AN: Well I must say I am encouraged by my reviews so far, just enough to get started on the next chapter. Thank you all for the encouragement. Now that I'm the one in the driver's seat I have a much greater appreciation for reviews. Mikejoneswho gets the honor of being my first review ever, so I'll remember that name. Looking back at the chapter right after I posted it I began to get the 'but I could have done this better' syndrome going, so I'm glad most of you think I'm off to a good start.
Also, I forgot to allow guest reviews when I first posted this story. This has since been rectified. My bad.
Just a heads up, the only reason this chapter is out this fast is that I am still in my 'writing a story for the first time' phase with all the energy that comes with it and I have a few days off to use for writing. So sorry to say, but you shouldn't get used to my pace being this fast.
To blankdead, thank you for the concern regarding the flamers. Don't worry though, it will take a bit more than a few jackasses to persuade me to stop. I've had this idea floating for almost two years now, if they want me to quit they had better come up with something damn creative.
With that being said I hope you all enjoy the next installment.
Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY or Naruto and am making no profit from either of these franchises whatsoever.
'thoughts'
Uchiha of Remnant
Chapter 2: Into the Cold
No words in the language he knew had a chance in hell of describing what Sasuke was observing as the simple reverse summoning turned into… something. It was only due to the activation of his Sharingan and the corresponding increase in both his perception of chakra and the processing speed of his brain that he was able to remotely understand what was happening in flashes of time that were measured in fractions of milliseconds.
His chakra levels that were previously almost depleted completely refilled in less time than it took to blink. Though the aches and pains of his bruises and injuries he had sustained in his battle with Deidara were still present.
A second and a half later, there was a tremendous pull on his chakra. Not his physical body, but the actual life force that he called his own. Every drop in every vein of his Chakra Network was suddenly lurched as some unknown force attempted to rip it from his body. The assault disappeared as quickly as it arrived, thankfully failing to dislodge his chakra.
He was also moving incredibly quickly. But not in a normal manner. It was not up, down, or any side direction. Sasuke could not describe how he was moving - the direction was so alien, so outside his normal experience and comprehension he could not put it into words. If he had to make a comparison it would probably be similar to what a creature who had spent its entire life on a flat surface would feel if it were suddenly lifted up into a third dimension that had previously been unknown to it. Sasuke similarly had no way of understanding how he was moving as he tumbled about. It was just… different.
What his senses were perceiving outside the confines of his own body was every bit as confusing.
Aoda and Garuda had become translucent and ghost-like, for lack of a better word. Their flesh, bones, organs, and even their last meals were visible even though Aoda still had them within his maw. The serpent clenched his mouth shut as tight as it could go, not willing to risk losing either of his passengers being lost to the chaos that permeated their very being.
The space between himself and his two summons, as well as the area outside Aoda's body also chose to not appear as anything remotely rational or familiar.
Space was either occupied by clear air or by solid or liquid objects. The simple and unassuming medium in which the interesting things; matter and energy, went about their business. That was how virtually every human in recorded history had perceived it and would have described it. The space Sasuke saw was different - it was alive.
It churned, boiled, bubbled, flowed, poured, and twisted before his very eyes as its own independent entity. There was no direction or organization to this movement as shapes, bubbles, and vectors of one, two, and three dimensions folded in on each other and themselves in an infinitely complex and shuffling web.
Despite technically still being inside Aoda's mouth, there was somehow still a presence of light. It seemed to come from everywhere, not having any fixed source but rather emerging and simply being everywhere at once. Colors both vibrant and dull of every shade and hue danced and mixed both from and across the maelstrom in front of him. The shades churned and mixed, evaporated, solidified, and separated across his field of view with blinding speed. They became transparent, opaque, and everything in between as they streaked and painted all three dimensions with their countless hues.
