"The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way around." Dr Serizawa, Godzilla 2014
Bold: Important note to the story
Italic: Important message to a specific character or event
"Message" Kaijuspeak
"Message" Speech
'Message' Thought's
|Boom!| Noise/sound effect
For all of you who are reading this message now, this text has been written after a decision I made to overhaul a majority of this book.
At the time I'm writing this, I find it lacking to my standards, and now I am currently writing it anew.
I hope yall will like this newer version.
Vibrant blinking lights faded in and out of the void Ruby's unconscious mind swam in, the many intense flashes of pictures of what was going on around her as she replenished her energy. The chill of the air, she could hear loud voices were yelling somewhere, but the meaning was lost on her.
She heard the sound of something being slammed and more shouting soon after. The exposed flesh on Ruby's body began to glow red, signaling she was going to wake up soon. Warmth built in her chest after her body temperature rose, her heart having built enough energy for her body to begin functioning normally.
Those voices stopped yelling upon seeing Ruby begin to move, her dorsal plates shimmering with radioactive ultraviolet light. A visible snort of air escaped Ruby's nostrils when she lifted her up from it's tilted resting position, confusion dawning on her face from what had happened while she hibernated.
Harsh white light blinded her when her black nictitating membrane moved off of her silver eyes. Slowly but surely, her eyes adjusting to the fluorescent light hanging just barely over her head. Ruby was in a concrete room and was chained to a metal table by a handcuff, which irritated her with how it's partially melted to her skin from her 900* Celsius internal body temperature.
They hadn't given her a chair either! Then again, there wasn't many chairs that could support a two ton person...
'Am I in a police station?' Ruby wondered while she looked around the room she was placed in.
It looked like one of those stereotypical interrogation rooms you would see in a crime show. Blank grey concrete walls, metal door next to a bulletproof glass one way window, metal table with a chair or chairs, a florescent ceiling light, and whole lot of nothing else...
The soft patter of many footsteps echoed in Ruby's ears, the numerous different kinds tell her that the building she was in was populated with a lot of people. She could've fought her way out with little effort, but that would've been pointless and not something she would do anyway.
That would prove the people who had called her a monster right...
Pulsing her radar had become a habit for her when Ruby didn't know her surroundings, the radio waves letting her see within a short twenty meter distance of the building outside of the room she was in. There were many different offices with people milling about in each from what she could see.
She couldn't make out any features with how her RADAR had to push through the walls of the building, every person appeared as a humanoid grey blob with only the closest people having any distinct features.
Dust stirred and the ground shook when her giant tail brushed or thumped against the floor from the slight annoyance she felt. Waiting patiently was something Ruby could never do well.
'How long are they going to make me wait?' Tapping her left index claw upon the metal table, Ruby placed her cheek in the other hand while she awaited someone to come see her.
There was also people beyond the glass window of her room looking at her, silently talking through gestures...that meant they had likely guessed that her hearing was enhance, and which to be fair, it was.
One of the people in that room exited out a door that lead into the hallway her cell stood in, then they walked close enough to where Ruby was, that she could make out some features of who it was.
A tall and long haired woman with eyes that seemed to radiate strictness, was walking towards the metal door of the room Ruby was in. Ruby let out a soft growl that shook the room as the woman entered.
"Finally! I thought I was going to spend the next decade in here!" A small huff escaped Ruby's lipless mouth after she ranted to the lady.
The older woman snarled at Ruby while producing a tablet with various images splattered on its screen. Looking down at it, Ruby noticed it was the building she had fought the robber on, only that it had a good section of it now collapsed, police and safety crew gathered around it to asses the damages.
Guilt bubbled up in Ruby's gut seeing the images of what she had done. She had gone berserk from her emotions running too high, and if this is what she could do with physical strength alone?
She would need to keep even tighter control over her emotions and abilities from now on. If she doesn't, she would accidently kill even more people. There was no need to even mention her other form, she would only use that if the situation was so desperate there was no other choice.
