Hi guys, I'm back! Sorry if you guys haven't had an update in nearly a month. I haven't exactly had time to update due to moving from ohio (where I've been the last 12 years) to Texas. Things have been a little hectic with the move.
I will update when I have the chance to. As for my other stories... i need to see where I want them to go before updating them, I haven't forgotten about them. They're just on a hiatus for now until I figure out a direction where I'd like their stories to ultimately go.
I know there are a group of people that don't like how this story is written, but I tried. For those that have stuck around, despite the breaks and flaws this story has.. thank you very much. Hopefully, you guys have enjoyed the story thus far. I'll do my best to make it better.
Aside from the main pairings, who would you like to see become a couple?
Blake and Shallot?
Scarlett and Sun?
Hailfire and Neptune?
Valvahdern x Jinjer?
Zero x Emerald?
Jaune x Pyrrha/?
Giblet x Velvet?
Let me know of the characters who don't have pairings yet, which you would like to see become one.
Now, onto the story!
P.S- I don't own Rwby, Black Clover, Dragon ball Super/ Xenoverse/ DBZ or their characters. Those belong to their respective creators and Studios. I only own the oc's with permission to use two additional oc's from a friend.
Opening:
Opening theme: Song 4 U (Tales of Xilia 2)
Visuals: replace the tales characters with the characters in this story. Villains being Cinder and Emerald. Mercury caught in the middle between the fighting sides unsure of which side to go with. Odyn and Ruby fighting against Cinder and Emerald respectively with the other characters fighting off the Grimm. Opening ends with Khanna extending a hand towards Mercury and the boy accepting it and joining the others after hesitating.
Chapter Twenty: Never Miss a Beat — Cinder's Trap, Part Two
The match had been decided before most of the crowd understood how.
Penny Polendina fought with the specific quality of someone who does not experience doubt, which was partly her nature and partly — Odyn suspected, watching from the stands — that she had made some arrangement with uncertainty that allowed her to set it aside during the relevant moments. Six floating swords, four strings per blade, and the absolute geometric certainty of someone who understands exactly what they are doing and is doing it with the complete commitment of a person who has nothing to prove and is proving it anyway.
Russel Thrush clung to his rock.
The rock was lifted into the air.
The rock was then not lifted into the air anymore.
"Victory to Penny and Ciel of Atlas," Port announced, and the crowd's sound was the specific sound of people who have watched something efficient and found it briefly more satisfying than something dramatic.
Ruby was already on her feet.
Outside the arena
She found Penny at the competitor's exit with the specific enthusiasm that she brought to reunions — the kind where the word reunion might be underselling the physical commitment involved. She crossed the distance in a movement that prioritized arrival over any intermediate stage of approach.
Penny mirrored it exactly.
They collided.
"Why," Ruby said, weakly, from the ground, "do I keep doing this."
Odyn was beside her, looking at the tableau with the expression he wore when something was charming and he had decided to let it be charming before he said anything else.
"You do this," he said, "because you love your friend and your instincts override the relevant physics."
Ruby puffed her cheeks at him from the ground. "You're supposed to be on my side."
"I am on your side," he said. "Just not on this particular issue."
She puffed them further.
He looked at her. He considered the situation. He made an offer that he knew, with complete certainty, would resolve it.
"Anywhere you want to go afterward," he said. "Any sweets shop or weapons store. Your choice."
The puffed cheeks vanished. Ruby appeared to process this in the specific rapid way she processed anything that contained both affection and the promise of a weapons catalogue.
"Deal," she said, immediately, and then blushed at the immediacy of it.
Weiss, who had watched the entire negotiation, pressed two fingers to her forehead. "You are the most transparent person I have ever met."
"I know," Ruby said, from the ground. "But it works."
Penny helped her to her feet with the cheerful efficiency of someone who has stopped the front of a freight truck with her palms and finds helping a friend up trivially simple in comparison.
"Ruby," she said. "Everyone." She turned. "This is my teammate."
