Homeless Bunny 35

  Ruby Rose

  A grimm tide. It was the nightmare of huntsmen, the absolute worst case scenario.

  It was what happened when the negativity in a settlement spiked uncontrollably, when humans began to lose hope. The nearby grimm would be drawn to the settlement. People would die and even more would lose hope. That would draw in more grimm. More deaths. More despair.

  Like the tide, the waves of grimm would ebb and flow. They would ebb, pushed back by momentary victories and surges of hope, only to flow again, smothering the reignited sparks. Each wave would be greater than the last, with more and stronger grimm attracted from further out in the wilds. Until finally, the defenders inevitably broke.

  Very few villages ever held out against even a small tide. Oftentimes, victory was measured in how many civilians huntsmen could evacuate, how least badly we could lose.

  That was what the textbooks said. I had no idea what a real tide was like because only seasoned huntsmen were ever called for reinforcements. I’d asked Uncle Qrow about them once, just once. The haunted look as he reached for his bottle was answer enough.

  The textbooks lied. There was supposed to be an upswing of negativity and despair. The books said that so long as humanity held onto hope, our hearts would be what prevented grimm tides from ever forming. That with enough hope, we could weather the storm.

  There was no negativity. We were on a field trip. We weren’t even in a settlement with civilians. But here it was anyway. It was only because Professor Goodwitch reacted quickly that we were able to retreat to the bullhead.

  The professor recognized the signs and butchered the first wave with a massive pulse of telekinesis. She raised up bulwarks and had the pilot radio for backup. She organized us by teams into shifts before everything devolved into fighting.

  Now, all we could do was wait for reinforcements. The pilot couldn’t even leave because there were too many aerial grimm.

  “Bumblebee!” I shouted.

  My team responded like a well-oiled machine. Blake tossed Yang her pistol and swung, launching my sister like a stone from a sling. Yang roared as her fist rocketed into an ursa major, shattering its bone plating like glass. That was one down, out of however many hundreds, and this was just the second wave.

  I pulled the trigger again and again. Each bark of Crescent Rose ended a grimm but I’d run out of bullets soon. There were too few people who could target aerial grimm effectively, especially the stronger, armored variants.

  See, dad? This was why sniper-scythes were practical weapons!

  Weiss was away. My partner had been pulled from RWBY by Professor Goodwitch. As the single best dust user we had, she was assisting Professor Goodwitch with the barricades, strategically using the limited supply we had to take out as many grimm as possible.

  It wasn’t like we were the only ones going without teammates either. TAMM was missing half their team, and the two most powerful students at that. The twins were–

  “Fuck!” Melanie screamed as she ducked behind Pyrrha’s shield. A hail of nevermore feathers almost skewered the potty-mouthed girl.

  “Cover the beowulf packs,” Pyrrha grunted. “Make sure the other teams don’t get surrounded.”

  “Got it.”

  The twins ran off together. They’d been running themselves ragged trying to help without getting in over their heads. They used their excellent teamwork to rip through the lesser grimm so Nora and Pyrrha wouldn’t get overwhelmed and could focus down the more dangerous alpha grimm.

  On the opposite side, Ren and Ilia did much the same. Their impromptu six-man formation was working wonders and looked like four comets orbiting a pair of explosive, mobile stars.

  Soon, the second wave petered out and we had a moment to breathe. RBY, VALN, and MM rotated with two of the other freshman teams. We ducked back behind the barricades and caught our breaths. We also had to quickly spot-check our weapons. If something broke on us now, that was it.

  “How’s everyone holding up?” Yang asked. She was panting lightly and sweat soaked her hair, but I was glad to see nothing more than a few bruises.

  “I’m good. I’m running low on rounds for Crescent Rose though,” I replied as I aimed down the sights. Just in case.

  “We’re good for now,” Melanie said as she leaned against her sister. The two took out one of Tianyu’s picnic sandwiches and crammed it in their mouths.

  Out of us girls here, they definitely looked the worst for wear. They weren’t huntsmen, not really; they’d said as much during training. They’d improved a ton, but they just weren’t the strongest fighters. Worse, they were working in pairs because Tianyu vanished shortly after Professor Goodwitch called us in.

