part of Ruby that lived inside her silently judged her on throwing it away with a smile on her face but the louder encroaching silence dared snuff her out. Her body rebelled against that, trapped in a paralysis of her making.
She didn't want to go, her failing strength unable to keep up with her willpower. Ruby's death tore a hole in them they never patched up, soldiering on on her orders and conveniently ignoring anything beyond the invasion. Beacon gave Yang the excuse to have RWBY operating as autonomous agents without a true leader, but after the dust all settled, Yang and Blake would be left in a world without Ruby and her. She couldn't tell if the sorrow of that tugged on her heartstring or if her lungs were failing under the stress of her injuries.
It didn't matter in the end though. She wasn't leaving her for long and would see her soon in the greater scope of the afterlife if there was one, assuming Ruby or Neo didn't steal her from the aether for their own nefarious deeds.
A weary sigh using her last breath escaped her. Those two annoyances duked it out for violations and breakthroughs of metaphysical and paracausal nature. Ruby's stubborn goal to remove Salem and Ozpin ended in her tentative success, the overpowered gifts of chance turned back onto the latter that then reduced the balance of power to nothing. That was at least the theory that manifested the Primordial beasts. Neo, reaching into the veil beyond, snatched a very torn soul and then gave her possession of her body for a reason she still couldn't figure out, and proceeded to let loose a weapon of potential mass destruction that did nothing but demolish Cinder absolutely before disappearing to die against Salem.
She feared that whatever plans Neo had for Ruby wouldn't end with her death, not with her ripping apart the seams of life and death so casually for an illusory show meant to gain support for Beacon in the coming days after the invasion. Unfortunately, she wouldn't be there to help prevent those plans unless Neo saw a need to bring her back, and she wasn't sure how she stood on that. A part of her wanted to accept the eternal rest, finally able to step away from the turmoil of the mortal realm, and the other part tempered by the war and Ruby almost relished in it.
Blake shook her gently, kneeling by her side solemnly, and she found her eyes again drifting back to her face. Through the blurry mess of colors, she mustered the last of her strength and pressed a weak finger to her nose, watching in resigned relief when it wiggled in surprise. Her vision faded into nothingness, her body finally failing after a prolonged struggle against futility.
She never saw the look of utter desolation cross over Blake's visage.
The smell of filtered and crisp air dragged her from her slumber faster than a sale on mint ice cream. Beyond the notion that she shouldn't have ever awoken again, the blinding lights of the indoor lights forced her back into the darkness from whatever afterlife Neo dragged her from. The headache of starvation and an empty stomach surged right in after she finished rubbing the bright spots of light from her eyelids and she aggressively rolled from her resting place.
She took an extra crucial second to realize the floor next to her bed wasn't where she expected it to be and went tumbling down in a sheets-bound ball of flailing limbs. Her shields and glyphs took the impact without any conscious effort as she struggled with her cloth prison, breathing a deep sigh of relief when she finally found an escape.
The surge of Aura from her core had her wincing at the incoming pain, only for it to chase away the pain of her headache and the bruises gained from her short fall. She lifted her arms for a visual inspection, expecting the Aura to tear across her the pathways in a violent affair and leave her muscles in agony. She hesitantly poked the skin along her arms, tracing the thick lines of scar tissue cracking like lightning. The Railgun wasn't an easy technique on theory alone and didn't weigh easily on the body. A particular sensitive spot near her elbow shook her from her analysis and she shakily rose to a stand.
The fall came from her placement on the top bunk after her resurrection though she still wasn't entirely sure she hadn't awoken in some cursed version of the afterlife. Clean lines of metal encased the walls with embedded beds on each side, space set aside for a small kitchenette. An automatic door opening just off to her side had her flinching and spawning a protective dome of glyphs. The realization of a tiny bathroom with bare essentials went deep inside as molten lava traveled from her core along the primary pathways in her arms, forcing her to collapse on her knees.