Ciel Soleil bowed with the precise formality of someone for whom all interactions are transactions of appropriate social protocol. She then began her recitation: Ruby, sixteen, Patch, Team RWBY, status questionable. She turned her eyes to Odyn, completed approximately two words of his designation, and encountered the specific quality of his gaze when he was looking at someone who had done something he found noteworthy.
"Is something about my face troubling you, Miss Soleil?" he said.
Ciel did the recalculation. She shook her head and said nothing more.
Ruby steered the conversation toward the six floating swords with the specific enthusiasm of someone who is genuinely interested and is also saving everyone from an awkward silence, because Ruby Rose is generally doing both simultaneously.
Ciel checked her watch.
Penny looked at Ruby.
"One minute," Ciel said, and stepped back.
Penny leaned forward. Her voice dropped.
"I want to stay at Beacon," she said.
"Penny, they'll never—"
"I have a plan."
She said this with the specific smile of someone who has been thinking about something for a while and is pleased with where they've arrived.
"We'll talk more," she said. "Soon."
Ciel's watch apparently reached the terminal point of its patience. Penny waved. Ruby waved. Odyn inclined his head. The two Atlas operatives departed with the measured efficiency of a schedule that had opinions about itself.
"Does she know?" Ruby asked, watching them go.
"About the—"
"The beep boop does not compute part."
"No," Odyn said. "And I suspect Penny intends to handle the relevant complications herself."
"She's very capable," Blake said.
"She stopped a truck with her hands," Odyn confirmed. "She'll manage."
The arena — doubles round: RWBY versus FNKI
Port's announcement had barely finished when Neon Katt arrived.
She arrived the way that Neon Katt arrived at most things — at speed, with an energy that preceded her, trailing a chromatic blur that the arena's lighting system found extremely photogenic. She came to a stop across from Yang and Weiss with the ease of someone who has made stopping at speed a personal aesthetic.
Flynt Coal adjusted his fedora.
He looked at Weiss.
Weiss recognized the look — the specific look of someone who has a grievance and has decided that this is the venue for it. She straightened.
"Your father's company," he said, "ran my father's shop out of business."
The words landed. Weiss looked down briefly, and the expression she made was the one she reserved for things she could not defend and did not try to.
"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.
He looked away. "Sure you are."
She raised a finger. She was preparing to say something that would begin to address the complexity of what it meant to carry a name you didn't choose—
"Hey, why don't you—" Yang started.
"Hey, why don't you?" Neon said, her impression landing with the cheerful commitment of someone who has been practicing it. She pointed. "Is that what you sound like? That?"
Yang processed this.
"Uh," she said.
In the waiting room, Roy watched the exchange through the arena's viewport.
"That's not good," he said.
He watched Neon skate a lazy circle around Yang's personal space with the confidence of someone who has identified a target and is confirming her range.
"You should try skating sometime. It might take you a bit longer since you're—" she tilted her head with practiced innocence— "a little top-heavy."
Yang looked down.
Yang looked up.
The countdown began.
The match — first half
What followed was, in Roy's assessment, one of the more frustrating things he had watched someone he respected do to themselves.
Yang fought Neon the way you fight a problem you're angry at — which is to say, she fought her poorly. Every blast from her gauntlets announced itself a full step before it arrived. Every charge was readable three movements in advance. The anger was real, the power behind it was real, and both of these things were making the situation considerably worse because Neon was built to absorb exactly this kind of force and convert it into momentum.
"She's forgotten everything," Khanna said, from the row above.
"She hasn't forgotten it," Roy said. "She's just — not using it."
"What's the difference?"
He didn't answer immediately. He was watching Yang stop short, shake her leg free of ice, and then immediately repeat the mistake that had resulted in the ice.
"There's a difference," he said.
Blake was watching with the expression she wore when she was worried about someone and was managing the worry by analyzing the situation rather than sitting with it.
"Should you say something?" she asked.
Roy had been asking himself the same question since approximately thirty seconds into the match.
He knew the answer.
He waited until the moment when Neon said the thing — the specific, flat, two-word thing that no one says to Yang Xiao Long and expects the conversation to continue in a productive direction — and Yang was about to do something that would not help her.
He stood up.