"Do you have any idea of the damage you caused to Vale and other people?" More guilt than before built in Ruby's gut, there was a good chance the building collapsing had affect other buildings in Vale.
Lowering her head, Ruby tried to think of the people who also might've lived or worked in that building.
"I'm...sorry. I lost control of myself after the last few days I've been stuck in this now eternal nightmare. That bomb Atlas was testing? I was at ground zero..." Horror dawned on the older woman's face when the memories of the news reports on the subject came out.
The entire island had been enveloped in the blast, the very sand and ground have been changed to glass from the heat that the island had endured. How did this young girl survive if what she said was true?
"I had been training on it since I live on Patch. I took a boat there to train every few weeks or so, only the other day...that had been a mistake I'll regret for eternity." Grief, anger, sadness, frustration, all of them blended together until Ruby let a single tear drop from her left eye.
"Eternity?" A single nod was the only answer to the woman's question.
"Eternity. I was...changed when that giant cloud of fire touched the Heavens. The energy that it generated now burns in my veins, forever mutating and evolving my body, pushing further past the limits of biology." Ultraviolet purple light shimmered across the room when Ruby's dorsal plates flashed with their intense energy.
That same color leaked from her jaws when Ruby's immense rage manifested for a few seconds, steam hissing from the energy created from the building blocks of the universe. There was a roaring fire that appeared in Ruby's eyes during that time; wild, untamed, primal, hating.
Shivers raced down the older woman's seeing that inferno hidden in the depths of Ruby's mind, more terror filling her for a second than she would ever admit. That fire soon died out with Ruby speaking afterwards.
"I am immortal and nigh invulnerable, no blade can pierce or slash my skin, my physical strength is unmatched, my breath is power incarnate. I hate it..." There was a loud thump and soft swishing sound as Ruby's enormous tail wrapped itself around her body.
Sorrow filled the woman while looking at the broken shell of the young child, a child who had been violated and changed against her own will with no say in the matter. [Fate can be damning], that saying was something that the woman had seen effect of on two people now.
"Now I am what most would call a monster on account of my power, power I never wanted to have." Curling further up in her tail, Ruby started to sniffle from all that had happened to her in such a short time.
"Power that hurts so much! Every second I'm alive is agony, and when I evolve millions of years in a few minutes, it's soul-numbing and maddening!" Ruby shouted before beginning to sob into curled up tail, while the woman was stunned into silence from the sheer horror of this young girls life.
At first when she first saw Ruby from one the of rooftop, she thought Ruby was some kind of unique faunas that had not seen before. The sheer size of Ruby had been staggering to see up close, along with the features the girl had.
When Ruby had nearly destroyed the building she was on with a single punch, the woman had felt a sense of unease she hadn't experienced in a very long time. What Ruby was was unknown, and frankly, that terrified the woman.
She had never seen a Grimm with so much raw power, yet there was a human who had the capacity to kill an ancient Grimm with a single move.
Then there was beam Ruby had produced to attack the bullhead who shot at her with heavy caliber guns. Even the strongest hunters in the history of Remnant, could never produce a aura slash of such magnitude.
It had been seen by the entirety of Vale, causing mass panic from the show of blistering power. Such a thing had to be studied to reduce casualties if the girl went on a rampage, which could happen given the fire the woman had seen raging in Ruby's eyes...
If the girl's psyche were to fail for any reason, humanity and the Grimm would be hard pressed to stop the destruction that would follow in her wake. They could do it if they were the given time and resources necessary, but not quickly enough to stop at least one kingdom from falling into ruin.
So it would be a better idea to train her, condition her...at least that's what the woman's superior believed. Clearing her throat to grab Ruby's attention, hoping that her boss was right in his decisions.
"The situation you caused tonight has attracted the attention of many powerful people, some not as friendly as others. Your in luck, though, there is someone here who wishes to give you a generous offer." Lifting her head from the ball she had wrapped herself in, Ruby grew curious on who it was the older woman had mentioned.
