Prologue: Mission to Vale
Somewhere on the vast continent of Remnant, nestled between the iron shoulders of the Mantle mountains and the creeping frost of the northern winds, there existed a kingdom that the world had long since forgotten.
It did not appear on any map. No airship pilot had ever marked its coordinates. No scholar had penned its name in any recent text. And yet, it breathed — quietly, stubbornly, like an ember that refuses to go dark no matter how fierce the surrounding storm.
The inhabitants called themselves the Albanar Tribe. The Dark Elves.
They could be recognized, if one knew what to look for: eyes the color of living flame, irises burning in hues of amber and ember that seemed to glow faintly in low light. Their skin ranged from rich mahogany to sun-bronzed sienna, and their ears tapered to subtle, elegant points — a feature that had earned them more than a few unkind stares throughout the centuries. They were a warrior people by nature, though not by desire. The mountains had made them strong. The isolation had made them proud. And the indifference of the outside world had, over time, made them quiet.
Once, humans and Faunus alike had regarded the Dark Elves with suspicion bordering on hostility. Now, they regarded them with something almost worse — nothing at all. The long and bitter feud between the two dominant races of Remnant had consumed so much of the world's attention that the Arkynoreans had simply... ceased to exist in the minds of those who had once known them. The elders who remembered had passed on. The young had never been told.
In many ways, it was a mercy.
In other ways, it was its own quiet tragedy.
On the training grounds that morning, the rhythmic crack of wood against wood broke the stillness of the cold air.
Two young men circled each other with practiced ease, their footwork carving shallow grooves in the frost-dusted earth. The taller of the two was broad across the shoulders, his cerulean-blue hair pulled loosely back, a single dark eyepatch covering his left eye. His right eye burned with that characteristic elven fire — amber, focused, reading his opponent the way a scholar reads a page. This was Odyn Albanar, eldest son of the High King, and he moved like someone who had been fighting his whole life, because he had.
His opponent — shorter, quicker, with a shock of red hair and eyes just as bright — was Roy Albanar, Odyn's younger brother. Where Odyn fought like a siege engine, patient and immovable, Roy fought like a wildfire, erratic and relentless. He darted left, feinted right, and drove his practice sword in a rising arc that Odyn deflected with a lazy, almost dismissive sweep of his forearm.
Roy clicked his tongue. "You could at least pretend I'm a challenge."
"You are a challenge," Odyn said calmly. "Just not today."
Not far away, a second pair of teenagers moved through their own sparring session with equal intensity. The girl — black-haired, tanned, her arms laced with old scars that she wore without embarrassment — unleashed a measured combination of strikes that her sparring partner barely managed to intercept. This was Kanna Albanar, cousin to Odyn and Roy, and she had the rare gift of making ruthless efficiency look graceful.
Her partner, Baron Odarinath, was a boy with deep-toned skin and a sweep of purple hair that fell across his forehead whenever he moved too quickly, which was often. He was younger than the others by a margin — a fact Kanna never let him forget — and he had a habit of talking when he should have been thinking. His defense held, but only barely, and the grin on his face was the stubborn, cheerful kind that refuses to concede even when losing.
The sparring came to an abrupt halt when a figure emerged from the archway at the edge of the training grounds and dropped to one knee.
She was a young woman clad in armor the color of deep emerald and polished gold, her posture impeccably straight even in deference. Sybyrh — pronounced Cyber, a fact she had explained to foreigners precisely zero times, because foreigners rarely asked — was the captain of the Elven Vanguard, and she carried herself with the quiet authority of someone who did not need to raise her voice to be heard.
"Pardon the interruption, my Lords," she said. "The King and Queen request your presence — all four of you."
The four teens exchanged a brief, wordless look before lowering their practice weapons in unison.
Odyn was the first to respond, inclining his head. "Thank you, Sybyrh. Tell them we'll be there shortly."
"No need for that." Kanna was already dusting off her bracers, a faint smirk at the corner of her mouth. "She can lead us herself. If that's alright with you, Sybyrh?"
The captain rose and offered a single nod. "Of course, my Lady."
As they fell into step behind her, Roy leaned toward Baron and dropped his voice to something just above a whisper. "Any idea what this is about?"
Baron shook his head, his expression shifting to something more serious than usual. "It must be significant. They've never called all four of us at once."
"He's right," Kanna agreed from ahead of them, not turning around. She always seemed to hear everything. "Whatever it is, I doubt it's a casual invitation to tea."
Sybyrh, to her credit, said nothing. But there was something in the set of her shoulders — a kind of deliberate stillness — that told the others she already knew more than she was permitted to share.