He did not shout. He said it with the specific register that cuts through noise because it has weight rather than volume.
"Yang."
Everyone in the vicinity turned. The combatants turned. The crowd, who had been watching Weiss and Flynt in the other section, turned.
"What do you think you're doing?" He said it clearly. He said it with the controlled intensity of someone who is angry in the way that is actually useful — the kind that has been organized into something functional. "You're better than this. I've watched you. Whatever she's saying, it's working, and it shouldn't be, and you know it. Stop flailing around and fight."
Yang stared at him.
Her eyes were red. Her aura was flickering.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then something in her face changed.
It was a small change — the specific shift of someone who has heard a voice they trust tell them the true thing, and who has recognized it as true even in the middle of the thing that was making truth hard to hear.
She punched herself.
It was a deliberate blow — controlled, purposeful, the specific self-administered reset of someone who knows exactly what she is doing and why.
The crowd, who had been watching, made a sound.
Neon blinked.
"Huh," she said.
Yang cracked her knuckles.
Her eyes were lilac again.
The match — second half
She fought the way she actually fought.
This was a different thing. The first half had been Yang Xiao Long performing anger. The second half was Yang Xiao Long working — and there was a specific quality to the working that had nothing to do with how she felt and everything to do with what she understood about the problem in front of her.
The problem was Neon Katt.
Neon's fighting principle was stated in the thing she kept telling herself: never miss a beat. She was a rhythm fighter — she operated in the space between your moments, the interval between when you attacked and when you recovered. You didn't catch her. You couldn't catch her. Not directly.
What you could do was change the terrain.
Yang blasted the ground rather than Neon. Then blasted it again. Then again, until the smooth surface that the rollerblades required was a collection of debris and uneven stone.
Neon's wheel caught a crack.
She stumbled.
She was airborne, and then a geyser caught her, and then Yang's shot caught her at the apex where there was nothing to push off of and nowhere to redirect.
The buzzer.
It was quiet for a moment.
"You're actually really pretty when you're angry," Neon said, from the ground, with the specific tone of someone who is going to be fine and knows it. "I can see why the red-haired boy pays attention to you."
Yang looked at where Roy was sitting.
She looked back at Neon.
She smiled, and the smile had a quality to it that was specifically about Roy and not about Neon, and Neon saw this and nodded with the genuine appreciation of someone who understands what she is looking at.
"We should party sometime," Neon said.
"Yeah," Yang said. "We probably should."
The volcanic section — simultaneously
Flynt had Weiss pressed hard.
This was the accurate accounting of the first portion of their fight. His semblance — the Killer Quartet, four copies of himself each contributing their own sound wave to a combined assault — created the specific problem of attacks that came from multiple angles simultaneously, which Weiss's style was not perfectly suited to because her style was precise and precision requires knowing where to point.
But she was also Weiss Schnee.
She had been training for two years at one of the best academies in Remnant. She had been practicing her glyphs since she could hold Myrtenaster. And she had, over the past eight months, been fighting alongside people who had taught her things that Atlas's textbooks had not covered.
She bounced between glyphs, accelerating around the multiple Flynts until she found the angle, and then went direct — straight into the volcanic section, straight toward the columns of flame that Flynt had been using as a weapon — and she tackled him.
They went in together.
The crowd went silent.
"Double knockout," Port said, in the tone of someone who is not entirely sure what they just watched. "Both combatants eliminated—"
Flynt came back up.
He was scorched. His jacket was ruined. His fedora was not going to recover. His aura was a flat red line.
He was standing.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Oobleck said, with the specific quality of someone who has just witnessed something and is choosing the appropriate words carefully, "Flynt Coal remains."
The crowd erupted.
Flynt looked at Yang.
He was angry. His semblance was gone. Weiss had taken him to the edge with the only move available to her — she had traded herself for him, knowing that Yang could finish one opponent when Weiss couldn't finish two.
He walked toward Yang.
Roy's expression from the waiting room was the specific expression of someone watching their student in the final exam and knowing the outcome before it happens.
Yang had organized herself.
She waited.
She let Flynt commit.
She moved.