A single knock sounded from the door to the room before a man with grey hair walked through the door. Ruby's breath hitched when she recognized the man who had walked in, for he was a man of immense influence and power in many places.
"Ruby Rose...your circumstances are both tragic and incredulous. Tell me...how can you do what you can do?" Those words made Ruby stiffen slightly from how they could be interpreted.
Did he want her to show off what she can do with her atomic energy? Did he want to know what caused it to happen? Did he want to know if there was a way he could replicate it? So many sub-questions packed into a single main question...
Regardless, this was not someone she could brush off so easily, not with the amount of influence he had. It would be easier to show him a fraction of what she could now.
Lifting her left index finger, she tapped the clawed tip of it once against the metal table in front of her. That single tap punctured through the metal with a loud screech, then she grabbed the table's edge with her other hand and squeezed.
Metallic shrieks filled the air from the table's edge being bent like playdough by Ruby. Behind her, her tail swishing against the ground before she lifted it up and slammed it against the ground, causing the whole building to shake from the force akin to an earthquake.
Ozpin and the older woman stumbled from the shaking, the formers eyes wide from seeing how a single action did this, while the latter felt her fear of Ruby return again. Smelling the fear rolling off the woman, Ruby grimaced from even more people recognizing her as abomination.
"You can thank General Ironwood of Atlas for what I can do and how I look." Ruby said with a small chest shaking growl, the overwhelming emotions radiating off her with the intensity of a palpable cyclone.
"That damnable bomb Atlas built mutated me into a nearly unstoppable force. A Leviathan Grimm could not harm me, an army of Grimm hundreds strong could not survive me, an Iceberg bigger than my other form could not withstand me...you asked what I can do? My question to you is, do you think you stop me this very moment? Before I evolve even more?" Leaning forward while letting mist and atomic light shunt out of her mouth, Ruby waited for an answer.
Sweat built upon Ozpin's brow, finally realizing the threat the girl in front of him truly posed. The gravity of what Ironwood had done fully hit him, he had created a being so much stronger than any other on the planet, save possibly her.
A calamity given flesh, destruction incarnated, a...deity some might call her eventually. Worry and doubt thundered in his mind, could he actually stop Ruby if he needed to? It...wasn't likely, not without taking back the magic he had gifted the maidens.
Ruby watched him like a hawk, her silver eyes tracing his movements, knowing he was doubting himself from her question. Projecting her atomic energy to her dorsal plates, Ruby discharged non-lethal amounts of her atomic energy.
It took half a minute for the effects to hit Ozpin and the woman, making the woman behind Ozpin stumble when she felt her body grow weaker, Ozpin's face paled slightly while both of their auras shimmered to life to shield them. Ruby gave a single loud snort as she pulled the energy back into her body, the energy disappearing from the room in seconds.
"See what I mean? That was a very small amount of what my body produces, now imagine being hit by one of beams I can produce. I can tell you that nothing living has survived it so far, their bodies end up being vaporize into nothing." Now there was the scent of fear rolling from not just Ozpin and the woman, but also what she guessed were the police inspectors behind the glass window.
Ozpin still had a good poker face on, sadly for him, it wasn't enough to fool Ruby enhanced senses. For the woman, however, she looked green in the face from both the radiation exposure and the description Ruby gave. Ruby gave a rather harsh laugh at the two's difference in facial expressions, her jagged teeth scraping against each other as she did so.
Her harsh laughter slowly settled into softer chuckles, the fire in her eyes still present, but it was only a flicker of what it had been minutes before.
"So what is this deal you speak of? I know that you are the headmaster of Beacon academy, Ozpin Veridian." Ruby asked after she had calmed down from her slightly manic outburst while the man cleared his face of any previous emotions with a loud cough.