Sweat matted her hair and her vision returned from the edges of the black. The taste of copper tainted her tongue and the belated pain of her bitten tongue drowned in a sea of Aura before it swept down and numbed her arms into a comforting dull ache. She spawned a single glyph in her palm and traced the path of her Semblance along her limb, wincing at the sting and marveling at the bright blue light tracing their way along the Railgun scars and illuminating against her snow-white skin.
A pair of footsteps echoing outside the metal bunk chamber made her spawn a protective wall just as the doors slid open. Any further threat assessment went out the airlock when she met a pair of familiar crimson orbs staring down at her with furrowed brows, examining the new additions to her partner. Yang knocked on the glyph, choosing not to break it using her own fragment to disrupt the layers of Aura woven throughout it and startle the freshly awoken Weiss into a panic.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Yang said softly, and Weiss dropped her defense when her voice washed over her, accepting the hug that came with her stepping into the room and kneeling by her side. The last memories of her previous life came tumbling out the moment Yang nestled her on her lap and held her tight, positioning her chin on her shoulder and carding fingers through her hair. She couldn't control the outpour of tears streaking down her cheeks or the sobs wracking her shoulders.
Yang barely felt the nails attempting to scratch deep rivulets down her back, whispering sweet nothings and shushing her through the episode. Every time Weiss tried to say something through her sobs, the hiccups interrupted her and the entire process restarted from the beginning, where Yang could do nothing but sit there and provide comfort. She gently swayed and hummed a nameless tune, waiting patiently and just staying there by her side to remind her she was never alone.
Her first coherent words were muffled by the blonde's luxurious mane, making her finally let up on her restrictive embrace. Yang pressed a finger to her lips, preventing a repetition until she could clean her up a bit, wiping away her tears and cleaning her nose with a spare tissue. Weiss hysterically chuckled through her attempts in trying to keep her still and enjoyed the altruistic ministrations. She wiped the rest of her face and sniffled a bunch, trying to avert her eyes but finding Yang keeping her in place. "I'm sorry."
"For what, you dense idiot?" Yang replied without any bite, running her thumbs along her cheeks and kneading them mockingly. She'd be lying if she told her she didn't enjoy it and wished she could steal Blake's ability to purr realistically, settling on a low rumbling from the back of her throat. "You're here now so it's all okay."
"But I died." She stated the obvious and received the most deadpan expression ever, beating out the time she and Yang had to inform Ruby about their accidental rediscovery of antimatter and the destructive potential to eclipse the former's supernova. Glenn nearly froze over by the time Yang assured her they'd destroy everything about the project and never so much as think about resurrecting it even with the planet on the line. It was only through the vague hints Neo gave them here and there that they learned she'd similarly wiped the idea of nuclear weaponry from the mind of humanity by ending many civilizations before they could dare use them. "I left you and Blake alone."
"Yes, you did and I almost blew Beacon to smithereens when I saw your name carved on the Stone." Weiss started on something, tears again welling in her eyes, and then promptly found Yang clamping her lips shut. She blinked them away and did her best Ruby impression, glaring sadly. Yang was unperturbed, finding the entire image hilarious with Weiss unable to make any sounds beyond dissatisfied grunting. "Of course, she had to smack me around and charge Pyrrha with keeping me alive after she died, so…"
"Wait, wait, how did Blake die?" All of the sorrow and shame stopped in an instant and her training kicked her, suppressing everything but the most important stimuli. She couldn't read Yang's expression for the first time since they met and she didn't quite like it, lips twisting into a frown. She didn't look any different from the war save for an extra scar that crossed her eyebrows, her Aura keeping her in her prime with barely any tension, marring, or wrinkles on her face. Though, the streak of pale grey hanging over her right eye was new. "She was technically immortal."
"The Supernova requires a fully stabilized core to activate and she decided to blow herself, about ten square kilometers of wildlife, and nearly wrecked the Colosseum and an Airship killing Adam and most of his rebellious Fang to the point Sienna cleaned up without any problems." Yang rattled off the circumstances that left her as the only living member to ride the fallout. "Blake made it easier with her little firestorm that killed the entire Council and that led to martial law for a month or two until Qrow became the leader. No more pesky democracy for him to deal with. Really helped clamp down on the unrest the human supremacists stirred about."