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
The throne room of the Albanar kingdom was not what most outsiders might have imagined, had any outsider ever been permitted to see it.
There were no gilded columns, no silk banners or polished marble. The room was carved into the mountain itself — a vast natural hall shaped by centuries of careful craftsmanship, its wooden floors worn smooth by generations of footsteps, its stone pillars rising to a low-vaulted ceiling where a deliberate gap in the rock allowed a single shaft of pale winter sunlight to fall across the room's center. The builders had understood that grandeur and stability were not the same thing, and had chosen stability.
The thrones were carved from dense heartwood, their surfaces worn and oiled, their seats draped in the pelts of Grimm — creatures that had made the mistake of threatening this kingdom and paid for it with their hides. They were not decorative trophies. They were reminders.
Seated upon the larger of the two thrones was Berethon Albanar, High King of the Arkynorean people. He was a man who looked as though the mountains themselves had grown tired of waiting and simply decided to become a person instead — broad, patient, weathered in a way that spoke of decades rather than age. His cerulean-blue hair and closely kept beard framed a face that was still handsome in the severe, angular way of someone who had never had the luxury of softness. His golden armor caught the light with a quiet dignity, the royal blue of his regalia visible beneath it like the ocean beneath a shield.
Beside him sat Hyatan, the High Queen, and if Berethon was the mountain, then Hyatan was the storm cloud that chose to rest against it. Her violet-purple hair was braided in the traditional fashion, her silver-trimmed armor immaculate, and her gaze — when it settled on the four teenagers who knelt before her — was both warm and deeply calculating.
Sybyrh knelt at the entrance.
"I have brought them, your Majesties. Shall I take my leave?"
"Stay." Hyatan's voice was quiet, but it carried the way a bowstring carries tension — effortlessly. "What we have to say concerns you as well."
Sybyrh lowered her head in acknowledgment and remained where she was.
Odyn spoke first, from his position of formal deference. "You called for us, my Lieges?"
Berethon rose slowly from his throne, the way a glacier moves — without urgency, but with the certainty of something that cannot be stopped.
"There is an evil coming," he said, without preamble. "I suspect the four of you have felt it. That particular cold in the air that has nothing to do with winter. The unease that wakes you at an hour you cannot name."
He let that settle.
"The darkness gathering on the horizon is not one that strength alone can answer. Not yet. You are formidable — I will not insult you by suggesting otherwise. But you are also young. Untested in the way that truly matters."
Roy frowned slightly. "So we lack experience, my Liege?"
"You lack certain experience," his father corrected. "There is a difference."
Then Hyatan descended the steps of the dais, and the quiet efficiency of the movement — all grace, no wasted motion — made the four teenagers straighten instinctively. She moved to Odyn first, and her expression changed as her gaze settled on the eyepatch over his left eye. It was only a flicker, that pained look — a mother's grief refracted through a queen's composure — but it was there.
She lifted a hand to the side of his face, her fingers resting gently against the edge of the patch.
"Odyn," she said softly — not as a queen, but as something far older and fiercer. "How old are you now?"
He blinked. "I... forgive me, your Majesty. I'm not certain I understand the purpose of—"
"You will," she said. "Answer me."
"Sixteen," he said. "As of last month."
She smiled and moved down the line.
"Kanna?"
"Seventeen, your Majesty."
"Roy? Baron?"
"Sixteen, my Liege."
Baron, who was kneeling at the end of the line with his usual earnest expression, straightened his back when her gaze found him. "I am the youngest here, your Grace. I turned fifteen at the winter solstice."
The queen paused before returning to Odyn, and when she spoke this time, it was barely above a whisper.
"Are you truly alright, my son?"
Something passed over Odyn's face — not quite a shadow, more like the memory of one. He met her eyes steadily.
"I am fine, Mother. The eye was my own fault. I didn't listen when you and Father tried to warn me, and I paid the price for it." A beat. "That is not a burden I intend to place on either of you."
The queen held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded — once, deliberately — as though filing something away.
When she returned to her throne, her composure was seamless.
"The four of you are to travel to Vale," she said, her voice carrying again. "There is an academy there — Beacon — where the next generation of Remnant's defenders are trained. You will enroll as students."
Berethon interlaced his fingers. "The combat philosophy they teach there differs significantly from Arkynorean tradition. That is intentional. Versatility is the quality that separates capable warriors from exceptional ones."
"It will also place you in situations that cannot be trained for," Hyatan added. "Missions. Encounters. The kinds of experiences that cannot be manufactured in a sparring yard."
Odyn considered for only a moment before speaking. "I believe I speak for all of us, my Lieges. We accept."
