Seed 1.3

I recognized these guys as Protectorate members from the library research. "I'm Ruby," I said, jumping onto the platform with my Semblance.

He jumped a bit at the sudden speed, but took it in stride. "Ruby, huh? Surprised that name wasn't taken." He looked down the street, at where the other two heroes were squaring off with the giants. "How'd this all start? I assume you didn't try to go after these two on your first day of capery?"

Wait, what? No, why did he think… Right. My face was still covered by my hood, so he had assumed I was a cape. Whatever, I could deal with that later. "Nope Those two were attacking some military-looking guys, so I stepped in before anybody got killed. Everybody got away, but I don't have any real way to catch the giants without killing them."

As I spoke, sections of the forcefield we were standing on began breaking off, joining the cloud floating around us. "Military? Huh, I don't think that was any of our guys." The smaller pieces of forcefield suddenly darted forward, blocking off one end of the street with tiny fragments that reformed into a single, massive sheet. With the field on one end and the two other heroes on the other, the giantesses were trapped. He continued; "It must have been some of Coil's mercs. They've spent the last few weeks carving themselves a chunk of downtown, so this would have been the Nazis pushing back."

I had no idea who or what he was talking about, but I guess he would know the area better than I would. Speaking of which: "These two are hard for me to pin down, are they gonna be a problem for you three?"

"They will be if their backup gets here before we can get them contained. Assault, Battery, and Velocity are running interference on that though, so as long as we wrap this up fast then we should be able to take them in. You up for it?"

"You bet I am. What should I do?"

"Armsmaster and Triumph shouldn't have any problems taking down an unarmed Menja, so if you can help me deal with Fenja - ah, that's the one with the sword, by the way - we should be good to go. You're the reason Menja lost her spear, right? If I can contain Fenja's movements, do you think you could disarm her too?"

Well, that shouldn't be hard. I'd almost managed it myself, earlier, so with Challenger's help, this should be easy. "Works for me. You ready?"

A nod from him, and I was off. I jumped down to the street and charged my target. She saw me coming immediately and tried to get her partner's attention. Before she could get there though, another cloud of miniature forcefields shot between them and solidified into a single barrier.

The unarmed giantess turned to face her opponents as her partner, or Fenja, apparently, drew her sword back and drove it into the field. When the blow bounced off without any apparent damage, she spun and dropped down again, shield held up defensively but ready to spring away as soon as she needed to. I saw the man in armor preparing to face down Menja on the far side before putting it out of my mind to focus on my own fight.

Fenja had crouched down, shield in front with Challenger's forcefield at her back. She stayed there, apparently waiting for me to make the first move. A different strategy than last time, it seems. Hoping she would fare better on the defensive?

I stopped a short distance ahead of her and began to stretch my Aura. This was hard, and I couldn't do it very far, but it was great at catching people off-guard. Rose petals filled the space my Aura occupied whenever I used my Semblance, but enough slipped through that I could manage stuff like this without being noticed if I was fast and my opponent didn't know to watch for it. As the outer edge of my Aura reached her, I scattered, reappearing on her shoulder and tightrope-walking along her arm towards the back of her shield.

She jumped, almost falling over before frantically swatting at me with the pommel of her sword. I dodged her first attempts, but once she started shaking her arm to get me off I had to run on the underside of her arm, catching my scythe on her forearm and swinging forward. One burst of speed got me where I needed to go, and I slashed at the leather strap holding the shield to her wrist. The reduction in damage wasn't quite enough to protect it, and the shield fell to hang awkwardly off her elbow. I launched off the inside of her arm, aiming to cross to her other arm to deal with the sword, but she recovered her balance and spun, forcing me to scatter around her sword on the backswing.

She started grabbing at her shield, but I needed that to stay right where it was. Before I hit the ground, I charged forward, forcing her to leave the shield where it was as she tried to dodge a swing at her right side, bringing her sword around to strike again. Before she could though, yet another forcefield cloud swooped in and solidified, keeping her from moving out of the way before I landed the blow. The field kept her from rolling with the hit, and before she could regain her balance I was back on the street, scythe behind her left knee as I pulled the trigger, using the recoil to send the giant to one knee. One more jump up and the blunt end smacked her in the head, putting her on the ground.

Once she was there, what remained of the forcefield from the far side of the street - apparently, the field that had tripped up Fenja had been made of the top half of that one - broke apart, then flew towards us and formed into a pyramid around her, keeping her down. I saw that Challenger was now standing on a rooftop, apparently having given up his ride in exchange for more barriers. Turning around, I saw that the other two capes-

Wow. These people are slow, even by the standards of other Huntsmen.

That fight had barely even gotten started. The guy in armor was just now closing the last few feet, while the other one just stared in my direction, jaw hanging open until armor-guy ended the awkwardness: "Triumph! Focus!"