The clap of her gauntlets around his trumpet — the specific closing of the gap that his semblance required to function — lasted one second before the backfire arrived.
Flynt was down.
"One remaining opponent," Roy said, in the waiting room, to Odyn, who had been watching with the same quiet attention.
"She'll be fine," Odyn said.
She was.
Afterward
They carried Weiss out of the arena — or rather, they supported her, because Weiss Schnee walking with assistance was a different thing from Weiss Schnee being carried, and the distinction was important to her.
She was soot-black and slightly scorched and breathing carefully, which was not the same as not breathing well.
"Weiss," Yang said, kneeling beside her in the grass. "Are you—"
"I'm fine." A cough that contradicted this. "I may not be... singing for some time."
Yang stared at her.
"Was that a joke?" Yang asked. "Did you just make a joke?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You made a joke."
"Proper form, Yang," Weiss said. "Remember it."
"You made a joke about—"
"I'm very tired and need to rest now."
Yang sat back and looked at her teammate with the expression she had when she was moved by something and is not going to say so in a way that makes it a thing.
"Good job," she said.
Weiss closed her eyes.
"You too," she said.
The tunnel — before the doubles match
Ruby had calculated the timing correctly — there was a gap between Yang and Weiss's match and the next announcement, and she used it to find Odyn in the competitor's corridor.
She did not say anything complex.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and told him she was glad it was him.
He held her for a moment, and the quality of it was the specific quality of two people who have said the important things and are now simply being together, which requires neither words nor performance.
"Little Rose," he said.
"Go win," she said.
She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.
He smiled.
She ran back toward the stands.
He turned toward the arena, and the smile faded into the specific composed focus that was a different expression from his public one — the one he wore when he had decided what he was going to do and was doing it.
"Done being romantic?" Roy said, from the tunnel's edge.
"Temporarily," Odyn said.
Roy smirked. "Good. Because we have a problem."
"The opponents from Haven."
"Yes."
"Agents of Salem," Odyn said, without inflection.
"The disguise is competent. Most people wouldn't catch it."
"We're not most people."
"No," Roy said. "We're not."
They walked out into the light.
The arena — OHRF versus the Haven pair
The roulette chose desert, forest, ocean, and mountains.
The crowd settled into the expectant quality of an audience that has seen these two fight before and is curious whether anything new is going to happen.
What happened was: the moment the starting signal sounded, Odyn moved sideways instead of forward.
The two Haven combatants had expected a charge.
What they got was Odyn's hand closing around Adam Taurus's face like a vice grip — not quite hurting, but absolute — and the sensation of being moved at a velocity that the human body registers as wrong before it registers as fast.
They arrived in the desert section.
Odyn released him.
Adam hit the sand.
The sound was a concussive thud — the specific sound of something large being deposited very firmly.
Then a shimmer ran through the air around them, and the crowd's noise dimmed to nothing.
The sound barrier.
"Nice disguise," Odyn said. "Wouldn't fool a Dark Elf."
Adam got to his feet. He was brushing sand from his hair and looking at Odyn with the expression of someone who has been caught and is deciding which way to fall.
He chose the direction of pretending nothing had changed.
"Smart kid," he said.
"Drop the act," Odyn said. "No one outside this barrier can hear us. Which means I can be honest with you, and you can be honest with me, and we don't have to do any of the social performance that tournament etiquette requires."
Adam looked at him.
"Adam Taurus," Odyn said. "Leader of the White Fang's radical faction. Student of Salem's methodology, regardless of whether you've met her personally. Ally of Cinder Fall." He paused. "You know who I am."
"Heard the name," Adam said. "The Forsaken."
The word landed like something that had been prepared for impact. Odyn's expression did not change.
"That word," he said, "tells me everything I need to know about what you've been taught and who taught it to you." He shifted his grip on his blade. "I'm going to fight you now. I'm going to fight you fairly, in front of a crowd that doesn't know who you are. But I want you to understand something before we start."
Adam waited.