"I wish to invite you to Beacon on a few conditions. One: you must receive weekly checkups and study on how your body works, for your power poses a huge threat to humanity. If you truly can kill an army of Grimm by yourself, you must understand my reason behind this." Ozpin explained as Ruby gave a single slow nod, it was a simple truth with what she had already done to the Grimm.
'Its true that with the power I hold, humanity has little chance if I ever go berserk...' Ruby thought before focusing on Ozpin when he began his next point.
"Two, you must not use your...unusual abilities in Beacon without immediate need or reason to. A single one of your beams will level half of beacons grounds, that will also cause a lot of death we both don't want." That was a statement Ruby fully agreed with, but it was also not that simple as well.
Her evolutions hadn't fixed her problem of overheating yet, meaning there would be times she would overheat while trying to avoid causing destruction or injury. Ruby had noticed that resting in water allowed her to cool off more efficiently than using air contact.
"I will not being always able to abide that condition. I have a issue with overheating when I produce too much energy for my body to store, leading me to use my beams to release enough energy to not cause my internal temperature to begin a melt down." A large grimace dawned on the Ozpin's face upon learning that piece of information.
'I can't have her damage the school's infrastructure, that could endanger both the students and the vault. Perhaps I should look into finding equipment that can store her excess energy? I could give them to the staff if she overheats in class...' Looking back towards Ruby, who was waiting patiently for him to answer, Ozpin started speaking again.
"If you start overheating during a class, you can go to the courtyard to release a beam into the sky to cool off. I'll also look into seeing if we can find some way to contain your excess energy through technology." Noting the thoughtful look on Ruby's face from his suggestions, Ozpin waited a bit to continue.
If Ruby could do release her energy without hurting others, all the better for her state of mind. She still remembered why she broke down in the dust shop, she had killed people accidently with her other form already.
'I cannot let that happen again if I can stop it...' Ruby thought while looking over her clawed hands, guilt steadily ate away at her heart from what she had unknowingly done.
"My last condition is that a person of my choosing trains you when we better understand your power." There were a lot of instructors he could contact for her, his first picks consisted of mainly martial artist given Ruby's physical strengths, soon after his mind had gone in a different direction of thinking.
'Maybe this new energy could be the solution to killing her...or merely getting rid of her subjects...' The former was the best case-scenario, while the latter was a close second.
Within Ruby's somewhat rational mind, she was mulling over the details of the deal Ozpin had offered. There were a lot to think about, but for the most part, the deal seemed sound. Of course, she would need some more...necessities given her body.
'I need a few conditions for myself, the most prominent being room size, useable furniture, and wearable clothing. No one is anywhere near my size and height. I should also have a water source available to cool off in, along with a separate bathroom from my team.' Glancing back up to Ozpin, Ruby listed off her own demands.
"I got a few requests of my own. First: I need a much larger room for whatever team I am in, I am nearly twenty feet in length after all. Second: I need the uniform to be modified for my height and size. Third: I need a designated large pool in my teams dorm for when I need to cool my body off or use my gill's. Finally: I need a separate bathroom from my team in the dorm." To prove her third point, since it was the hardest to understand, Ruby let her gills move slightly on her neck.
"All are reasonable. You will get a custom made dorm for your team on account of your situation. I also ask that during the initiation next Monday, that you limit the use of your energy abilities unless absolutely necessary." With the deal set and done, both Ozpin and the woman walked up to the door to the room.
"Your family is here to pick you up. Your sister and you will get school ID's mailed to you, please show them to the guard at the airship on Monday." Ruby gave him a short nod before Ozpin left through the closed door, the woman gave Ruby one last glance and following Ozpin out the door.
There was silence for a minute or two as Ruby sat there and processed what had happened. She, a fifteen year old girl, had been accepted into Beacon academy early. Ruby knew it was mainly on account of the past week, but that still didn't diminish the happiness that the realization brought her.