The Sharingan also revealed the presence of chakra. Unlike the chaotic orgy of space and color the chakra Sasuke observed had far more consistent behavior. It appeared as tiny flecks of dust or sand, spontaneously popping into existence in random locations both inside and outside of all three of their respective bodies before vanishing at speeds even his fully developed dojutsu could not follow. He could even see flashes of chakra spontaneously appear within the flesh of his arms and hands in front of him before they vanished. It was this chakra, Sasuke realized, that his body had re-absorbed to cap off his previously depleted reserves. Though how his body could have absorbed all that chakra in a fraction of a second was beyond him – it shouldn't have been possible to take in an amount that great from the environment in an hour, much less a millisecond.
His ears on the other hand were providing a stark contrast to the wild mess his eyes were seeing.
Silence. Complete and utter silence. Not a hum or buzz of even the smallest of background noises could be heard. Even focusing his chakra to enhance his hearing yielded nothing. Not even the beating of his frantically pumping heart could be heard.
Not even ten seconds had passed since they escaped from Deidara's blast, but Sasuke was already fighting the urge to panic. And from how Garuda and Aoda were thrashing and their own hearts were pounding they were not faring any better than he was. Normally Sasuke was calm and collected even in stressful situations, well aware that rational thought and not mindless panic was the best way out of most problems. Still, there was a limit.
Sasuke never imagined he would again find himself saddled with a situation as spontaneous and as terrifying as the Uchiha Massacre, but he had to admit he had found a contender.
Sasuke focused his vision, desperate to find anything that could help get them out of this anomaly. He forced his diaphragm to slow down its labor, trying to bring some measure of control to his actions.
As he poured more chakra into the Sharingan the morphing froth of space around him slowly came into better focus. There was no deceleration of the mess of activity surrounding him, but the random storm of shapes and colors began to coalesce into patterns slightly more familiar.
None of the images lasted for more than a fraction of a second, and all of them were fuzzy or distorted to some degree.
Trees, branches, flowers, grass, rocks, sand, waves, puddles, streams, patches of sky, various fauna, and everything in between could nevertheless be made out. Even the occasional human face or patch of skin could be seen before it flashed out of existence.
The Uchiha began to calm himself. He was still frantic, but his brain began to ignore the adrenaline rush and direct its efforts into understanding what was going on around it and try to come up with an idea to end their unintended journey.
Sasuke only lasted about thirty seconds before his eyes widened in alarm and edged closer to hysteria again as he felt every cell in his body begin to have a dull ache that rapidly progressed to an every-more painful burning sensation. A quick analysis of his chakra levels revealed that it was higher than his maximum level. A glance into the flesh of his left arm showing the motes of chakra were somehow adding themselves to his body and increasing his chakra reserves.
Sasuke would normally be rather excited about obtaining more power. However, the rate at which chakra was being added was far too fast for his body to keep pace with. His cells would start dying en mass in mere minutes if it didn't stop.
He would be dead in less than two minutes if he stayed here, and Aoda and Garuda would likely share his fate if the similar increase in chakra he saw in them was anything to go on.
Blazing red eyes renewed their search for some way to get out of the void. Sasuke desperately pulsed his chakra, activating the most inefficient performance of the tree-walking ability he could muster across every square inch of his skin to vent as much of the excess chakra from his body as possible.
It was futile. The small bits of chakra appearing in his body and adding to his total refilled his reserves far more quickly than he could deplete them. Any larger jutsu would no doubt yield the same result, and performing any powerful techniques inside Aoda's mouth would no doubt kill or seriously injure both of his allies.
A slight mercy was granted as the rate the foreign chakra appeared slowly started to decrease. He had no idea why, but he wasn't complaining.
It bought him some time, but he was still in a race against the clock.
He grasped at the phantom projections and mosaics of shape before him, attempting to use either his chakra or just plain physical force to induce some kind of tangible change to their current state. Using his chakra to stick to the malleable forms before him with varying degrees of strength applied brought him nothing. A watered-down Chidori weak enough to not pose any risk of injuring Aoda or Garuda had similarly disappointing outcomes.