Weiss choked on her spit as she tried to wrap her head around Qrow of all people taking charge of the shattered government with only district leaders to get anything going until he could cement his hold and prevent widespread riots. Ozpin gave him the title after Ruby died and he suddenly had to choose between accepting her previous responsibilities for his own or pawn it off to yet another successor, his third this time, in the form of the last two S-ranks that would consider taking advice from him, and the less said about Raven's history the better.
"How do you know about that?" Weiss caught her look of confusion for a second before it disappeared into bemusement. She couldn't quite figure why those familiar crimson orbs made her incredibly uncomfortable and she fumbled under the attention. An enormous weight pressed against her mind, not anything close to what Ruby could leverage in a fraction of a moment, but much, much more refined and experienced. "Didn't you die? Isn't that why we're both here? Wherever here is..."
She motioned about with her hands, scanning the room again. A black shadow nestled in the top bunk across her own caught her attention. A slight movement revealed a pair of familiar golden eyes staring down at her silently while marking the page in her book. She waved up at the shadow, getting a curt hand gesture in reply before Blake melted into the space between the light, disappearing again. Save for the knowledge she couldn't teleport, she had no way to distinguish her presence. The thought they were lucky to not have her as an enemy flew out from the depths of her mind again and subsequently got buried under the weight of the war.
"We don't actually know where 'here' is." She air quoted and lifted the pair of them off the ground in an impressive show of balance and strength, placing Weiss on a lower bunk and stepping over to the wall where a panel slid open to reveal a monitor. "Atmosphere is filled with oxygen and nitrogen, ambient temperature is comfortable, and skies are clear. Initial inspection of the immediate area reveals flora similar to that found on Sanus and Solitas, vegetation density only found outside of the five kingdoms, and a partially similar constellation map and celestial satellite to that of Remnant. Beyond that, the Ruby won't or can't determine anything."
"So… not the afterlife then." She inspected the fuselage around her again, making note of the perfect welding and modern design that hid the terrible wiring that was Yang's hallmark engineering trade. The four bunks surprised her but it touched her to know she still built everything around the standard fireteam. "I see you made some modifications since her re-creation. The atmospheric readouts are new though. Did you figure out how to sustain flight outside the atmosphere then? How long did that take you?"
"Twenty years, give or take." She pressed a few buttons and felt the ship shudder beneath them. "Hydrogen is an exceptionally good fuel source once we rediscovered how to get it without relying on Dust and creating an impure substance. We couldn't isolate the phenomena of Dust failing outside of the magnetic field but we could work around that issue."
"Twenty years and this one ship is all you created. We created antimatter in two years. That's not the Yang I remember." Weiss replied, making humor of the situation and taking a deep gulp at the next logical leap. "So how did you die in the end?"
Yang turned her head and shot her a silent question.
"Blake died using your Supernova, I died using Ruby's Railgun, and, well, Ruby died before us so I'm sure she's somewhere around here, probably through those doors or scouting the terrain." She rattled off the circumstances of the death as if they were lottery numbers and not deep-seated emotions threatening to send her back into a useless ball of sadness and pity. Ruby trained them well to ignore a lot of the shit they went through and she didn't need to be by her side for when she awoke from her death, her time far more important to figuring out where they were and how. "So how did you get here?"
"Of old age, and yes," She stared Weiss down until she abandoned her look of incredulity, bopping her over the head for good measure. "The irony of that is not lost on me. As to Ruby, she's not here. She wasn't when I awoke so I'm about 100% sure she had some hand in this or Neo is just having a laugh."
As far as predictions went, she could do far worse.
Weiss cackled for a bit, wiping the last of her tears from her breakdown away and waving away her concern. "I'm trying to imagine you as an old lady and I can't, I'm sorry."
Yang removed her scroll and tabbed over to an image, blowing up on its holographic projector. "I looked better at seventy than you would at thirty." Blake stirred from her shadows and inspected the laser constructs, a soft whistle stirring from her strained vocal cords to echo about the small cabin. The goosebumps still raced across her spine whenever she dared intrude on the verbal world, those rare moments leaving her more vulnerable than a scared bunny Grimm.