Berethon's expression didn't change, but something in his posture eased — the particular relief of a father who has asked something difficult of his children and received exactly the answer he had dared to hope for.
"Sybyrh will escort you to your departure point. You are not to fly to Beacon directly — it would draw attention." Berethon's gaze shifted to Sybyrh, who remained kneeling. "As for you, Captain, we have a separate matter to discuss."
Hyatan then addressed the four teenagers once more.
"Go and prepare. And remember — to the people of Vale, the Arkynoreans are little more than legend. The generation you will walk among has no memory of us. This is your opportunity to reintroduce what we are to a world that has forgotten."
She paused.
"Do not make them regret remembering."
The four teens pressed their fists to their chests in the traditional Arkynorean salute, bowed, and filed out of the hall. As their footsteps faded down the corridor, Hyatan's eyes remained on the doorway for a moment longer than necessary.
Then, with the quiet efficiency that defined her, she turned her attention to Sybyrh.
What followed was a conversation that Sybyrh would not soon forget.
The King summoned a projection of shimmering energy between his palms — not unlike a scroll display, but older, powered by something other than technology. The image that formed in the air before them was of a man seated at a desk in a distant office, as though he had been expecting exactly this call. He was elderly but sharp-featured, with an air of melancholy that clung to him like a second cloak. A dark jacket, green scarf, matching glasses. A cane rested against the corner of his desk. A coffee mug steamed quietly to one side, which he set down as the projection solidified.
He leaned forward, folding both hands over the head of his cane, and his eyes — tired, ancient, and still very much alert — met theirs across the distance.
"Your Majesties." His voice was measured, unhurried. "To what do I owe this honor?"
"Ozpin," Hyatan said, "you needn't be so formal with us. We've been friends far too long for that."
The old headmaster of Beacon Academy smiled, and something in it was genuine. "Old habits. Forgive me."
Berethon leaned forward. "We are sending Odyn, Roy, Kanna, and Baron to your academy. As students."
Ozpin's expression shifted — just slightly. An eyebrow rose. His posture adjusted by perhaps two degrees. It was the body language of a man who had become very good at not showing surprise but had not quite mastered erasing it entirely.
"The princes and members of the Vanguard, at Beacon." He paused. "May I ask why?"
Berethon chuckled — a low sound, like distant thunder. "You remain as perceptive as ever, old friend."
"It is the darkness gathering on the horizon," Hyatan said. "We need them better prepared than we can make them here. Vale will provide that."
Ozpin was quiet for a moment. Then: "When you say darkness... do you mean her?"
The silence that fell between the three of them was heavy.
"If it were only Salem," Berethon said, "we would consider ourselves fortunate." He held the headmaster's gaze. "The threat we speak of is someone far older. Far worse."
Ozpin went very still.
"His name," Berethon said quietly, "is Thanatos."
The coffee mug on the desk was forgotten. The warmth in Ozpin's expression dimmed, replaced by something colder and more complicated — recognition, dread, and the particular devastation of hearing a name you had hoped never to hear again.
"That's... not possible," he said, though his tone suggested he knew it very well might be. "We sealed him away. All of us — your families, mine, Summer, Taiyang, the Branwens — it took everything we had."
"And yet," Hyatan said simply.
"We believe Salem's interference with the balance between life and death may have weakened the seal," Berethon added. "We cannot confirm it. But we cannot afford to assume otherwise."
Ozpin absorbed this slowly, the way one absorbs news that fundamentally changes the shape of the world. When he finally looked up, something had settled in his expression — not peace, but a kind of determined clarity.
"I understand," he said. "And I am grateful. More than I can say."
Hyatan allowed a brief pause. "There is one more reason we called." She nodded to Sybyrh. "This is Sybyrh Arkham. Vice Commander of the Elven Vanguard. We would like her to serve as a combat instructor at your academy."
Ozpin regarded the young captain with an appraiser's eye. She met his gaze without flinching — composed, precise, the way a blade is precise.
"She is young," the headmaster acknowledged. "But even across this projection, I can see she carries more combat knowledge than most of my faculty could claim. I would be glad to have her." A faint note of amusement entered his voice. "It seems we shall have both a martial arts instructor and a weapons master on staff this term."
That drew the room's attention.
"A martial arts instructor?" Hyatan's curiosity was evident. "Someone new?"
"He introduced himself as Tarro," Ozpin said. "I believe it's a Saiyan name."
Berethon's expression shifted into something unreadable. He and Hyatan exchanged a look that lasted no longer than a breath, but spoke entire sentences.
"Will that be a problem?" Ozpin asked carefully.
"No," Hyatan said, after a moment. "No, we don't foresee it being one."