Sasuke continued his attempts in defiance of these negative results. It was all he could do at this point.
A minute and a half more passed with no success even though the rate at which the chakra spawned had dropped to less than a fourth of what it was at the start. The pain had grown to unbearable levels and was starting to become so great that it was interfering with the rest of Sasuke's cognitive activity that was trying to escape what would certainly be the oddest death in history. The stabbing sensation did not spare the smallest portion of his body; arms, legs, head, brain, bones, groin, organs. Every pain receptor he had was burning.
The Uchiha was a second away from giving into the pain and releasing a scream of agony that would ultimately be unheard in the absolute silence of the void they were in, but fate chose that moment to give mercy. With a sudden lurch their journey ended, the void vanishing from sight in an instant to be replaced by the blackness of Aoda's mouth.
Their voyage over, Aoda wasted no time in ejecting his two passengers from his mouth, neither Sasuke nor Garuda in any condition or mood to bother drying themselves off from his saliva. For several minutes all three lay panting on the ground recovering from the shock of adrenaline, terror, and pain they had experienced.
Garuda was the first to rise, not willing to stay in a belly-up position that was disgraceful to his kind for any longer than necessary. He was not capable of speech, but that did not stop him from mentally cursing himself for being too panicked to have the presence of mind to simply de-summon himself before Sasuke-sama's opponent self-destructed. He had flown into the mouth of a snake; one of Manda's children no less! His flock would never let him live it down if they got wind of this.
The Hawk took a single glance at the landscape around them before cawing to his two comrades to get up; they needed to talk now.
The sole human amongst the group slowly collected himself after hearing his avian summons' call. The pain was gone but he was still exhausted and numb from the experience.
He rolled his head to the side towards Garuda but paused when instead of solid earth his head made a crunching noise on the somewhat soft substance it was lying in. The Uchiha suddenly became aware that his body seemed to be lodged into the same substance that was damp and nipping cold to the touch.
Onyx eyes shot open to reveal a different landscape from both the woodland they had fought Deidara in and the dark rocks of Ryuchi Cave.
Snow covered the land before him as far as he could see with more snowflakes gently drifted down from the sky to add to the white blanket about four inches deep already. The land was almost completely flat save for a handful of random contours that fell several feet above or below the plane of the ground. They were sitting in what was clearly a small meadow in warmer seasons with dormant trees free of any leaves or green forming the beginning of a forest of unknown size on any side of them.
To his rear Aoda reared himself up, further crushing and grinding several trees that had been unfortunate enough to be underneath him when he emerged from the void.
"Are you both alright?" the snake asked, concerned that his two passengers may have been harmed.
"We'll live" the Uchiha replied.
"Sasuke-sama, what one earth just happened?"
"Deidara's last blast somehow interfered with the reverse summoning. I don't suppose either of you know where we are?"
Both serpent and hawk shook their heads. Sasuke's first guess was they were somewhere in the Land of Snow, but quickly discarded that possibility. The Land of Snow and the location where they had fought Deidara were in a similar position in terms of longitude, with the former being a bit further east. It had been almost noon when he had started his battle with the explosion-happy Akatsuki, so it should have been two or three o'clock in the afternoon in Yukigakure.
A glance above him revealed not a bright midafternoon, but a dark sky that was in the middle of transitioning to night.
'We must be somewhere on the other side of the world. Just perfect…'
Garuda took it upon himself to spread his wings and soar into the air, scouting out the area in case there was something recognizable or useful. He returned to the ground after less than a minute, ruffling his feathers when he touched down to keep warm from the biting cold.
A second of eye contact with the Sharingan was all Sasuke needed to have Garuda share the visions he had seen in the sky; it was an efficient way to communicate and share information given Garuda's verbal handicap.
There were no recognizable landmarks anywhere. The forest that surrounded them extended for miles in all directions, although the sea or some large body of water was a bit less than three miles to the south. Most importantly though a small number of houses and settlements were visible thirty miles north, meaning there were people here who could inform him of his location.