  “Where’s your team leader?” Weiss demanded as she joined us.

  “We don’t know,” Miltia said as she angrily bit down on her food. “He said, ‘Acquit yourselves well,’ then fucked off somewhere!”

  “That doesn’t sound like Tianyu.”

  “Really, princess? Because it sounds exactly like the bullshit he’d say. He probably thinks this whole thing is a training exercise.”

  There was an unfortunately high likelihood of that. Tianyu… This was the same man who talked about ancient grimm and a witch from the Age of Gods like unruly children. He didn’t have a normal sense of danger.

  “And Amber?” I asked. She was a Maiden. Things would be so much easier with her here. “Where is she?”

  “She went flying before this all started, said she needed time to decompress and ‘be one with nature,’ damn hippy,” Melanie grumbled.

  “Shit…” Not even Yang corrected my swearing. The situation was that dire.

  I ran my fingers along my baby’s spine. Tianyu made her for me out of some kind of magic super-metal. He said that she had been enchanted with wind and gravity. He also said she’d be as powerful as I was, that my own magic would be the deciding factor.

  Well, I had no idea how to use my silver eyes, but I didn’t have a choice anymore. The siren rang again, announcing a shift change. We stood as one. No matter what happened, we’d survive. Together.

  X

  Militia Malachite

  This was bullshit. This was such bullshit. Each wave in a grimm tide was larger than the last. Our breaks got proportionately shorter; we just didn’t have the stamina to keep going like this.

  I dodged out of the way of one beowulf, only to trip over the dissipating corpse of another. That was a problem, too. There were so many grimm that the bodies piled faster than they could vanish. They became temporary terrain features that made running hazardous.

  And worst of all, Tianyu was still nowhere to be found!

  Tianyu’s training ensured I was agile enough to turn the trip into a shoulder roll, but I wasn’t feeling very charitable at the moment. He fucking ditched us! And I just knew that fucker was watching somewhere too! Probably with popcorn!

  “Mel!” I shouted. There was a beowulf alpha that had managed to flank us both, cutting off our retreat towards the Invincible Girl.

  I didn’t need to say anything else. We’d been fighting together since before our finishing school days. Fighting in sync was as natural as breathing. That was how I knew to duck, her attack patterns as familiar to me as my own. Melanie came flying out behind me, heel and blade poised right where the base of my neck had been a second ago.

  Her foot stabbed into the alpha’s shoulder as the grimm let out a pained roar. Its thick muscle and bone-like armor caught the blade, but she used that as extra leverage for a sweeping backflip, clawing out the beowulf’s throat with a rising kick.

  I took that as my cue to withdraw to her. When the rest of the pack lunged for my sister, I was there. My wrist-mounted claws were faster than Melanie’s kicks. Her kicks were heavier and stronger. This was how we fought: I’d give her time to make those sweeping finishing blows and recover while she acted as the fulcrum that we fought around.

  “Grenade!” I heard Nora shout. Off in the distance, I saw a deathstalker’s armor shatter, only to be picked off a moment later when Ilia stabbed through its new weak point.

  The ginger was just about the only one who was still fresh. She had a seemingly unending amount of grenades and had been launching them strategically to keep us from being overwhelmed.

  It was funny. Outside of combat class, people said she was the worst leader because she seemed so impulsive. Even in combat, she’d always seemed like a brute, not much better than the blonde gorilla. I was pretty sure only her boytoy really believed in her. But now, I was starting to see what Ozpin must have seen in her.

  Everyone else was starting to tire, but not her. She could afford to save her grenades for the perfect moment because she had the strength to crush an ursa major with her hammer alone. She could think mostly clearly while everyone else got worn down because she could rejuvenate herself with some lightning dust. Here, in a real-life, do-or-die battle, her stamina was worth more than gold.

  X

  I didn’t know how many grimm we killed. For that matter, I lost track of the wave we were on. Things got better when Amber arrived, but it was like pouring a bucket of water over a wildfire. Unless we received reinforcements from Beacon, or the bunny decided to get off his fluffy ass and help, we were fucked.