Vicious little bastards though with their teeth.
Weiss probed the floating image of Yang decked in what looked like her take on Ruby's black ops suit: tight black reinforced leggings with thigh pouches, rather than cargo pants, tucked into a pair of worn boots she swore were the same she had throughout the war, and an atrociously faded orange hoodie stamped with the emblem of the four Hunter factions, the same used for the Vytal Festival. Ember Celica peeked out from under her sleeves, leaving bulges on her wrist.
She did look good for seventy, stuck in what she hesitated to label as her late thirties with the first lines of age streaking across her face and leaving shallow tear tracts along her cheeks and the start of crow's feet around her eyes. And she'd definitely be lying to herself if she didn't look absolutely delicious in those leggings, mentally kicking herself for not forcing her to wear them earlier. Pyrrha, on the other hand, also immortalized in holographic form looked just a shade older than Yang, wearing a modernized version of her armor stylized after a civilization long dead before the development of accurate recordkeeping, though she kept the circlet. She discarded the cleavage and show of thighs in place of a bodysuit for a slightly better form of protection, sword and shield slung over her back.
Both of them however sported hair worn in high ponytails just a few shades darker than her own with almost none of their original blonde or red peaking through, washed out with the decades. "Pyrrha and I took this to celebrate the official unification of the five Hunter factions under one banner. Of course, by that point, Mantle's economy was barely getting back into shape after the depression you caused by moving the SDC to Menagerie, Vale's Council was still neutered after Qrow's retirement and they were still establishing their hold under his successor, nice man, took no bullshit and didn't give them a chance to stir up any old speciest crap, and the other three wanted a better organized and centralized order to request help and collaborate."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Everything was all peachy and you all ended up as friends and the Grimm never threatened any civilized borders again. Sounds incredibly boring and don't really care." Blake threw her book at her head for her lack of tact, her shields unable to distinguish the action with a threat and letting it through with a loud thunk. She flipped her the middle finger and set the book aside away from her reach. "Did you or did you not tap that ass?"
Yang tried her level best to keep her flabbergast from showing, looking between her and Blake and getting a shrug of indifference from the Faunus. "I just told you I helped usher in a prosperity never before seen on Remnant, surviving long beyond the Hunter average lifespan to gain a full head of white hair and die of old age rather than dying brutally in the field, and dealt with the political fallout in Vale without causing a civil war, and you want to know if she was my rebound off you?"
Weiss nodded eagerly, almost ravenously giddy at the prospective answer to confirm her wild fantasies.
"You do know that if I say 'yes' then she's just gonna pass out from the blood loss, right?" Yang addressed Blake and got rolled her eyes as her answer and, on cue, Weiss fell back onto the bed, giggling madly. "Right… she died as the pervert she lived. If you're still listening in there, Pyrrha and I never married but we had the same agreement we had with Ruby and Blake: stress relief, skinship, sparring, you know, the whole shebang. Jaune never recovered from attempting to ask her out."
"Jaune was a mama's boy that needed a hard reality check and I don't think Ruby smacked him hard enough." Weiss's voice echoed about the lower bunk and she wiped the blood dripping from her nose with the back of her hand. She staggered to a stand and stretched, feeling everything pop from what felt like a couple of centuries of dead slumber. "Alright. So, possible alien planet and triple resurrections. I'm gonna need my books, my weapon, and some mint ice cream to get started." She listed off these things on her fingers, looking about the spacecraft for some more things she needed, suddenly coming to with a wide smile. "Oh, and a kiss from each of you." She pointed to the shadow of Blake and then and Yang. "Actually, make that two from you. I have to make up for half a century of my absence."
"You forgot someone." Yang pointed above her head to where Blake dangled a living shadow with red eyes to match the former's. It yipped once and lolled its tongue, wagging its tail incessantly. She snatched the creature without a pause, squeezing it in her arms until it burst into a black mist and then reformed at her feet. "After Ruby destroyed her gem, I had to keep her with my constantly. Never met another on the five main settled continent with her intelligence but a few Alphas came close. Most of them wanted to be left alone."