'This is a dream come true for me...yet, the events leading up to this are what I never would have wanted to happen to me...' Those thoughts halted to a screeching stop as Yang soon walked through the door of the interrogation room, displeasure and slight anger written all over her face.
Ruby unconsciously leaned back away from Yang, past times with this same scenario causing her to feel extremely nervous.
"So...first you leave dad and me in the house to heal off what you did to us, then you go to Vale and collapse a building after fighting a gang...am I leaving anything out here...Ruby?" Alarm bells and screaming cookie-men blared in Ruby's head while she looked for an escape exit.
When Yang asked something quietly with an angry tone, it meant she was royally pissed the fuck off about something. Ruby whimpered while trying to seem smaller than she was, which was difficult given how much space she took up.
"It was an accident! Hey, hey! Let's not get too angry now!" Nearly falling backwards to get away from her irate older sister, Ruby put her hands up in a placating gesture.
Anybody who witnessed such a sight would likely find it was comical, seeing the eight foot tall and nearly twenty foot long mutated girl back up from a much, much smaller girl.
"Quiet you! Go meet Dad in the lobby!" Ruby tried to go out the door as fast as a roadrunner Grimm after Yang's order, but ultimately failed to be swift with her size.
Hitting her head on the top of the doorframe with a loud |Gongk!|, Ruby groaned while she rubbed her forehead. Standing out in the station lobby was her father, this made Ruby even more nervous than she had already been with Yang.
"You young lady...are grounded for the foreseeable future! I mean Oum's sake! Destroying an entire building because you were getting robbed?! I can understand beating up the perpetrator, but not destroying an entire building!" Her father ended his tirade with a sigh of tiredness.
"Hey! One good thing came out of this at least! I am going to Beacon with Yang!" That seemed to surprise both her father and sister, the latter forming a large grin.
"Oh Ruby, this is amazing! Lets go celebrate! You can tell uncle Qrow later tonight!" The younger sister tried to protest as Yang used a majority of her strength to drag Ruby outside where Yang's motorcycle, Bumblebee, waited.
The vehicle sagged under Ruby's weight but held up in the end. Tai shouted after them, but the two sisters were already gone roaring down the road by then.
"Where are we going?" Ruby had to shout over the blowing wind, while also trying to avoid letting other drivers hit her tail that waved in the air behind her.
"Oh, just a place I heard about near downtown!" Yang yelled back as Ruby got a bad feeling about what was to come.
Scene break: Bombed Island
A single lone Grimm had survived both the atomic blast and Ruby's purge by burrowing underground. That lone Grimm was a single mantis type Grimm. It stood on the beach exactly where the bomb had detonated, it's mandibles and mouth hissing while it's skin bubbled in giant nearly open sores.
Despite Ruby soaking up a large amount of the radiation on the beach, there was still enough that it was lethal being on the island for more than a few hours. The sores upon the Grimm insect's hide burst open, grey fluid falling upon the Grimm in vast amounts.
The mindless beast shrieked as it stumbled around aimlessly, it's lifeblood falling out of it's body with every popped sore. It stumbled into the charred remains of the old forest it had lived in, the carbonized wood/sand still present on the ground after the hell unleashed upon the forest by Ruby.
Its cries of agony echoed over the remains of a once beautiful tropical island. The sound of it's shrieks carried out into the bay in shiver inducing clearness. Most people would like every single last Grimm to die painfully, but most would agree that what this Grimm was going through was horrible.
While producing its cries of pain, the Grimm tripped over a large piece of glass and landed in a large deep inky black pool of liquid. It felt itself getting weaker the long it was in the pool of certain death. So it struggled in vain to get out of its prison, failing miserably as a sore on its leg popped open in a burst of grey pus and blood.
It fell and sank into the black pool that was something that should have been contained if it had been known to be there. The black sludge like fluid rushed into the Grimm's open wound and entered its bloodstream. Even louder cries of agony escaped the Grimm's mouth when it felt the alien fluid enter it's body.