Lion-guy, or Triumph, I guess, snapped back to his fight, where his partner had engaged Fenja. Armor-guy was faster in a fight than I'd thought at first, and he seemed to be pretty skilled compared to what else I'd seen here. Fenja grabbed for him, but Triumph opened his mouth and shouted, creating a solid wave of sound that forced her to cross her arms across her face in defense. His partner used the distraction, turning the head of his polearm into a grappling hook, which fired upwards and latched to her shoulder. She got pulled slightly down as he went up, slicing at her abdomen as he rose over her hands.

She kept grabbing and punching, but he had landed inside where she could easily get to him. He clambered up and over her shoulder, and dropped to the ground, slicing his weapon down her back and rolling between her legs. Jumping up and catching each his weapon on the back of her right knee and the front of her left, he spun around, activating some kind of thruster on the back of the blade. She went down on one knee, just like her partner had. Another shout from Triumph, who had moved around beside and behind her, and she was on her hands, scrambling to stand back up. The blade of the polearm started glowing red, and its wielder brought it around, slicing it into a gap in her armor, just above her ankle. She screamed, Triumph shouted again, and she went down.

That was so cool! How had he done that without Dust!? I could maybe see some kind of electrical gadget heating up the metal, but doing it that quickly should have made some kind of sparks, and that wasn't even bringing up the rocket!

Whew. Okay, Ruby, you need to focus now.

While I'd been geeking out, the dividing barrier between us had broken down, most of it reforming into another containment pyramid as a chunk broke off and headed back towards Challenger.

Armor-guy brought his weapon around, sticking it to his back as he walked towards me. He held out a gauntlet. "You seem to be new around here. Do you have a name?"

I started to respond, then stopped. Challenger had assumed I was a cape, and it would probably be good to stop any confusion. I removed my hood and answered his question. "You can call me Ruby."

His reaction was muted, but it was there. The visor over the top half of his face hid his eyes, but his head tilted fractionally and he shifted position. Triumph, behind him, just started staring again.

"Most capes try to keep a secret identity, to protect their friends and family. You should probably give the idea of giving it up like that a little more thought."

Heh. I think my friends and family can protect themselves just fine. Either way though…

"Yeah… about that. I don't really have a regular identity, at least not here. There's some stuff we need to talk about, and I think we should do that in private. At risk of being a little cliche... I'm not quite from around here."

"Well. That's quite a story. I don't suppose you have any proof?"

The heroes had cut their patrol short in light of my appearance, and once the van had shown up to contain the giantesses more permanently, Challenger had taken me and Triumph to the PRT building. Right now, I was talking to a woman that Armsmaster had called Director Piggot. Apparently, the person in charge of all the local superheroes didn't have powers of her own. That was odd, but not really important now.

"You could have someone look at the bullets from my scythe. They're made of a few different types of crystal that I'm pretty sure you don't have here."

At that, she shared a glance with Armsmaster, who turned and stepped out of the room. That left me here with just Piggot behind her desk and Challenger leaning against the wall behind me.

Piggot continued: "If Armsmaster confirms that, then this is beyond my pay grade. I'll probably end up sending this to the Chief Director, but I'd like to know as much as possible now, to save some time. My first question is how you got here. You mentioned you were trapped, but why did you come here in the first place? Do we need to worry about more people coming through from this… Remnant?"

Crap. I knew I was going to get asked that eventually, but I still hadn't thought of a way to do it without giving away a lot more than I wanted to. The Relics were classified beyond all belief back home, and I doubted Oscar would be very happy if I ended up telling everybody here.

"I was sent here by my stepmother, Raven. She abandoned her team a long time ago to go lead a tribe of bandits, and now that the Grimm are gone, I got sent to track her down."

"The Grimm?"

Ah right, they never had them here. "The Grimm are... monsters that used to be all over the world, killing and… eating anyone they came across and destroying everything they could. They've been around forever, as far as anybody can tell, but they stopped showing up a few months ago."

She hummed a little at that, and I kept up my discussion of Raven.

"Anyway, Raven's worldview is… odd. She has this rule where she'll only save any given person a single time, but anyone she cares about is definitely going to get saved once. She won our fight once I finally found her, and because she still owed me a saving, she sent me here instead of just killing me. It's hard to say whether or not it could happen again; I'd say it doesn't seem likely, but Raven is hard to predict at the best of times."

Piggot pressed on, "But how, exactly, did she get you here? I need to know if other people could use the same methods."

Dang it, she's quick. How to explain this without giving away everything... "Her Semblance-

Challenger interrupted, "Semblance?"

Oh, yeah. "That's basically Remnant's word for superpowers. Raven's Semblance lets her make portals between locations. She stole a… thing that can enhance a person's Semblance, and that apparently let her make portals here."

"What kind of thing?"

"...I really don't want to say."

Piggot raised an eyebrow, but didn't do anything otherwise. She was hiding it well, but I wasn't sure if I'd seen a positive face on her since I'd gotten here. I clarified, "This stuff is really, really secret back home, and with good reason."