"Then I will expect five Arkynoreans at Beacon." Ozpin reached for his cane, as though preparing to rise. "I will keep a close eye on them."
"We know you will." Berethon's tone was warm, if brief. "We will keep you informed."
The projection dissolved. The throne room returned to its ordinary quiet, lit by that single shaft of pale mountain light.
Sybyrh was already rising to her feet when the queen spoke.
"Can we entrust this to you, Sybyrh Arkham?"
The captain brought her fist to her chest and bowed — the deep, formal salute of the Vanguard, the kind given only when a soldier means every syllable of it.
"On my life, my Queen."
A short time later —
They gathered at the base of the mountain as the sun climbed past midmorning, the five of them standing in a loose cluster with travel packs on their shoulders and the peculiar quietness of people preparing for something they cannot quite see the end of.
Sybyrh moved to the front of the group and raised both arms, her hands flowing through a series of deliberate gestures — part movement, part language, part something older than either. The air around her fingertips shimmered with faint luminescence, and then a circle of glowing runes spread across the ground beneath them, its edges rotating slowly inward like the hands of some enormous clock.
One by one, the five of them stepped into its center.
"Remember," Sybyrh said, as the runes began to spin faster. "No flying to Beacon. Not directly. We do not need the attention."
Kanna nodded. "Understood."
Baron opened his mouth. "But why can't we just—"
A sharp sound — the specific crack of knuckles meeting skull — cut him off.
"Ow!"
Kanna lowered her hand without looking at him. "If you had listened, you would know why."
Baron pressed his palm to the tender spot on his head, eyes watering slightly. "That really hurt, Kanna..."
"It was meant to."
"Less bickering," Sybyrh said, with the tone of someone who has deployed exactly this phrase many times before and expects to deploy it many more. "The spell requires all five of us to hold concentration. Lord Baron, I suggest you find yours."
He straightened immediately. "Right. Yes. Sorry."
The runes flared white.
Then they were gone — launched upward through the gap in the mountain roof like a signal flare, trailing light against the pale winter sky before vanishing into the horizon.
The journey that followed was, by the standards of Arkynorean travel, uneventful. Which meant no one died, and Baron only nearly fell once.
They landed in a quiet field on the outskirts of Vale with enough time to adjust their clothing and observe that they were not alone. The field around them was already buzzing with activity — dozens of students, bags in hand, all converging toward the same destination with the barely-contained energy of young people on the edge of something they had been waiting for.
Sybyrh assessed the scene with characteristic economy, then turned to face her charges one final time.
"I will follow through separate channels," she said. "Behave yourselves. Study hard. Don't start conflicts." She paused, and her gaze moved briefly to Baron. "Or finish them in ways that draw crowds."
"That was one time," Baron said.
She gave him the particular look of someone declining to dignify that with a response.
"Farewell, my Lords. May the Udiya keep watch over you until we meet again."
Then she performed the same sequence of gestures as before — and she was gone, leaving nothing behind but a faint warmth in the air where she had stood.
Roy stared at the space she'd vacated. "...She could've at least waited to tell us which bullhead to board."
"We'll figure it out," Odyn said, turning to scan the crowd.
Kanna was already watching the other students with a cataloguing kind of attention — weighing, measuring, noting. She could not have explained this instinct, because it had never been taught to her. It was simply something the Vanguard-trained did.
Then she noticed Baron had gone quiet.
Not uncomfortable quiet. Not tired quiet. The particular quiet of someone carrying something they don't want to mention, standing in a crowd with a smile that doesn't quite reach their eyes.
"Baron." She kept her voice level. "What's wrong?"
He glanced at her, and then at the others, and the forced brightness of his expression flickered.
"It's... it's probably nothing."
"Baron."
He exhaled. It was the exhale of someone who had spent a while deciding whether to speak and had just decided they may as well. He explained it the way he always explained difficult things — with as few words as possible, each one careful, as though placed down rather than spoken.
His sister. Her name was Hailfire — Hail, he called her, because it was the name she had told him she preferred and he had never stopped using it. She was fifteen. She was here, somewhere, or she would be soon. Their father, Overfire, had almost certainly sent her — but not in the same way that the King and Queen had sent the others. Hailfire had not been given a choice. She had been placed, positioned, like a piece on a board, in service to their father's designs. She was not a willing participant. She was looking for a way out, and she had been looking for a long time.
"She's in trouble," Baron finished quietly. "And I think she's going to need help."
The silence that followed lasted only a moment.
Kanna reached over and rested her hand briefly on his shoulder. Her expression had shed its usual sharp edges.
"Then we help her," she said. Simple. Definitive.
Roy nodded. Odyn did the same.
