(Metatron Omega - Apotheosis)

As suspected, the hole lead deeper into the hive. To the lower levels, to be precise. Dragging himself through the cold tunnel, Braylon thought about a way to reach the surface. Since the only way was forward, he had no choice but to follow whatever road lay in front of him, hoping that one might eventually spit him back into the forest.

The first detail that was able to catch his sight was the large quantities of egg clusters scattered everywhere. He immediately thought that he was reaching the hive, which made him frown. The only noise that filled his ears was the sound of eggs squishing, jerking at the slightest touch or releasing disgusting gasses. He cut his way through the eggs with his Holo Sabre and pushed himself forward into the unknown.

Some twenty meters later, Braylon stumbled upon yet another insect which shared no traits with the ones he met before. Its overall difference made him think it was some rival species at first, but then he noticed that said insect focused entirely on him and ignored the eggs.

"Oh you're kidding..."

His first thought was that he was looking at a Varkid knock-off, the one that reached the third evolutionary stage, just a tiny bit smaller. It had a black body like that of a stag beetle, armored spider-like legs, a crocodile-like head with no snout, a mouth filled with tiny sharp teeth, a split jaw, several pair of eyes and a curvy horn identical to that of a Hercules beetle growing out of its forehead.*

Braylon tried to keep his fear in control. Perhaps the creature had trouble recognizing him. Perhaps it was friendly.

"Oh who am I kidding."

He materialized Striker, quickly aimed at the insectoid's head and fired. To his surprise, it took the 12 gauge shell to the face very well, grumbling quietly and shaking its head. It was time to counterattack.

The creature's horn sparked with electricity, appearing from the root and rising to the tip, forming a small blue sphere. Braylon let out the most manliest of screams as an electric bolt hit him, rapidly draining his Shield. He had to hide behind an egg to avoid getting hit by the second one.

"That thing is a reverse lightning conductor with legs!" He hyperventilated, waited a few seconds and peaked out only to immediately pull his head back as a third bolt threatened to hit him. "This won't work. I have to take the hit." He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth in frustration, then roared as he jumped out and fired two more shots with the Striker while immediately receiving an electric barrage in return.

At that point it became a battle of who was going to die first. Both sides gave and received heavy damage, the insect's head started bleeding heavily while Braylon felt the pain only an electric shock can give. Eventually Braylon proved to be tougher, as the creature succumbed to its injuries.

"Fucking finally, thank God, Jesus..." Braylon slumped and sighed in relief. "Brr! Stupid electricity."

The earth started shaking as something dug its way into the tunnel. Braylon snapped back into concentration mode as he wildly glanced left and right to find any signs of a possible threat. To his chagrin, two more of those insectoids crawled out from their improvised holes.

"...Son of a bi-!"

"Tch!"

Among the new students, one of them was Ruby's sister. Her name was Yang Xiao Long and she was one of the best brawlers in the whole kingdom. Let it be known that she was also really humble.

As Yang jumped away from an attacking Ursa, her partner, whom she met half an hour ago, used her weapon to strike a fatal blow to the Grimm who was rather too focused on Yang to see her.

"Meh, I had him." Yang shrugged as they both moved forward.

"Hey, Blake."

"Hm?" Her not-so-talkative partner turned her head.

"Have I mentioned I have a sister?"

"You did now."

"Ha ha." Yang rubbed her nose. "But seriously, I have a sister. Name's Ruby."

"And?"

"She... kind of... met this guy..."

"So?"

"So... I dunno... looks weird to me."

"...okay?"

"I'm not saying he may be her boyfriend or anything. I am not that overprotective."

Her partner watched as Yang cracked her knuckles. Something told her that speaking her mind wouldn't be good for her health.

"I didn't say anything to her, though. I just think... I dunno, he kinda gave me the creeps. No, not talking about stalker creepy but... just creepy."

She slowly nodded but Yang didn't see it.

"Maybe I'm just imagining things. Maybe, just maybe, he is a nice person and I am just trying to make excuses. Heck, he is maybe the nicest person around! Wouldn't even hurt a fly and all of that, you know?"

Braylon roared as he grabbed the insect's horn with his right hand. Letting the electricity to flow through his Shield-protected body, he materialized Holo Ripper and cut of the horn, then he roared once more as he shoved said horn into the creature's mouth. The electric discharge caused its head to shake violently before exploding.

"I am unstoppable!" He yelled, fist-bumping the air. Turning around, he decided to check out the long trail of insectoid corpses that littered the tunnel. The one he just killed was tenth in a row.

"Damn, I am good."

The young Vault Hunter continued down towards the literal light at the end of the tunnel. His walk became pacing. Pacing became running. Maybe it was a way out. Maybe he would be free.