That was true, for the moment anyway. The Grimm were attracted to negative emotions, and people learning of superweapons like the Relics could have caused a panic. In a few years, once the Grimm had been Hunted to extinction, that would hopefully change, but for the moment we were still keeping these things secret. Just because that reasoning doesn't apply here doesn't make it okay to start blabbing everything.

She kept staring for a moment, then responded, "Fine. I can't promise that the Chief Director will let you keep that secret, but I suppose I won't press you for it now."

I guess that was as good as I was going to get. She wasn't happy about me keeping that to myself, though. To be honest, she didn't seem to be a big fan of me in general.

She continued, "Challenger, take Ruby here somewhere. I have some calls to make regarding this whole situation."

I was about to protest, but Challenger interrupted. "Yes ma'am, let us know what you manage to find." He turned, and seeing Piggot start talking into a little box - a Scroll, I realized - I stood up and followed.

As the door closed behind us, Challenger turned to me. "You hungry? I don't think the Director would be happy with us leaving, but we could head down to the cafeteria." I nodded, and we started walking.

As we went, Challenger started asking questions. "So, you're from an alternate world. I've learned some stuff about Earth Aleph, but from what you talked about in there it sounds like your world split off a whole lot more than thirty years ago. What's it like there? Y'know, other than the constant attacks by creatures apparently out of my kid's nightmares?"

"Really, really, different to here. I saw a world map earlier, and even the continents are shaped differently. We only have four kingdoms, and up until recently, the space between them was filled with horrible monsters. Technologically, Remnant's like forty years ahead, but armies still use swords and spears right alongside guns and grenades, and we've never managed to put anything into space. Huntsmen get trained in the use of their powers practically from the moment they gain them, but don't typically work for any single government once they… graduate…" I trailed off as I caught myself rambling. "Sorry."

He chuckled at that. "Perfectly alright, I'm just curious. The 'Huntsmen' you mentioned, those are basically Remnant's version of superheroes, right?"

"Pretty much. We're organized a little differently, but we do a lot of the same stuff. Huntsmen tend to focus more on the Grimm, but until recently that was kind of a necessity."

"Recently? What changed?"

"That's… kind of a long story. The Grimm were created by a woman who called herself Salem, but about six months ago…"

We fought, surrounded by the violet crags of the Witch's lands. The ground, littered with corpses, ash, and puddles of black slime, spawned Grimm almost as fast as we could kill them. Weiss and Blake slaughtered the monsters as quickly as they could as I fought to gain control of my true power - and the world vanished behind a curtain of Silver.

"...A big group of Huntsmen finally tracked her down and killed her, and they've stopped appearing since."

He gave me a look, but otherwise didn't respond to my obvious hesitance, which I was thankful for. Even though team RWBY had made it through intact, lots of others hadn't. It hadn't exactly been a fun fight. We arrived at the cafeteria then, not attracting much attention despite the many troopers inside. I had my hood over my face again, and apparently, capes were a common enough sight here that nobody bothered us beyond a few initial glances.

That was nice, to be honest. The relative lack of undeserved admiration felt a little bit like home.

As we walked over to the buffet line, he changed the subject. "Your plan for coming here was to ask to use Haywire's tech to return home, right?" At my nod, he continued, "Well I'm hardly a Tinker, so I don't know much about how all that stuff works, but as far as I know big projects like that tend to take some time. You have any ideas as to what you'll be doing in the meantime?"

Tinker? Oh, he meant technicals like Haywire or Merlot. "I… hadn't quite thought that far , to be honest. I only got here a couple hours ago, after all. I was kind of hoping that you guys could help out with that, but I guess that's not quite the PRT's job."

"Why would you think that? I'll grant, your circumstances make you a bit of a special case, but as far as I know, in the eyes of the law, you're basically a superpowered refugee. Throw in your skills and experience, and I don't see any reason why you couldn't just stay here. You could keep doing pretty much what you did on Remnant, you get a place to sleep and food to eat, and we get another powerful cape helping us beat the crap out of this city's gangs. It's a win-win!"

I hadn't thought about that! "Hey, that would be great! We'd have to convince the Director though, and I'm not sure she likes me. Is she gonna be alright with this?"

"Ah, noticed that, did you? It shouldn't be a problem, she's like that with pretty much everybody, and she never stops lobbying to get more capes transferred here. She's not gonna argue with you joining up."

"Alright then, where do I sign up?"

"And also, where did you put my scythe? I'm gonna need that back."

Whew. I just barely finished this in time. I was away from my computer for a week and I think that moved the deadline up farther than I expected it to.

We actually have plot development now! Granted, it's development that every one of you saw coming, but at least it's something, right? I'm going to try to get Chapter 4 out by the fourteenth, but I'm not a hundred percent sure I can manage that. I'll guarantee it by the twenty-first though.

See you all later!