  After a while, even Nora and Professor Goodwitch were tiring. Small injuries piled up. A bruise here, a small cut there, this was an endurance battle and we just didn’t have the numbers to last.

  Then, just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I heard an ear-piercing scream.

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  Blake went down. I didn’t know if it was because RBY tried something reckless, they seemed the type, or because the catgirl fetish-bait was unlucky, but she was on her ass, one hand clutching her bleeding side. Her aura was obviously gone and her weapon was held loosely in her hand.

  Yang leapt to her partner’s defense. Her hair was matted with sweat and dirt. The usual fire I’d come to expect was gone, replaced by a few, dying embers. She stood with her fists raised, though she’d long since run out of shells for Ember Celica.

  There was a small horde of grimm around her. Beowolves, creeps, ursa, I even saw a taijitu raising its heads. It almost seemed as though a full quarter of the wave had abandoned their fights to mindlessly rush the newest source of despair.

  No one else was in position to back her up. Yang and Blake were some of the strongest in our year; truthfully, no one thought they’d need it. The grimm closed. As they were about to be overwhelmed, a single, deafening crack pierced the battlefield.

  “Leave my team ALONE!” Ruby screamed. She was a crimson blur, a bolt of blood-red lightning that sent lesser grimm scattering with the wind from her passage alone.

  She was some kind of genius weaponsmith who was trained by her uncle, Qrow motherfucking Branwen. Even Junior knew not to fuck with that man. She obviously took to the training like a duck to water because she got to come to Beacon two years early.

  But that wasn’t enough. That was just regular genius mixed with the good fortune of knowing someone already in the business. Talented kids were a dime a dozen, especially among huntsmens’ brats. That wasn’t enough to get the god-bunny to personally handcraft her a weapon.

  I’d been curious, and yes, jealous. What did he see in the naive brat? For all the shit Tianyu liked to pull, like going AWOL in the middle of a grimm tide, he wasn’t actually irresponsible.

  I understood. I got it now. She was just built different.

  She blitzed around the battlefield with all the authority of the grim reaper, scythe in hand and screaming bloody murder. She beheaded the taijitu and cleaved an ursa major in half from head to crotch without so much as a stutter.

  An especially large boarbatusk tried to run her down. Its spinning, armored hide just barely deflected the scythe. Instead of carving it down the middle, the midget practically skinned it alive, like peeling an apple. It squealed in agony as it passed her, clipping her shoulder.

  At the speeds they were moving, it should have launched the midget like a stone from a sling. Her aura should have broken. Desperation and reckless bravery didn’t usually save the day; they were more likely to get you killed.

  But Ruby didn’t break. It was as though she suddenly weighed as much as a freight train. Or maybe the boar became no more than a falling leaf.

  Either way, crimson winds tore it from her path, launching it into the ground like a spiked volleyball. From where it had been struck, stone roses sprouted, petrifying the grimm even as it began to fade.

  Those same, stone roses bloomed from every grimm she cut down. It was as though their black blood nourished the flowers. And when they faded, they left behind a macabre rose garden that still held traces of the grimm corpses they’d fed on.

  It was beautiful and terrifying. I felt like I was watching a legendary hero come alive. Her eyes were glowing, leaving silvery light trails that illuminated the rose petals behind her.

  I was reminded of an old fable, the one about a clan of silver-eyed warriors. Some said they were the very first huntsmen, the very first to take up the mantle of humanity’s protectors. Other stories said they changed the course of history whenever they appeared. They raised up kingdoms and brought down tyrants, each generation shaped by their deeds.

  I would never have put much stock in stories like that until recently. I wouldn’t even have known that kind of story. Why would I? Sure, I worked for an information broker, but we dealt in practical knowledge, not old wives’ tales. I’d never have bothered looking, until…

  Until Tianyu came to Junior, until he demanded every scrap of mythology and folklore common across Remnant.

  Had Tianyu known?

  No, stupid question. Of course he’d known. The midget had glowed like this once before, back when she thought Tianyu was about to murder her sister.