"What about Pyrrha or... Ruby? They could've awoken before all of us or they could be somewhere else." She broached the subject, watching carefully for Yang's reaction. She could hide a lot behind the pervert facade she let the world see but she couldn't take away that Yang spent a lot more time with Pyrrha, making a semblance of a life that could easily eclipse what she shared with her in their relatively short five years together. What chance did she have against the decades upon decades she spent with someone she personally welcomed into their relationship to fill the void Ruby left behind.
Yang sensed that turmoil within her and wrapped her in a hug to ease her worries. "You're worried." She looked up at Blake when she silently joined the conversation, petting her hair. "You're worried I moved on with Pyrrha, and yes, yes I did." She admitted, Weiss close to crying again if she didn't shush her abruptly and interrupt her before she could get rolling. Blake didn't have the same visible overt reaction to those words, petting her just a smidge harder to make her dissatisfaction known. She placed her hand over hers, squeezing softly. "Now, now. It wasn't easy. Took a few years to get through the emotional baggage, and checking every minute to make sure there wasn't a Blake clone following me, but I survived."
"It's just a shame you guys weren't there to see it." She remarked sadly before her smile brightened the room. Blake received a hair ruffle and ear scratch for good measure, Weiss getting a kiss to her hairline. "But hey, we're here now. Wherever here is."
"Does that mean a reconnaissance mission… leader?" Yang gave her a crooked smile at her acceptance, not having the chance to hear it from either of her teammates before their untimely demise. "Though, Blake probably has a dozen clones already out there."
The mentioned Faunus shook her head and created a clone just to their side, the construct holding for a brief moment, sweating and pale, before bursting into pure iridescent Aura. "Hmm, I see your Supernova disrupted your ability to create the latticework construct needed for stable clones. I assume you used your primary core as the fuel for it rather than your auxiliary cores, though I suppose it could be a side effect of using any Semblance on itself, the destructive property of Yang's Aura turning inwards with an exponential curve of detonation."
The two of them stared at their midget with amazement, wondering how and when she had the time to analyze Yang's Aura and Semblance so thoroughly. She gave them a blank look before replying, "What? I'm allowed to theorize. It's most likely the same or similar reason I can't control my glyphs anymore: the Railgun destroying the Aura pathways in my body and making it exceedingly painful to channel anything beyond a single glyph."
"Great. So to iterate: we've been resurrected due to an unknown force, probably Ruby and Neo, you two are about what, B-ranks at best now without your Semblances, dropped into familiar terrain with almost the same constellation map, and lacking any sort of communications array or this ship would've already connected to the Towers by now." Yang counted off the many different events and consequences plaguing them for the immediate moment and then paused suddenly, swinging about to face the rear ramp. She punched the button to the storage hold and disappeared from their view, forcing them to follow into a rather spacious hold for a craft of its size filled with a pair of sleek bikes and racks for extra go-bags, extra rations, and their original weapons of all things.
Weiss practically hovered over to the bikes, hearts in her eyes and drool trailing down her chin, until Blake yanked her away to the ramp. She pouted at the loss of her new toys, resolving to escape from her clutches and spend some time getting intimate with the repulsor coil replacements of the wheels. They'd still be there, secured tightly in custom-made harnesses until Yang told them what was up.
Their leader stopped on the threshold where metal met grass, gazing out into the dark treeline. Her eyes widened imperceptibly, a white glyph appearing to block the incoming projectile and then shattering much to Weiss's consternation. Yang took the surprise and shock of the defense breaking much better than her, catching the projectile with a deft movement before it could pierce her skull. She inspected the weapon, flipping it back and forth. A silver arrowhead decorated the wooden shaft adorned with grey feathers to create drag. It was a positively ancient weapon, dating back several millennia even before Neo went all apocalyptic trigger-happy on the planet
She threw the weapon over her shoulders, Blake catching it and releasing her grip on Weiss's arms after they started shaking from the struggle of losing the Aura from just that one glyph. The blue lines tainting along her arms faded once the glyph shattered, leaving behind angry red scars as if freshly singed into her skin.
"We have company."