If only.

When he arrived, his jaw simply opened without his consent at the sight before him. He was standing in a spherical room, excavated like the rest of the hive, with egg clusters providing light in what would otherwise be a dark room. At the opposite side of the room, right near the walls themselves, lay the giant body of what he could only describe as the matriarch, or even patriarch, of the Sturgs, completely encased in black-purple obsidian. Something was floating just few meters above the macabre display. Something impossibly black.

Spherical, that was the only detail his eyes could perceive. It was a sphere, a massive sphere, so pitch black that Braylon couldn't even comprehend if it was three dimensional, much less what exactly that thing was. Other than a faint, yet loud, echo of gears grinding against each other, a noise that was seemingly so distant that it could as well come from another room entirely, as absurd as that sounded, it was completely silent. He wasn't even sure if it acknowledged his exsistence.**

He had an answer as soon as the spherical object distanced itself from the preserved insect and went higher.

(Metal Slug 6 – Biotoxic)

The object remained still for a few minutes before it created glowing red patterns. Said patterns consisted of large lines shaped to form a complex labyrinth all over the surface of the object. What was noteworthy was the fact that the lines always formed ninety-degree angles. As soon as the process was completed, the object became surrounded in a thick coat of flames as did the ground below it, where the shadow was supposed to be. It suddenly surged forward toward Braylon, setting the ground on fire as it moved in the air.

"Jesus!" Braylon barely escaped the sudden attack as he jumped to the right. The flames were inexplicably extinguished seconds after their master left their position. It almost looked like a trail.

The object returned, intending to hit the Vault Hunter. While he did escape, prevent the most catastrophic damage, his Shield still had to suffer. Same thing happened for two more times, before the object stopped in the middle of the room. Braylon fired few shots with the Unforgiven but he had no idea if it did anything. He never heard the bullets hitting something or even ricochet from the surface.

It slowly descended until it touched the ground. Braylon heard a faint clicking, as if some mechanism was activated. The object split in two equal horizontal parts, with the upper one slowly rising above, allowing Braylon to see its innards and the clicking to drastically, and painfully, increase in volume.

Gears. There was nothing but gears of all shapes, sizes and materials piled in one large sphere. Picture, if you will, something strongly resembling the Russian nesting dolls. That was the picture Braylon had in mind as he stupidly stared into the object, unable to understand how such simple, yet complex, machine can even begin to work. Then the gears detached one by one, each going into one of the black parts that protected them, until all that remained was yet another sphere, which was the size of a human torso, red as the patterns from earlier.

Four long streams of fire were projected from the sphere, one for each side, standing still for a few seconds before slowly moving in circles, a tactic to incinerate everything in the room.

All Braylon had to do was to stand in a space between two streams to avoid getting burnt to ashes. As the temperature rose to barely tolerable levels, the Vault Hunter materialized his assault rifle and fired into the red sphere, hoping to do at least some kind of damage. There was no visual change that would give him the clue he needed, but after he completely emptied the magazine, he heard a loud crack as if glass was damaged. The streams of fire immediately ceased to exist, as the gears returned to their previous state with speed Braylon thought impossible, followed by the two black halves sticking together.

The object lost its red glow after it successfully flew once again into the air. A brief humming noise could be heard as it quickly and without warning split into four smaller versions of itself, each sporting new patterns colored in blue.

"Oh shit."

This new set of patterns was even more complex. Two vertical circles. Between them, a third circle, irregular with dozens of branches randomly scattered and connected with the other two. The remaining sides were decorated with symbols so complex that it made his head hurt just by looking at them, such as five-dimensional cubes and triangles that were anything but a triangle. All four spheres positioned themselves in the corners as they began glowing blue. Braylon sprinted at the centre as each sphere released a massive electric burst below them.

He raised his head upwards as he noticed four circular shadows fastly approaching his position. For a moment he observed how each aura-like light connected with the other three as three spheres began circling around the remaining one that stood right above him. He quickly leaped away as an even more destructive blast shook the entire hive. It sent him flying against a wall as his Shield was completely depleted and still unable to absorb enough damage.

Every inch of his body hurt. From bones to muscles, he could feel tremendous pain despite having a pain reducing implant as well as a cationic insulator implant, which is supposed to increase the resistance of his Shield to electric attacks, infamous for having the ability to quickly deplete Shields. He watched from the ground, stunned and unable to move, as the spheres fused to form their original counterpart that once again descended to the ground.

Clenching his fists and teeth, Braylon tried his best to stand up, succeeding only in shaking his body like a leaf in the wind. No matter how much he berated himself, his body refused to cooperate. Closing his eyes, he mentally gave an order to his PDA to start creating and pumping his body with various drugs that would at least help him ease the pain, if nothing else. It beeped before executing the order as fast as it could.