Sasuke thought through a few plans in his head before turning to his two summons.
"Both of you head back to your homes. I'll go find someone who can tell us where we just landed. Aoda, if Suigetsu summons you just tell him what happened and have him take the rest of the team to the Jade Hideout in the Land of Hot Water until I get back."
They both nodded in understanding and compliance before vanishing in puffs of smoke that lingered longer than normal in the frigid air. It was just as well Aoda left, his body would stay warm for some time due to his sheer size but he still did not prefer such low thermal conditions.
Sasuke did not have the same problem. Even without using a wafer of his fire-nature chakra to warm himself he could handle the cold. The Shinobi Academy had done its part to make sure all the children who went there were trained to handle and ignore moderate pain and discomfort. It wouldn't do to have operatives who would fail a mission because the weather was "not comfortable." One had to be able to handle sharp pain without hesitation if they were expected to bite their thumb hard enough to draw blood to perform a summoning.
He could have had Garuda give him a ride to save him some time, but a house-sized bird flying towards a town might not put the people who lived there in the mood to divulge the information he wanted.
Besides, he had already put both of his summons through hell traveling through that chaotic ether that would have overwhelmed even the most experienced acid addict.
The Uchiha flared his chakra to evaporate the saliva still clinging to his clothing before it could freeze. He had lost his traveling cloak in his battle with Deidara, leaving him with his thin white shirt as his only option for clothing on his upper body. In hindsight, it had been a poor decision to leave Jugo as the only member of Hebi carrying spare clothing around.
Though to be fair, he would have been an idiot to trust Karin or Suigetsu with the job.
With an exhale of visible condensation that was alien to someone that had grown up in the heat and humidity of the Land of Fire Sasuke turned the chakra on his feet into snowshoes as he used the water walking ability to prevent himself from trudging through the snow. There was no reason to leave tracks so someone or something could follow him after all.
Sasuke put one foot in front of the other and started running as a true shinobi; without adding a sound to the dead quiet that surrounded him. There were no leaves to rustle in the mild breeze, it was too cold for crickets, and whatever birds lived in the area had gone to greener areas for the winter. The only sound that accompanied Sasuke on the start of his trek was the rush of wind as he glided across the snow.
He had only been running for five minutes when a small twitch of movement was seen out of the corner of his eye a little over eighty yards away. He stopped abruptly, ready to see if the movement in question belonged to a person he could get directions from.
A few seconds later a low, gravelly rhythm of breathing reached his ears along with the crunch of snow that was too loud to be something as small as a person. Moments later the certainly-not human made its way through the trees toward the Uchiha on all fours, hunched over slightly in an almost ape-like manner.
'What is that? I've never heard of a creature or a summon like this.'
Even with his normal vision it was clear the thing before him was not made of ordinary flesh and bone. It was a wolf-like creature in shape, though proportionally had much larger forearms. It was much larger than a wolf too, standing a bit over five feet at the shoulder. The fur and skin that was visible was jet-black with no shade of any other color to be seen anywhere on its body.
The eyes, though, were what drew most of Sasuke's attention. There were no tomoe to be seen, but the vivid red that radiated from the eyes like small lanterns was a perfect copy of the hue of his Kekkei Genkai.
The creature stopped its advance about fifteen feet from Sasuke's position before revealing that it was capable of standing in a bipedal fashion, raising its head a full seven feet off the ground. It was clearly interested in him, the ears now perked up and fully pivoted straight at him to pick up any sound he made.
Sasuke drew his right hand to his Kusanagi. He would prefer not to fight this thing and waste his time, but he would have no problem putting this thing down if it attacked. He had killed a bear in the Forest of Death the size of a small house by crushing its skull with nothing but three kicks when he was twelve. If this thing thought it could take him on it was sadly mistaken.