"The people you're working with are going to lose," Odyn said. "Not because we're better fighters, although we are. Because what they're building toward cannot hold. It requires breaking things that, once broken, don't come back together." He met Adam's eyes with the directness he brought to things he was certain of. "And whatever grievances your people have — real ones, legitimate ones, the kind that have real causes and deserve real answers — those become impossible to address once Beacon falls. Once the trust is destroyed. You know this."
Adam was quiet for a moment.
"Pretty speech," he said.
"It's not a speech," Odyn said. "It's an observation."
"Fight me," Adam said.
"Yes," Odyn said.
What followed was a fight in the technical sense.
Adam was very good. Odyn understood this within the first six exchanges — the speed was genuine, the swordsmanship was the product of real training taken seriously, and the semblance was not a simple ability but a sophisticated one, absorbing kinetic energy and converting it into something that could be released at a moment of the fighter's choosing.
Odyn had seen this kind of ability before, in different forms.
He absorbed it by not giving Adam the impacts he was waiting for.
Instead of pressing, he circled. Instead of committing strikes, he made the strikes that required Adam to absorb them — light impacts, frequent, each one just below the threshold of what the semblance could efficiently store. He was filling a bucket with a dropper.
Adam saw this and adjusted.
Odyn saw Adam adjust and adjusted.
The swordfight had the quality that good swordfights have — the quality of a conversation happening too quickly to be articulated, two minds running their separate calculations and arriving at new premises faster than the crowd could follow.
He's good, Odyn thought. Genuinely good. In other circumstances—
He filed this.
Adam went for the stored release. He had been patient, he had collected it carefully, and the blow arrived with the full force of everything he'd absorbed across the length of the fight.
Odyn's hand came up.
Adam's blade stopped.
Not from a block. From a hand. Odyn's bare hand closed around the flat of the blade with the specific quality of something that has decided it is not going to move, and which is correct about this.
The crowd — what Odyn could see of it through the sound barrier — had made a collective motion of incomprehension.
He looked at Adam over the caught blade.
"Tell Cinder," he said, "that if she comes for the people I care about, she should be prepared for the full version of this."
He released the blade.
Adam hit the sand.
Mana Zone: Light-Fanged Dragon's Jaw.
The ending of the fight was not a fight. It was the specific application of something that Adam Taurus had genuinely not encountered before — the complete scope of Elven magic in combination with physical capability in combination with the particular anger of someone who has watched the people around him suffer because of the decisions of people like Cinder Fall and has organized that anger into something useful.
Adam did not get up.
Odyn walked away.
Roy's arena — simultaneous
Roy had been patient.
This was not his natural state — he was, by temperament, someone who preferred to settle things — but the training had instilled in him the specific patience of someone who has learned that timing is a weapon.
His opponent's tail kept him at range for the first portion of the fight, which was the intention. Roy accepted this and watched. He watched the rhythm of the tail's deployment. He watched the specific moment between when the tail was retracted and when it was ready to strike again.
The gap was there.
When the wind from Odyn's finishing move arrived, it hit his opponent mid-swing and disrupted the rhythm. Roy was already moving.
He had watched Weiss fight for eight months. He had watched her glyphs — the mechanics of how she used them, the way they stored and released energy, the specific principles of the technique. He had not asked her permission to understand it, and he was not going to use it the same way she did, but the underlying concept had been available to him.
He made lightning glyphs.
They were not the same as Weiss's glyphs. They were not derived from a Schnee semblance — they were constructed from lightning magic directed by the specific Elven ability to shape magical force into containment fields. But they held energy. They released it on contact. And they gave his opponent two problems to manage simultaneously.
Opponents with two problems make mistakes faster than opponents with one.
Tiri made the mistake.
Roy had been building something while his opponent was distracted.
He pointed his blade at the sky.
The sky had opinions.
The dark clouds that had gathered during the combat — drawn by the electrical field Roy had been generating — delivered their content at the exact moment he swung the blade downward.
It was not a precise technique. Precision was not its virtue. Its virtue was scale.
Tiri landed in the specific way of someone who has been struck by a tremendous amount of lightning and has no remaining interest in continuing to stand.
The buzzer sounded.
Roy sheathed his blade.
The sun returned.