  I glanced to my right and found my sister. Our eyes met. We laughed at the bizarreness of it all. We watched as the wave was annihilated by a single, prepubescent girl, as a legend came alive.

  We’d spent our childhood in Mistral’s underworld. We’d attended a finishing school for assassins. We’d spent our entire lives biting and scratching and murdering everything in our way, all to cling to every scrap of power we could get our hands on. And here she was, apparently some kind of Chosen One.

  Life just wasn’t fair sometimes. At least we were on the winning side.

  X

  Tianyu Yue

  I watched as the freshmen fought desperately against the grimm. They were on their seventh wave now and doing quite well for themselves, far better than any individual would have fared alone.

  The teams were supporting each other admirably. Their leaders were taking command and implementing practiced formations. And where those formations failed, they adapted with only minor flaws in positioning or responsiveness. Even the twins were making themselves useful. Most of them didn’t even need to be saved by Glynda more than once or twice.

  I’d read the textbook, of course. Well, I’d read the cliff-notes version Ozpin compiled for me. The grimm were largely irrelevant because they lacked the intelligence to act in a cohesive manner. At least, until Salem or an ancient grimm led them in something called a grimm tide. A strong enough alpha could as well, but that obviously wasn’t the case here.

  The details weren’t important in the end. What mattered was that things weren’t as bad as everyone made it out to be. They underestimated themselves. They could hold out for a while yet.

  Until then, or until the ancient grimm I could sense chose to act on its own initiative, I didn’t see the need to intervene directly. After all, I loved my team, truly. Why would I deprive my beloved students of this wonderful training opportunity?

  Off in the distance, I’d listened as Amber and Cinder traded blows. To be honest, keeping an ear out for Amber seemed more important than the minor scuffle going on with Glynda and the students.

  That said, I hadn’t bothered to intervene there, either. My lovely wife always said that struggle was critical to a disciple’s growth. She called them tribulations. That always made me chuckle. “Heavenly tribulation” had an entirely different meaning when we were the heavenly authorities.

  Even so, I couldn't deny that she had a point. A child reared without trials to overcome would never become truly strong. They could master a hundred martial arts, learn every spell under the sun, but their strength would be akin to a house built on a foundation of fragile glass.

  Amber wasn’t a martial artist, but this was important to her. This was Amber’s “heavenly tribulation,” the albatross around her neck. If she could not beat Cinder with her own hands, if I rescued her without even letting her try, I felt that she would plateau here, never to blossom into the mage she could be.

  So, I pulled back. I kept an ear on her as she took a life, and as she steeled herself with shuddering breaths. I watched as Ruby came into her own, her innate magic colored by my training.

  Together, she, Amber, and Glynda bought the students the time to breathe.

  They were triumphant. They could well have held on until reinforcements arrived.

  Or, they could have had the ancient grimm not chosen that moment to announce itself.

  “▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"

  A deafening roar shook the forest. The remaining grimm became more aggressive, almost as though rallying under a general’s flag.

  The ancient grimm finally came into view and I had to admit, it looked fairly impressive. As far as evil dragons went, it was visually stunning, with wings that could probably hug Beacon Tower entirely and jaws large enough to swallow an elephant whole. Its crimson eyes were like twin suns, glaring malevolently down at two people in particular.

  Ruby and Amber stood out. Not just for their deeds, but for their magic. They were like beacons of mana that no magically sensitive creature could mistake. And grimm, as far as I could tell, were direct offshoots of the Dark God’s Authority. They were most definitely mana-sensitive. In that sense, the two girls were slabs of succulent steak before a starving dog. And that meant it was time for me to intervene.

  I vanished and reappeared alongside my team. I placed an arm around the twins and pulled them close. “Yo.”

  “Tianyu!” the twins yelped in concert. A dozen emotions warred across their faces. Worry. Fear. Relief. Joy. Until finally, it all settled into annoyance. “What the fuck? Where were you?”

  “I was watching over you, and Amber, too,” I said, offering the Maiden a nod. “Well done, by the way.”