The wolf entity did not make any aggressive moves though. It lowered itself to quadruped form again and tilted its head slightly as if it were confused as to what it was seeing.
Sasuke stood his ground as it hesitated with a single front paw raised off the ground in an unsure manner. Another moment passed and it started walking forward again, deciding to risk further inspection.
The Uchiha stood impassively, not at all concerned with the decreasing space between them. Even as the wolf stood on two legs again and placed its head inches from his own he felt no alarm. The thing would be lucky to move half an inch before he bisected it.
Sasuke began to become genuinely annoyed as the wolf somehow got the impression it had the right to smell his hair. The strands of raven-black hair on his scalp were pulled toward ebony nostrils as they sampled the air around the Uchiha for any scent or particulate matter of interest.
Eyes narrowed as the Uchiha's patience started to wane.
'I don't want to kill this thing for no reason, but would it be too much to ask for it to make up its mind?'
The thought had barely finished forming in his head when Sasuke hastily stumbled back in shock, his hand having flown from his sword handle to cover the right side of his face.
The thing had licked him!
Sasuke's jaw clenched as he fought the urge to skewer the abomination before him that had so blatantly invaded his personal space.
'That's it. I'm gone.'
He had more important things to do than socialize with a mutated dog that thought he was a pup that needed to be cleaned. That was Kiba's job.
Sasuke resumed his run north after wiping the unwelcomed moisture from his cheek and around his eye. The creature thankfully was content to watch his departure, making no move to follow.
'Hope I don't run into a pack of those things. I probably shouldn't kill them if I want to avoid antagonizing the people here though. If they're rare enough that I haven't heard about them then they might be an endangered or protected species.'
Sasuke was over two-thirds of the way to where Garuda had seen a settlement when he spotted a group of the black wolves ahead of him slightly to his right running toward a section of the forest directly ahead of him but blocked from his view by trees.
'Probably some carcass they found.'
He prepared to divert his course, having no desire either to antagonize them by giving them the idea he would steal their kill or to have his face cleaned by a pack of the things instead of just one.
As he rounded about and came to the edge of a clearing though, he realized his mistake.
It was no animal, but a person the wolves were attracted to. And not in a good way if their body language and growling were any indication.
The person was small, probably a young teenager. A girl if he were to guess based on what little posture and bodily dimensions he could make out through the heavy cloak and hood, the latter of which was raised and prevented him from looking at the face of its owner. The attire the presumed girl wore was bright red. Black boots were the only item of clothing he could see that did not possess what had to be their favorite color.
The person did not have any visible weapons and was making no move to defend themselves or flee.
Sasuke drew Kusanagi without any hesitation. He was irritated at being forced to save another stranger who was in over their head but instinctively he knew he had to help.
He hadn't let that daughter of the Daimyo, Naho if he recalled, slip off that cliff to her death. And he wasn't about to start now.
As he prepared to attack his irritation was replaced by satisfaction. This could actually work in his favor. He had been looking for someone to help him anyway, and if he saved this person's life they would probably far more liberal sharing the information he wanted than if he had knocked on their door.
He could use a test battle as well. His bruises and scrapes from his earlier battle with Deidara were still reminding him of their presence as they stung from exposure to the biting cold air. His chakra reserves on the other hand had more than doubled from his clusterfuck of a reverse summoning (a suitable consolation for almost killing him, he had to admit) and while he was certainly excited about the change it would be wise to test his control a bit. He also needed to re-calibrate his jutsu so he didn't use up too much chakra or loose control of a technique that was now likely more powerful. This would be a perfect time to do just that.
Wanting to preserve every detail as clearly as possible, Sasuke activated his Sharingan as he lunged forward to attack and noticed a sharp contrast between the human and the black wolves.
His earlier assessment that the wolves were not composed of ordinary tissue was proven correct as his dojutsu revealed there was not a shred of ordinary matter composing their being. They were made of chakra. Pure chakra. It was not all that dissimilar from what a tailed beast was except for the obvious difference in size and the indescribable gap in power. These things had quantities of chakra that would be lucky to be comparable to the average ten-year old academy student.