Baron looked at them each in turn, and something in his face eased — the particular relief of a person who asks for help and receives it without conditions.
He nodded.
"Thank you."
They found the departure point easily enough — the presence of a bullhead lander and several hundred students being a fairly reliable indicator of the correct location. It was as they were joining the crowd that two figures caught Kanna's peripheral attention.
The first girl was small and vivid — black hair shot through with crimson highlights, silver eyes that moved the way curious eyes always move, cataloguing everything with unconscious eagerness. She wore a striking combination of black and red, the long crimson hooded cape draped over her shoulders like a battle standard that had decided, for today, to be decorative. She was sixteen at most, and she carried herself with the slightly hunched posture of someone trying very hard not to be noticed while simultaneously noticing everything.
The girl clinging to her arm was the opposite in almost every visible way. Tall where the first was slight. Gold where the other was dark. Her long blonde hair caught the morning light like something deliberate, and her eyes — lilac, bright, relentlessly amused — swept the crowd with open enjoyment. She was, unmistakably, the kind of person who would inevitably become everyone's problem and everyone's favorite at the same time.
It was the blue-haired boy who spoke first.
"Waiting for the bullhead?"
The shorter girl looked up from whatever distant thought had occupied her and found Odyn watching her with an expression of mild, genuine friendliness. She processed the pointed ears. The eyepatch. The very significant height difference. And then she processed his question, which was significantly less alarming than the rest of him.
"Y-yeah," she said. "Are you... new here?"
"You could say that," Odyn said.
She tilted her head. "Are all four of you going to Beacon?"
"We are," Roy confirmed.
The blonde's eyes had already moved to Roy with the particular attentiveness of someone who has spotted something that warrants a second look. She was not subtle about it.
Kanna stepped forward before the blonde could deploy whatever introduction was forming in her expression.
"Name's Kanna Andross," she said, extending a hand. "The one in blue with the eyepatch is my cousin Odyn. The redhead is my other cousin, Roy. And that's Baron Caldern — think of him as the group's mascot."
"I am not a mascot—"
"The blonde is Yang." The taller girl shook Kanna's hand with the grip of someone who has been told more than once she doesn't know her own strength. "Yang Xiao Long. And this is my sister, Ruby Rose."
Ruby offered a slightly flustered wave. The four elves returned it with warm smiles, and she relaxed by several visible degrees.
What followed was brief and companionable — the particular ease of strangers who have not yet had time to decide they don't like each other. Names exchanged, small observations offered, the first cautious threads of something that might eventually become familiarity.
Then the bullhead arrived, and the crowd began to move.
Aboard the transport, en route to Beacon —
The city fell away beneath them. Through the windows, Vale spread out in miniature before dissolving into hills and coastline, and then Beacon rose ahead of them — enormous and impossible, carved into a promontory above the sea, its towers catching the morning light with an almost architectural arrogance.
Ruby pressed her face to the glass and forgot, for approximately three seconds, that she was trying to be composed.
Yang watched her sister with fond exasperation before leaning across the aisle toward Odyn.
"Hey," she said, dropping her voice. "Think you could look after Rubes for a bit? I've got people I promised to meet up with and I don't want to leave her alone."
Odyn considered this for approximately half a second. "Of course."
"Thanks." She reached across the gap between their seats before he quite registered what she was doing, and patted his arm once. Then she leaned past him and whispered something to Roy that lasted approximately four words.
Roy's face went from composed to catastrophically unprepared in the time it takes to blink.
Yang sat back, perfectly satisfied, and smiled at no one in particular.
The bullhead touched down. Students poured from the loading bay in a rush of conversations and nerves. Yang disappeared into the crowd with the easy efficiency of someone who has done this before, and the four Dark Elves stood with Ruby Rose in the open air of Beacon's courtyard, surrounded by the organized chaos of first-day arrivals.
Roy continued to look mildly haunted.
Kanna glanced at him. "You alright?"
"I'll be fine," he said, with the tone of a man who needs a moment. "She is significantly more direct than she appears."
"I noticed," Kanna said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "It hasn't been twelve hours."
"Eight," Baron corrected helpfully. "Roughly eight."
Kanna looked at Baron. Then at Roy. Then at the sky, as though asking it for patience.
Ruby, meanwhile, had been distracted by a weaponry display she had spotted across the courtyard — the elegant, terrifying, beautiful kind of distraction that completely overrides the part of the brain responsible for watching where one's feet are going.
The collision, when it happened, was entirely unpreventable.
The girl she stumbled into had white hair, flawless posture, and the particular expression of someone who has never, in all their life, been bumped into.