As for the sphere, it once again performed its act of splitting in half, to reveal the core, or whatever that thing was supposed to represent. This time it was glowing blue, as Braylon thought it would. Even the attack was different; a continuous lighting bolt that aimed him and him only.

"Come on! Come on, damn it!" He cursed mentally as the Shield slowly succumbed to the relentless attack. As the battery reached fifty percent, Braylon focused all his strenght into his arm in a seemingly futile attempt to move it. Almost seconds before he gave up, the arm started twitching before sliding across the ground and then finally moving completely. Immediately, Braylon went for his energy pistol, aimed lousily at the object and repeatedly pressed the trigger, watching as many bullets missed their target, with only few hits being successful. It was when the Shield's battery reached ten percent that his aim improved, as three hits out of four landed on the core.

The satisfying crack that his ears yearned for came so suddenly that he barely noticed. He saw as the blue sphere started leaking some black fluid from several spots, before his view was obstructed from the gears. Smiling to himself, he used the time it took for the object to ascend for his needs, which currently consisted of rising from the ground and pestering the voice to spawn another ammo case.

In the end, he got his wish, right as the blue patters dissapeared. The black crate appeared in front of him. To his relief, it contained the very thing he asked for. Six unmodified grenades. He would use them next time.

First there was red, then there was blue, now it was yellow. The patterns themselves were complicate beyond reason. Braylon had no idea what were those supposed to mean, but he did, however, noticed two square-shaped spirals staring down on him, likely to symbolize eyes, or that was his hypothesis.

Two cylindrical pyramids formed on each side. A yellow laser beam was shot out from each pyramid, went for the walls, caused an explosion upon contact, then bounced off, repeating the proces for three more times. This resulted in a panic attack for our Vault Hunter, who thought that, despite only few beams actually trying to hit him due to their unpredictable ability, the one to suffer was the cave-room that shook violently as if struck by an earthquake. Curiously, in all three shots, six laser beams in total, never once did a beam go towards the sender.

"It is trying to bury us both!" Braylon rolled away from a rock that was close to land on his head. As the final beams ceased to bounce off the walls, the pyramid-like constructs sunk into the sphere. That was the first wave of attacks.

The second wave started off with the object creating a yellowish aura around itself. After that, it immediately shot itself towards a wall faster than a bullet. The contact caused a loud and powerful explosion.

"That thing has gone crazy!" Braylon yelled mentally as he fell to the ground due to the earthquake that shook the place, only to jump up and hide behind a large rock as the sphere bounced away from the freshly-made crater and somewhere close to his position. Thankfully, the explosion buried him under a small pile of rocks that protected him from even more devastation. He refused to leave the pile as long as he heard explosions going off in the whole cave-room.

"Is... is it over?" He blinked. "I wonder what is going on..." He removed the rocks from himself and jumped out from the hiding spot.

There was the sphere, right at the centre of the severely-punished lair. Braylon blinked as he got a better view of the chaos around him. Craters filled the room from the floor to the ceiling. What remained of the preserved Sturg was now a pile of shattered obsidian rocks. His attention turned back to the object as it started forming a tiny yellow orb under itself, which became bigger and bigger until it reached the size of a car. The orb detached from its maker and landed below, causing an explosion that raised dust all around. Braylon swore loudly as he saw eight smaller orbs jumping into air and scatter everywhere around the room, thus turning into smaller explosions. One landed right near his legs and sent him flying into the obisidian remains. Something that he immediately used as a cover for the next two repetitions.

"This place is a mess.."

Truly, what remained was nothing that would resemble the room of the Sturg matriarch, or perhaps patriarch. Even the dust refused to settle down. The obsidian remains were tougher than anything present, so they survived mostly intact. Key word being mostly.

At last, he saw the object descending. The opportunity that he was waiting for. Its core was once again revealed to the world, now yellow in color and still oozing that black liquid. Braylon raised an eyebrow, waiting for the attack that should happen any time soon.

"Why it didn't-" A yellow beam directed at him from the core stopped his line of thought. Instinctively, he jumped towards the top of the pile to avoid getting blasted. As if on clue, the not-so-small beam, while missing him entirely and smashing the wall, still had enough force to send him flying towards the desired location.

He stood up, looking at the impact zone of the beam. His jaw dropped when the only thing he was able to spot was a massive hole in the wall that stretched for so long that the only thing he could see was blackness. Braylon turned his head just in time to see another beam going at his direction. He was few seconds too late to jump away unharmed, so he crossed his hands in front of his face as he took a small, yet powerful, portion of the attack, while the remaining part was busy drilling what would later be his exit from that rocky prison.