The chakra they were made of was an oddity as well. Unlike the chakra that he and every other shinobi wielded that was composed of some mixture of Yin and Yang chakra, the bodies of these wolves were made of pure Yin chakra. It was a phenomenon he had thought impossible; everyone without exception had at least some quantity of each. The closest comparison he had seen was the Nine-Tails cloak Naruto had adorned in the latter stage of their battle at the Final Valley. Said cloak had been pure Yang chakra in comparison for some unknown reason, though Naruto's native chakra untainted by the Tailed Beast beneath the cloak had been a proper mixture of Yin and Yang, if extremely heavy lopsided in favor of the latter.
When he analyzed the human a split second later he almost did a double take. If the wolves were a weakened variation of tailed beasts, then the energy surrounding their hooded target was a watered-down Tailed Beast Cloak.
As with the black wolves there were some key differences between the two compared phenomena. Like the wolves the chakra cloak the stranger possessed was much weaker than what he had compared it to. Even the single-tailed version Naruto had used that was supposedly the weakest one he could form was at least one and a half orders of magnitude more powerful than what he was seeing now. And unlike Naruto's cloak the chakra surrounding the red-themed individual was solid, collected, and overall passive. It was a far cry from the vibrant and bubbling mass of chakra Naruto had used that could be shaped and extended at will like a living thing.
Still, it was similar enough that he could tell it would be able to function as a passive shield around the entire body. And if he was reading the color, texture, and flow of the chakra right it would also function as a mild healing factor just as Naruto's had. If he had to guess the individual had a chakra level roughly equal to a low chunin.
The person may not have been as helpless as they looked, but he decided to lend a hand anyway. He had already shot forward to attack the wolves lunging toward their target and had covered a third of the distance there before he had analyzed either of them in any case.
On the far left of his vision he saw his ally of circumstance withdraw what appeared to be a red-themed large rectangular metal object of some kind just before he intercepted three wolves with a Chidori-enhanced Kusanagi.
To the Uchiha's relief his chakra control was unaffected, and he only had to hold back a little bit more to fully compensate for his now much larger chakra levels.
In hindsight the technique he used was overkill. Their pitiful bodies disintegrated on contact into a black vapor that quickly diffused into the atmosphere.
He deactivated his Chidori Katana right before landing. He had successfully tested his chakra control and there was no need to waste any effort on creatures that he would have made short work of even at the age of seven.
He faced his next wolf, slashing the unenhanced blade clean through the skull before it could respond to his attack.
The now deceased wolf started to evaporate just like the first three he had killed, and he was able to see that not a shred of solid matter was left over as a corpse. Not even a drop of blood.
He split another wolf diagonally across the chest that had attempted to go around him and attack their original target when the sudden report of some kind of explosion reached Sasuke's ears.
He turned around in bewilderment at the unannounced sound and confused at the lack of heat and light the likes of paper bombs normally made.
His earlier assumptions about the stranger's age and gender were both proven correct as the hood covering her face was now pulled back, revealing neck length black hair with natural dark red tips. She was holding the metal device with both hands before using her finger to pull a small lever on the side. The source of the noise was immediately revealed as a burst of sound was emitted from what was clearly a weapon of some kind.
A metal projectile smaller in size than a senbon was ejected from the end of the device at speeds almost twice as fast as a kunai thrown by a Jonin. The piece of metal spun in midair during its one-way journey to blow out the torso of the wolf it was aimed at; a method to keep the aim of the projectile straight without curving one way or the other if he were to guess.
Several other wolves closed in on the girl, bringing them too close for her to use her ranged weapon. He started moving toward her to provide close-range support but paused as the metal weapon in her hand shifted into the form of a large scythe almost instantly completely automatically after the girl pushed a small button on its side. How the weapon could shift like that so quickly with no physical help from the girl aside from a button push was beyond him; batteries couldn't provide the necessary amount of power quickly enough to move the different pieces of metal so fast.