Ruby scrambled to her feet, arms waving in frantic apology. "Oh gosh, I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going, I—"
The white-haired girl looked down at the cases that had scattered around her feet, then back up at Ruby, with the deliberate, measuring calm of a storm deciding whether to commit.
She committed.
"Do you have any idea—"
Odyn was across the courtyard before Kanna could raise her hand to stop him.
Her hand went up anyway, fingers spread. He checked, halfway there, and she met his eyes with a look that said wait.
He waited. His jaw worked.
Kanna watched. Assessed. The white-haired girl's anger was sharp but not malicious — it was the anger of someone who has been startled and reacted before thinking, not the cruelty of someone who enjoys this. Ruby's apology was genuine and profuse and being entirely wasted on ears that weren't ready to hear it yet.
Then Ruby sneezed.
The dust on the scattered cases ignited.
The cloud of multi-colored powder that erupted into the air managed, in one remarkable moment, to end the diplomatic window Kanna had been patiently holding open.
Odyn crossed the remaining distance in four long strides.
"Back off," he said. Not loudly. Not with heat. But with the particular flatness that indicates a person who has a great deal of heat and has chosen, for now, not to use it.
The white-haired girl turned on him with the full force of her outrage. "You—! Do you know what she did?!"
"I saw," he said. "She apologized. Accept it, and we can all move on."
"She ruined my—"
"Accept it," Odyn repeated, and something in his tone — or perhaps in the amber eye he leveled at her over the eyepatch — made the girl pause for the first time since the whole incident began. He held her gaze steadily. "I know who you are, Weiss Schnee. Heir to the Schnee Dust Company."
Her chin came up at that. "Then you know that I expect—"
"I know your family's company has an excellent reputation in some circles," said a new voice from slightly behind Odyn, "and considerably less excellent practices in others."
The girl who had spoken stepped forward with the measured, unhurried confidence of someone who has been watching the whole exchange and simply decided, in their own time, that now was the moment to comment.
She was dark-haired, amber-eyed, dressed in understated black, with a ribbon tied neatly into her hair and a book tucked under one arm as though she had been planning to return to it as soon as this was over.
Weiss turned on her.
"I don't have to stand here and listen to this!"
She gathered her cases with pointed efficiency and swept away in a direction that strongly implied she had extremely important business elsewhere.
Ruby reached after her, then let her hand fall. The girl was already gone.
The dark-haired newcomer turned to leave as well, and Kanna took exactly one step to intercept her path.
"Wait," she said. "Just a moment."
The girl paused and regarded her with quiet, measuring eyes.
"Thank you," Kanna said. "For what you did back there. It might've gone considerably worse without you."
The girl seemed to consider this, then gave a small, almost involuntary nod. "It seemed relevant to mention."
"Still." Kanna extended a hand. "I'm Kanna Andross. This is my cousin Odyn, my other cousin Roy, and our friend Baron."
"Blake Belladonna," the girl said. She shook Kanna's hand briefly, and something in her posture — that careful held-back quality, that practiced near-invisibility — reminded Kanna of someone who had learned, somewhere along the way, that making herself small was safer than being seen.
She filed that away.
"Maybe we'll see you around?" Kanna offered.
Blake allowed a small, genuine smile — the kind that escapes before you decide to give it. "Maybe," she said.
And then she was gone, melting into the crowd with the ease of someone who has made a study of exactly that.
Ruby sat down in the middle of the courtyard.
Just sat down, right there, on the stone, tilted her face up at the sky, and exhaled.
"Welcome to Beacon," she said, to no one.
Odyn looked at her for a moment. Then he sat down beside her.
Roy sat down.
Baron sat down.
Kanna — after a brief internal negotiation with her dignity — sat down.
Ruby blinked. Looked around at the four of them, arranged in a loose circle around her like very composed, somewhat baffled satellites.
"Why are you—" A laugh escaped her before she could stop it — a slightly unhinged sound, half disbelief, half genuine delight. "You guys are so weird."
"It builds morale," Odyn said solemnly.
That made her laugh again, properly this time, and Odyn found himself smiling in spite of everything.
Later —
The initial chaos had settled into something more manageable by the time the six of them — Jaune Arc having been absorbed into the group somewhere between the loading bay and their second wrong turn — found their way to the auditorium.
Yang had saved a seat for Ruby near the middle. The Elves dispersed to one side, Jaune nearby, and the hall filled with the rustling, murmuring energy of a room full of people trying to look like they weren't nervous.
Before she left, Ruby had lingered for a moment — and then done something that surprised everyone, including herself. She had turned back to Odyn, wrapped both arms around him in a brief, fierce hug, and then, as her face went the approximate color of her cape, pressed a quick kiss to his cheek and bolted.