Jaune couldn't believe how lucky he was. Or rather, how unlucky he was. It strongly depended on the point of view, really.

So there he was, meeting this girl called Pyrrha, which became his partner through rather humiliating circumstances. And next thing he knew, he found himself running away from a gigantic Deathstalker. You know, those things born from nightmares and children tears.

His eyes, which completely weren't watery because he was crying by the way, dared not to look behind him. The demented screeching was enough nerve wracking on its own. Still, he had to see it, maybe he would also see his new friend Pyrrha. Yep, there she was, just few meters behind him with the oh-my-god-the-horror Grimm trying to impale her with its yellow prayed to whatever deity up there to gift him and the girl with a miracle that would get rid of the Grimm forever.

Then the earth shook.

And when we say shook, we really mean it.

In fact, it shook so violently that the Grimm stopped chasing the two just to see what could possibly cause the earthquake. Well, it soon got the answer in the form of a giant yellow beam to the face. And it didn't stop there, because the beam kept going, pulverizing several trees as well, until it had a clear view of the blue sky above.

Jaune stopped running and gawked at the sight. The Grimm was no more. Not even a chunk was left behind. It simply vanished into thin air. All that remained was one huge smokey crater.

"T... thanks?" He mumbled to himself before the girl crashed into him. "Ow!"

"Sorry!"

Braylon landed on one of his knees. The last attack was absorbed by the Shield, but it still hurt beyond reason. He barely dodged the last beam. Should an attack like that happen again, the probability of him surviving would drop to zero.

"I have to finish this! Now or never!"

He materialized Orphan Maker and ran towards the object. It probably realized his intention because it fired a smaller and weaker beam at his feet, seemingly unable to conjure a powerful version of the attack. Braylon jump-rolled sideways and kept running, reaching his target in short time. His Orphan Maker boomed, followed by glass cracking. As he placed two new shells into the shotgun, he also materialized two grenades and threw them at the core just as the gears piled around it.

The Vault Hunter ran away as the object ascended once more, removing all patterns from its surface. Several distant explosions could be heard as the object trembled slightly. The blackness that shrouded the object in mystery and eeriness faded into nothingness, leaving behind one large, grayish sphere with hundreds of lines carved on its surface. The sphere shook violently as an unseen force erupted from the object in the form of several large holes that now damaged the intricate surface, comparable only to a volcanic eruption. It landed into the crater below, a result from its previous attacks, black smoke and fluid erupting from the holes.

As for Braylon, he fell on his knees, trembling as exhaustion and lack of adrenaline got the better of him. He was happy that he managed to overcome yet another obstacle, but he also knew that it was far from over. After all, he had an initiation to pass.

If only he could move his tired legs, that is.

So M1rzaTheBroJo brought up an interesting point that I wanted to talk about but always failed to remember anything about it. Thing is, I will treat this story sorta like rpg/anime, in a sense that there will be times where several chapters will fall under one arc, with some filler chapters or whatever. I will try to make them short, but I cannot promise anything, much like the shipping stuff, mostly because I am not a person you want for writing romantic stuff. If that bothers you, then I am sorry but, to put it eloquently, deal with it. I (probably) mentioned already that this story definitely won't be for everyone. Some won't like the violence, others the fact that there is an OC, others my writing style and that is completely OK. But make no mistake, this story will be written the way I see fit.

Also, speaking of arcs, I will probably try to end the current one with the next chapter.

Guest: You need to pay more attention to details. As for the second part, well, I was planning one long-ass arc for the first fic where the plot would end up on Pandora as an, I think, arc that would connect Volume 3 and 4 of RWBY with the fic. Something like that.

PDA Biopedia:

*Entry #32: Sturg – Hive Guardian

Type: Riftspawn - Insect

Faction: None

Description: "These guys are no pushovers. If I were to judge by the behavior and appearance, I would say that this subspecies was meant to take the role of something between a soldier ant and a living shield. Now that I think about it, the whole Sturg species kinda does share some of the ant characteristics, at least from what I've seen up to now, although I fail to make heads or tails out of their roles. Also, their horns are conductors which is a problem in itself. Must avoid at any cost." (Can deal Shock and Corrosive damage, increased resistance against normal and Shock-based attacks)

**Entry #33: Dvořák the Anomaly

Type: Riftspawn - Hero

Faction: None

Description: "I have no idea what I'm looking at. It seems and behaves like a machine and yet from what I've seen, there is no way it could even work. Its innards are just a bunch of gears put together that serve as another layer that protects, what I assume that thing was, the main core. All of it wrapped in one large sphere made of rock. But there is something that made me feel uneasy during the whole thing. The very first moment I saw it, I felt a chill all over my body. I couldn't even suppress it properly. It was like... it was like I saw something similar years ago..."