He looked at the crowd — at Ruby's face specifically, which had the expression she had when she was happy in the uncomplicated way, the full-face version — and he felt the specific quiet satisfaction of someone who has done the thing correctly.
He walked toward the exit.
Odyn fell into step beside him.
"Yours?" Odyn asked.
"Done," Roy said. "Yours?"
"Done."
They walked out of the arena together, and the crowd's noise followed them, and neither of them said anything else because there was nothing that needed saying.
Cinder's dormitory — that evening
She had been going through the match recordings for an hour.
Emerald watched her from across the room with the expression she wore when she had an opinion she was determining whether to voice.
Mercury was doing pushups. This was his most transparent version of pretending not to be listening, which everyone in the room understood and nobody acknowledged.
"There's a complication," Cinder said, finally.
"The Dark Elves," Emerald said.
"The Dark Elves." She set the scroll down. "What I saw in that arena — both of them — changes the calculus of what we can do and when we can do it."
"You're saying we can't fight them," Emerald said.
"I'm saying we can't fight them yet." There was a distinction Cinder was drawing here that was important to her. "The plan proceeds. But the timing has to account for them."
"And when we have the maiden's power?" Emerald asked.
Cinder was quiet for a moment.
She had been confident, going into the tournament, that the power differential was manageable. She had factored the Elven students into her planning as a nuisance — significant, but addressable.
She had revised this assessment.
The boy with the blue hair had caught a semblance-charged blade with his bare hand. He had done it without apparent effort. And the impression she had gotten, watching the recording — the specific impression of someone who has encountered a limit and is trying to locate it — was that she had not found the limit. She had found an outer surface. The limit was somewhere behind it.
"The plan proceeds," she said again. "We work around them."
"And if we can't work around them?" Emerald asked.
Mercury's pushup count had not changed. His expression had not changed. He was performing the face of someone who is not having opinions.
"We will," Cinder said. And she believed it, because the alternative was a recalibration she was not prepared to make.
She turned back to her scroll.
The file she opened was P-E-N-N-Y.
She read it.
She read it again.
She smiled.
"A slight adjustment," she said. "To the plan."
Ozpin's office — the same evening
Qrow Branwen occupied a chair with the specific posture of someone who would be more comfortable if the chair were lower and there were something to drink nearby. He had managed one of those things.
"You've found your guardian," he said.
"I believe so." Ozpin folded his hands. "I have believed so since the day we met."
"She's ready?"
"She is ready."
Qrow was quiet for a moment. The city outside the window had its evening qualities — the festival lights, the sounds of the tournament crowds dispersing, the ordinary ongoing life of a city that does not know what is currently being planned within several of its buildings simultaneously.
"There's a thing," Qrow said. "About the girl. Something—" He paused. "She feels different to me lately. Like she's not entirely alone in there."
Sybyrh, who had been standing to the side in the specific way she stood in rooms she was present in but not leading, straightened slightly.
"I can address that," she said.
Qrow looked at her.
"Our High King," she said, "can perform a very specific class of magic. One of its applications is the preservation and eventual reincarnation of a soul that would otherwise be lost." She spoke carefully, the way she spoke when she was providing information that required precision. "It is my belief that one of our people — someone who was lost, some time ago — was preserved through this spell and found a vessel in your guardian candidate."
The room was quiet.
"A Dark Elven soul," Ozpin said.
"Yes."
"Inside Pyrrha Nikos."
"Yes."
"Whose soul?" Qrow asked.
"I cannot say with certainty," Sybyrh said. "I have a belief. But I won't say it until I'm certain." She paused. "What I can tell you is that the soul is not hostile. It has been acting to protect the girl. It has been conscious for some time."
Ozpin looked at his mug.
"Then when I speak to Pyrrha," he said, "I am speaking to two people."
"In a manner of speaking," Sybyrh said. "Though I suspect they have learned, by now, to be one thing and two things simultaneously."
Tarro, who had been listening with the attention he brought to things that mattered to Sybyrh, said: "You should tell Pyrrha. If she doesn't already know."