Mini-tailed beasts, a chakra cloak user with no Tailed Beast, and now an incredibly advanced weapon he had heard nothing about.
'Where the hell am I?'
The rather serious question would have to wait for later. The Uchiha had suspected the wolves would not be as tolerant of his presence if he interfered with their kill, and the multiple ones charging his way proved him right. They were quickly disposed of with various slashes and thrusts. Sasuke grabbed one charging individual by its head as it attacked from the opposite side of his latest kill before crushing the skull with an audible crunch in his hand. No blood or corpses meant he didn't have to worry about how clean his kills were.
With the wolves' numbers cut in half by his and the girl's efforts the Uchiha slowed his pace down and turned himself around to better watch his temporary ally in action.
She was clearly skilled with her weapon. Normally a weapon of that relative size to its wielder would play hell with their center of gravity, but she rather creatively used the scythe's inherit top-heavy imbalance to her advantage by using its extra momentum to boost her speed and change her direction more quickly. Even the backward thrust from the firing of the metal projectiles that he could tell would greatly disturb her aim if used consecutively was used as another force to help her move as she activated the weapon while it was aimed behind her to propel her relatively small body forward.
The fluidity and grace of her attacks yielded body after body. She spun and twisted her scythe in what could even be called an elaborate dance of lacerating force that bisected and dismembered anything that go too close.
Sasuke's eyes widened again when she, for lack of a better term, disintegrated her own body into a flurry of rose petals and jetted with respectable speed to the last wolf facing her. Or at least she turned into what looked like rose petals- his Sharingan easily saw the technique for what it truly was. The girl was able to dissolve her body into pure energy formed from the same Chakra cloak she wore and travel at speeds approaching that of a typical Body-Flicker jutsu. How the girl held her massless form together without scattering aimlessly or how she even knew where she was going without any physical eyes he had no idea, but it was a very interesting technique he had certainly never heard of. After slashing her last opponent in half she turned her weapon back into its original form before turning toward him, waiting for him to finish his end.
He was down to his last opponent now. He simply sheathed Kusanagi before snapping his leg forward toward the wolf attacking him from the front of all places. Sasuke's leg was flexible enough for him to land a push kick straight to the creature's face over six feet off the ground with enough force to cave in the skull.
He then faced the girl who he now saw also possessed eyes a shade of silver that could have been mistaken for a Hyuuga from a distance if one ignored the fact she did not share said clan's lack of pupils.
The Uchiha raised an eyebrow as the girl clenched her hands together in front of her in an excited manner that gave the impression she was fighting the urge to jump up and down. He also instantly observed that she could probably pull off an incredibly powerful puppy face look to manipulate the minds of her friends and family if she so chose.
She was going to be disappointed if she thought it would work on him.
His gut reaction told him the girl thought he was really cute, but by some miracle he could comfortably tell his gut that his history of attracting women with a single glance was wrong in this case. She did not have the starry-eyed, love-struck gaze that too many females had around him; nor was she blushing or nervous. She was excited to see him for some odd reason, though he could not begin to imagine why.
Actually it was impossible for him to know. The words and sentenced that began to emerge from her mouth were utterly incomprehensible to him. He had landed somewhere so far from home they spoke a different language.
'The first thing I'm going to do after I die is find Deidara in the afterlife and kick him in the balls as hard as I can. He could have just told me where Itachi was and we would both have been on our merry way. But no!'
Sasuke was able to maintain a calm and collected face for the girl in front of him before raising his hand up to interrupt her monologue as well as the somewhat wild hand gestures she was making that seemed to be a poor reenactment of some of the moves he had just used to kill the black wolves.
"I do not speak that language."
Sasuke had hoped that by some miracle she would be bilingual and understand what he was saying, but fate had decided it has given him enough slack for one day. The girl tilted her head to the side in a manner any other person would have considered adorable or cute looking.