The Grimm sent cries of help to the queen of the Grimm, but silence was his only answer. Panic enveloped it as it sank further into the black sludge, Grimm had to live a very long time or be under so much stress to bring itself to gain emotions or logical thinking.
Right now this lone Grimm was undergoing the latter, its crimson eyes looked toward the sky one last time before its head sunk under the sludge. Alien energy enveloped the beast from the wounds across its body, unknown cells congregated into its bloodstream from the sludge.
It's body shook as the unknown cells stuck to the flesh of it's heart, weakening the muscles before strengthening them enough to stay alive. |THADUMP!| was the noise very heartbeat made while the Grimm tried to claw it's chest with it's mantis arms. Blood flew into the sludge from its chest when it cut a gash in its own chest.
Though that only sped up the process of the sludge overriding the Grimm's own body, causing waves of molesting agony to spike against its very being. Several new limbs ruptured from it's back and shoulders, one pair had tendrils of grey flesh form off of the limbs and form a pair of metallic looking wing's.
Blood filled the poor creatures mouth when its jaw cracked and split into four mandibles, the blood running into its throat as it sank further into the sludge. It could not breath while the blood built in its throat, panic greater than ever filled it's newly found mind.
'Queen HELP ME!' It screamed in its mind while his body cracked with pieces of flesh floating away into the endless sludge sea.
It lifted one its new limbs and thrashed it in the pool and unknown to it, the new limb sent a pulse wave crashing against the island in the form of a Electro Magnetic Pulse. Its red eyes were clouded in fear before its vision went black, grey metallic skin sewing shut over its once ferocious blood colored eyes.
The same metallic skin crawled over the rest of its body, coating it in a thick layer of nigh impenetrable armor. It's vision came back in the form of infrared vision, seeing the heat signatures of everything left upon the island.
For the first time ever this Grimm had not just been sent into a panic, but now irrational fear filled every part of its newfound mind. A long crest grew from it's now angular shaped skull, reaching the middle of it's back.
The wings that had formed from two of it's new limbs grew even longer as its size swelled, the energy on the island and the sludge causing forced mutation in the Grimm. Twenty feet, forty feet, ninety feet tall and still growing.
By this point it had grown out of the black sludge pool, the hooked blades from it original Mantis blade arms grew bigger and sharper. The cries of the Grimm had changed to something more...primal in nature.
Loud discordant screeches echoed over the island as the now mutated Grimm came to a rest, its body towering at two hundred feet in height and a wingspan of nearly three hundred fifty. Hunger gnawed at the newborn being, its body craving more radiation to feed off of.
It raised it's wing into the air behind it and took off into the night sky, the loud cries being heard by the only one who could understand its message.
That same being was currently inside a nightclub with her sister, Ruby and Yang were both having a good time. That was until Ruby heard the cries of something she had never heard before, but put it off while she strong armed the bartender into another free drink.
'Eh, that was probably nothing.' Ruby thought as she watched Yang stumble up to her.
"Enjoooying yourself, Rubes?" Yang asked while a fair bit sloshed from her stack of drinks, Ruby just gave Yang a hard pat on the back that sent her flying from Ruby's strength.
"I think you need to slow down sis!" Ruby yelled while downing a large shot of whiskey, fortunately or unfortunately on how you looked at it, it would not get her anywhere near being drunk.
Not when her internal temperature was about 900* Celsius, enough to melt most things except stuff like steel. She would burn off any poisons in her body except the most dangerous ones.
Ruby sighed as she used Yang's scroll to pay the tab and lug Yang over her shoulder, she took them both back to bumblebee to head home using the Great Patch Bridge.
It would be a while before she could sleep tonight.
Annnnnd that's it!
For those of you who read the original book, or for those of you who had read this book before the overhaul, I would like to know how yall think this overhaul is compared to before.
Anyways I hope yall liked the chapter, tell me what you thought and leave a vote if you'd like!