"She knows," Sybyrh said. "I told Khanna, who told Pyrrha directly. Some time ago."
"And she—"
"Handled it," Sybyrh said, with a quality that was almost pride. "She is a remarkable young woman."
Ozpin set his mug down.
"When you're ready to tell me whose soul it is," he said, "I would very much like to know."
Sybyrh looked at him.
"When I'm certain," she said. "It is not a small thing to say. I don't want to be wrong about it."
He nodded.
"Then we move forward," he said, "speaking to both of them. And we trust that whatever decision Pyrrha makes — she will make it with both of their input."
"Yes," Sybyrh said. "That is what I believe will happen."
The Cross Continental Transmit Tower — that night
The elevator closed.
Pyrrha stood in it with the composed quality she had when she had made a decision and had stopped debating it. The expression was not quite peace and not quite resolution but was in the territory of both — the expression of someone who has arrived at something after a long approach and is standing at the edge of it.
The voice arrived quietly, in the interior register that had become as familiar as her own thoughts.
You should be prepared, Sarai said. I think something significant is about to be asked of you.
"I know," Pyrrha said.
How do you feel about it?
"I'm not sure yet." She looked at the closing doors. "How do you feel?"
Sarai was quiet for a moment.
Proud of you, she said. Whatever you decide. And— another pause, with the quality of something being gathered, something large and difficult to hold— I'm afraid for you. Both feelings are true at the same time.
"I know," Pyrrha said again. "Me too."
The elevator moved upward.
Outside, the festival's lights painted Vale in the warm, ordinary colors of a city that does not know what some of the people within it know. The Amity Colosseum floated in its altitude above Beacon, visible from half of Vale, its lights making a second kind of sky.
Whatever happens, Sarai said, you will not face it alone.
"Neither will you," Pyrrha said.
The tower rose around them.
They arrived.
End of Chapter Twenty
To be continued in Chapter Twenty One: "Fall" — Cinder's Trap, Part Three
The particular cruelty of being chosen for something is that the choosing does not ask you first.
Pyrrha Nikos had been chosen twice: once by circumstance, for the shape of her talent and the scale of what she had been given; and once by something older and more specific, for the quality of her character, which a soul that had been waiting for the right vessel had found sufficient.
Both choosings had arrived without her permission.
Both had made her who she was.
Sarai Albanar, who had been watching from inside since she became conscious, had formed her opinion of Pyrrha early and had not revised it. The opinion was: this one. This was the right choice. Not because Pyrrha was invincible — she was not — but because she would make the right decision when the decision mattered, and she would make it knowing what it cost, and she would make it anyway.
This was, in Sarai's estimation, what the people worth choosing had always been.
The elevator arrived at the top floor.
The doors opened.
Pyrrha walked forward.
Ending theme:
Ending: My hero academia season 4 endung theme - Koukai no Uta
Visuals: Ranges from the characters introduced so far before turning to a dark screen split between the heroes and villains. Mercury struggles to choose a side until hands from the lighter image reach out to him and shatter his dark background. It then shows stills of each character in range of importance in the story before ending with the forces of light behind Team Rwby and Odyn looking up to Cinder and the forces of darkness.
And done! Whew! It took me awhile to write this one and determine where the story was going to go. I figured putting Adam and Tirion in there disguised would gave them a little perspective for when they fight the elves later on. As you can probably tell, the dark elves haven't even unleashed their full power... yet. It's coming, don't worry. I hope you guys enjoyed the little bit of extra Roy x Yang development I threw in there.
Shallot and Blake will be getting their interactions soon, don't worry, I haven't forgotten. The other saiyan characters will be getting interactions with the main cast soon as well. The black clover part of the story will come into play when Cinder hatches her plan. I'm thinking the King and Queen will have something to say to Atlas once volume 3 concludes. And it's not ending how it did in cannon, i have a bit of twist in mind for volume 3's ending.
Cinder will be more careful right now, but we all know she's going to think she can beat up the elves once she has her maiden powers... that's just villains are. I still don't know what to do about Emerald, leave a comment or PM me about what i should do with Emerald. Anyways that's it for now, until the next update guys!