  “You could have helped,” Amber said. There was real hurt in her voice. “I almost died.”

  “You didn’t, and I wouldn’t have let you. You needed to deal with Cinder on your own. She’s your demon, not mine.”

  “Yeah? What about us? You left us to drown, Tianyu,” Melanie said.

  Glynda took that moment to step in. Ozpin’s deputy was uninjured, but I’d never seen her look more exhausted. “Your questionable teaching methods aside, and we will talk about this, we have bigger concerns at present.”

  I glanced at the grimm wyvern. It had paused briefly at my arrival, which told me that it was unexpectedly intelligent. Its back boiled like tar as it spewed more and more grimm into the world.

  “Right, that thing,” I said. I supposed it had thoroughly run through its usefulness now. “I believe my absence was necessary for your growth. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry that you were scared. Please know that I’m proud of you, all of you. And allow me to prove to you that you were never in any danger.”

  I stepped forward with all the discipline and poise I’d earned in my century of life. As far as I was concerned, I was a chef first and a Campione a distant second. Being a godslayer, a champion of humanity, was a job, a chore to be fulfilled no different than taking out the trash. It was a duty I recognized needed doing, but one I took no pleasure in.

  So why would I take on lesser tasks? Why would I take up arms against mortal opponents?

  I wouldn’t. I didn’t. Neither did my siblings for that matter. Though Campione were absolute monarchs of whatever territory we claimed, we didn’t often exercise that right. We were judge and executioner, but we seldom held court, leaving mortal affairs to our mortal subordinates.

  This wyvern was what a nation-destroying calamity looked like to a normal huntsman. To me, it looked like an obese gecko. Yinghua Liu. Erica Blandelli. Ena Seishuuin. Laura Kinney. Even they wouldn’t have struggled with this and they were all fully human. But they weren’t here now. I missed them.

  I supposed it could be said that a Campione’s duty was to face threats that were beyond human ability. Heretic gods and divine ancestors happened to be the most common in my old world, that was all. And until my chosen subordinates here grew to the level where I could foist my duty onto them, I’d have to stand before them to pave the way.

  Which meant this obese gecko was my problem for the moment.

  I slid into a familiar stance. Maybe shaking off the rust wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Lately, the only reason I’d used the Lunar Revel at all was to show Velvet how it was done.

  “Five treasures,” I began, speaking softly yet firmly. There was no need to shout; the world would hear me regardless.

  Mana swirled and formed the familiar pentagram. Wood fueled fire. Fire produced ashes. The ashes of the earth refined gold. Gold purified water. And water nourished wood.

  “Born of twin truths.”

  The circle closed. A golden light filled the forest as all creation held its breath. Darkness and light, yin and yang, encircled each other, the perfection of the taijitu that no grimm could hope to replicate.

  I took a half-step forward. A strong fist began with a strong foundation.

  “Illuminate the path of ascension. Lunar Revel: Shattered Heaven.”

  My feet planted firm, I twisted my hips and shoulders, using every bit of my body to drive momentum and intent into my hand.

  I cast out my hand, and the world broke.

  Author’s Note

  In other news, Tianyu is kind of an asshole when seen from other people’s perspective. He appears selfish, disinterested, and detached from the cares of mortals… because he is.

  You know that shonen trope in which the kung fu master throws kids into tiger dens for training? That pretty much describes Tianyu.

  He’s spent a century with Luo Hao. He genuinely believes this is acceptable, so long as they emerge stronger for it in the long run because in the same way he grossly overpaid with the healing elixirs for corn husks, he has a very different idea of “threat” than normal people.

  Animal Fact: You can’t “trance” rabbits. That’s not actually a thing.

  “Trancing” is when a person holds a rabbit on its back. The rabbit will go still and this is often done by groomers to clip nails. It’s thought that this hypnotizes and pacifies the rabbit.

  Yeah, don’t do that. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is that the rabbit is entering a state of tonic immobility. In other words, it’s playing dead. It’s trying to convince the predator (you) that it’s not worth it. “Tranced” rabbits show the same physiological symptoms as humans suffering from heavy trauma.

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