"U-uhh," Odyn said.
Roy turned to look at him with the expression of a younger brother who has just witnessed something worth saving.
Kanna's mouth curved slowly into a smile she absolutely did not try to suppress.
"Lady killer," she said.
"Kanna—"
"Completely unprovoked. She's known you for hours."
"I didn't do anything—"
"Clearly you did something."
"I—" Odyn gave up, turned away, and appeared to find the far wall extremely interesting.
Baron and Roy exchanged a look that communicated, without words, that they would be revisiting this at the least convenient possible moment.
Jaune, who had missed most of this, raised a hand. "Did I... miss something?"
"No," said Odyn.
"Yes," said Kanna.
The lights in the auditorium dimmed slightly as the headmaster took the stage.
Ozpin — older in person than in the projection, and somehow both less and more than Berethon's description had suggested — walked to the podium with the unhurried gait of a man who has spoken to rooms full of young people many times and has long since stopped performing for them. He held his cane lightly, more habit than necessity, and his eyes moved across the assembled students with an attention that was quiet and completely comprehensive.
When he spoke, he did not raise his voice.
"I'll keep this brief. You have traveled here today in search of knowledge, to hone your craft and acquire new skills. When you have finished, you plan to dedicate your lives to the protection of the people."
A pause. His gaze swept the room.
"But I look among you, and all I see is wasted energy in need of purpose and direction. You assume knowledge will free you of this. But your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far."
His eyes settled somewhere in the middle distance — not on any face in particular, but on something none of the students could quite locate.
"It is up to you to take the first step."
That evening, in the ballroom —
The great hall had been converted into something resembling an enormous, slightly improvised dormitory — sleeping bags laid out in loose clusters across the polished floor, belongings stacked at careful intervals, the mingled noise of a few hundred teenagers settling in for their first night.
Ruby sat cross-legged on top of her sleeping bag in her pajamas, a small journal open in her lap, pen moving in quick, looping strokes. Yang crashed down beside her with the enthusiastic disregard for personal space that only older sisters can fully commit to.
"Big ol' slumber party," Yang announced.
"Dad would hate it," Ruby said, without looking up.
Yang surveyed the room with undisguised satisfaction, then leaned over to inspect what her sister was writing. "What's that?"
"Letter. To the gang back at Signal." Ruby turned slightly to guard the page. "I promised them I'd write."
"That's adorable."
Ruby threw a pillow at her.
Yang caught it and tucked it behind her head. "Anyway. You've got more friends here than you're giving yourself credit for, Rubes. That Blake girl seemed decent. And Jaune's harmless." A deliberate pause. "And then there's him, of course—"
"Yang."
"—your new best friend who you definitely don't have a crush on—"
"Yang."
"—Odyn, I mean, that very tall, very — Ow."
Ruby had retrieved a second pillow.
"We're not talking about that," Ruby said, with great firmness.
"We are absolutely talking about that," Yang said, cheerfully reclaiming the pillow. "You kissed him on the cheek, Ruby."
"I know what I did."
"On the cheek."
"I am aware."
"Within eight hours of meeting him."
"I know, Yang, I was there—" Ruby buried her face in her remaining pillow with a muffled noise of pure suffering.
Yang patted her on the back.
"Look," she said, more gently. "There's nothing wrong with it. He seemed like a good person. Stood up for you with Weiss. Complimented your weapon." A beat. "You have good taste."
Ruby lifted her face from the pillow long enough to give her sister a deeply suspicious look. "You flirted with Roy before we'd been off the bullhead for five minutes."
"That's different."
"How."
"I'm not the one writing letters in my pajamas and blushing about it."
Ruby pointed at her. "You don't know what I'm blushing about."
"I know exactly what you're blushing about." Yang looked at her with the particular satisfaction of an older sister holding a winning hand. "You like him."
"He's my friend."
"Both can be true."
A candle flickered nearby. Both sisters turned to find Blake Belladonna seated a short distance away, back against the wall, book open across her knees, apparently doing an excellent job of pretending she wasn't listening.
Ruby sat up straighter.
"That girl," she murmured.
Yang tilted her head. "You know her?"
"She helped, this morning. With Weiss. But she left before I could say anything."
Yang looked at her sister. Then at Blake. Then back.
She stood up, took Ruby's arm, and pulled.
"Yang—"
"Hi!" Yang said, arriving at Blake's spot with Ruby in tow. "We might know each other, sort of. I'm Yang. This is Ruby."
Blake lowered her book slightly.
"Aren't you the one who exploded?"
Ruby smiled with enormous effort. "You can just call me Ruby. Actually."