She replied with only a single word that he did not know, but her cocked eyebrow, the questioning intonation she added to the end of said word, and the rest of her body language was enough for him to get the general idea of the definition of the word "what".
"I do not understand what you are saying." It was pointless to utter the sentence if she couldn't comprehend it, he may as well have listed his favorite foods for all the good it would do. Still she now clearly understood the verbal barrier between them as her head perked up a bit and her mouth formed a small "o" in understanding.
The girl did not give an awkward pause after discovering their variations of tongue nor did she show signs of hesitation to further communicate with him.
Instead she lifted her hand until her palm was directly facing him before uttering an obvious greeting of some kind before pointing to herself.
"Ruby Rose."
Well at least she had better manners than Neji Hyuuga.
"Sasuke Uchiha."
Ruby Rose gave a friendly smile as she was prone to do. Sasuke did not smile, but he did ever so slightly relax some of the muscles on his face to produce a look that was a bit softer than the indifferent gaze he wore as a habit.
Some things were universal apparently, as both brought their right arms up for a simple handshake.
Any historian worth their salt will know that there are certain points in history and time where key events happen that forever and irreparably change the nature of the world. The years of written history are written around events so important that their age is not measured by their distance from the present, but by how far before or after the event they are. Anyone from an outside universe or reality looking back at Remnant's past would be able to easily identify this as the defining moment that marked a colossal change. It would not become apparent immediately, but this was the boundary. The end of one era and the beginning of another was marked by two strangers who did not speak the same language shaking their hands.
AN: Phew, nearly pulled an all-nighter to finish this!
Several of you have brought up that I'm doing alright keeping Sasuke in character. Thanks for the vote of confidence! It may become more difficult later, but I'll do my best to keep everyone else as true to their personalities as I can. I tried to give Ruby, Garuda and Aoda some measure of individual character in the relatively short 'screen time' they had here. Let me know if you think it's accurate or if I need to work on putting myself in different characters' shoes when I continue with the story and introduce the rest of the cast.
Also let me know if my fight scenes need some work. This was a simple one that in practical terms was just a tester for me, but if any of you have pointers let me know.
If any of you are wondering how I got the idea for some of the details for Sasuke's trip, I based some of it off a youtube video called Carl Sagan 4th Dimension. Just follow the journey of the red square if you want to have a very general idea of what Sasuke went through here.
BTW, if any of you are wondering how much of an asshole for details I am I got a story for you. I tried to base the direction Sasuke took on Patch (if you haven't figured out that's where they landed you can explain to me how exactly you did not see or do not remember the FIRST trailer of the entire RWBY series), as well as the distance to the ocean and the town on the actual map of Patch by comparing the length of the island to the length of Remnant's circumference. The resulting fraction was multiplied by the number of miles in earth's circumference (24901 miles) to get the dimensions of the island. Turns out if our planet and Remnant are the same size, Patch is about 300 miles across.
Yeah, the "small island" Qrow mentions in the WOR series is 300 miles across. I actually cut the size of Patch in half when I wrote this because I didn't want it too big. And going by scale its over 400 miles from patch to Vale, and the city of Vale itself is about a thousand miles in length from Beacon to the coast. Am I supposed to believe Ruby when she said she could see Signal Academy when she was on the airship above Beacon in Volume 1 that was about 1500 miles away? That they travelled the thousand miles between Beacon and the docks at the end of said volume? I call bullshit.
And while we're on the subject of geography, I would be grateful if anyone who works at or knows someone at Rooster Teeth could explain to me how Patch and Vale are covered in snow when THEY ARE ON THE GODDAMN EQUATOR! How do these places even have winter? It should be a once a century event for the temperature to dip below seventy degrees Fahrenheit!
I'm going to get creative with some of the details of this story to have make any sense…
End of my rant, sorry you had to hear that.
Anyway, hope you all enjoyed, read and review please!