Blake regarded them both for a long moment with the expression of someone who has successfully avoided conversations like this for years and is now being made to wonder where exactly her strategy went wrong.
"Blake," she said finally. "Blake Belladonna."
"I like your bow," Yang offered.
"...Thank you."
"What are you reading?"
Blake considered not answering. "A man with two souls," she said, because it was shorter than refusing. "Each fighting for control of his body."
"Cheerful," Yang said.
Ruby stepped forward slightly. "I love books. Yang used to read to me when I was little. Stories of heroes and monsters." She paused, and something in her expression settled into something genuine and unguarded. "It's one of the reasons I want to be a Huntress."
Blake seemed to consider this from a distance, the way one examines something unexpected. "Hoping to live happily ever after?"
"Hoping everyone does," Ruby said.
That, apparently, was not the answer Blake had been expecting.
She did not quite smile. But she did not look away, either.
The moment held — fragile, new, the particular kind of quiet that settles over the beginning of something before it knows what it is.
Then, from across the room, a voice rose several decibels above the established sleeping-hall norm. Weiss Schnee, in silk pajamas, had arrived to address what she considered an unacceptable volume situation.
Yang turned.
Weiss turned.
They pointed at each other simultaneously.
"Oh, not you again—"
"Likewise—"
"I came over here because—"
"Well, I didn't ask—"
The argument had escalated from zero to considerable in approximately six seconds. Ruby watched it with the dazed expression of someone watching two storms discover each other.
Then the temperature of the room changed.
It was subtle — a particular quality of attention, the feeling of something being carefully aimed in your direction. Yang and Weiss both felt it at roughly the same moment, because both of them stopped talking at roughly the same moment, and both of them turned around at roughly the same moment.
Kanna stood behind them.
She was smiling.
It was the kind of smile that has done the math already.
"Ladies," she said pleasantly. "Would either of you like to tell me why you're the loudest people in a room where several hundred students are trying to sleep?"
Yang laughed. A small, involuntary, nervous laugh. "Kanna! Ha. What a — what a coincidence."
Weiss attempted to summon her usual composure. It almost worked. "We were merely discussing—"
"I didn't give either of you permission to speak yet." Kanna's smile did not move. Her eyebrow twitched once. "Now. I think the three of us should have a little conversation about volume and consideration and what happens when I don't get enough sleep."
Ruby and Blake exchanged a look.
"This will be interesting," Blake said quietly.
"Yeah," Ruby agreed, with feeling. "Yeah, it will."
The camera, had there been one, would have been wise to cut away.
End of Prologue
To be continued in Chapter 1: Initiation and Teams
In the age before Vale's towers were built, before the academies drew lines on the map and called them borders of safety, there were others who walked Remnant's roads. They have not gone. They have only been forgotten. And forgotten things, when remembered, have a way of changing everything.
____________________________________________________________________________
Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Thought I'd try to end the chapter on more of a lighthearted and depending on who's reading this... a funnier note.
Don't worry, it will be explained a little later how saiyans come into play in this story. As you can see I'm going to have it be kind of a running thing with Yang teasing Ruby about her "crush" on Odyn, who is clueless any of that is going on currently. He may find out in a few chapters, we'll see. And no, Odyn and Ruby won't just all of a sudden become an instant couple like that. I'm going to develop their relationship. So it'll be more of a close friendship at first.
Ruby will probably develop romantic feelings for odyn first and it may be early on, but she won't act on those feelings until she knows Odyn feels the same way. It'll be more of a best friend/younger sister type relationship for now.
As for other pairings, I wanted to see what you guys think. Feel free to vote in from these polls for each oc.
Baron:
Velvet S.
Pyrrha N. (?)
Emerald S. (Reformed/Good)
Yang Xiao Long
Roy:
Yang X.L.
Velvet S.
Coco
Emerald S. (Good)
Cinder F. (Good)
Kanna:
Daikon K. (Saiyan oc)
Yatsuhashi
Fox
Neptune
Jaune ?
Hailfire:
Daikon
Mercury (Good)
Oscar (vol. 5)
Sage
Other (write in)
Daikon:
Kanna A.
Velvet S.
Hailfire C.
Yang X.L.
Emerald S. (Good)
Coco
Cinder F. (Reformed/Good)
Other (write in/ suggestion)
Anywho this is mix of DBXV, RWBY, and my own original story. So some things may seem.... out of place. That will be due to a good portion of it is original content. I'll try to stick as close to the RWBY cannon as I can ... at least for events. Since there are saiyans and those like saiyans involved, i have to account for that so not everything will follow the cannon story directly.
That's all i got, see ya in the next chapter!
To be continued in Chapter 1: Initiation and Teams.