Hey guys, Novaflame6 here again! Hopefully you're enjoying the stories so far. Back at you with a brand new update! Before we dive into the chapter, I'm throwing a few quick polls your way:
Reader Polls
Who should Baron end up with?
Flare K. (OC)
Velvet S.
Blake B.
Yang X.L.
Which of the girl characters should Roy end up with?
Yang X.L.
Weiss S.
Blake B.
Velvet S.
Pyrrha N.
Flare K. (OC)
How should the relationship between Odyn and Ruby progress?
Steadily over the first two volumes.
Start out as a friendship until Volume 2, Chapter 7 at the dance.
Keep it strictly as a friendship until late in the second volume.
Feel free to vote for any of the options and drop your thoughts on why your pick works best!
That's all for the intro notes. Let's get right back into the story, shall we?
Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Super, Dragon Ball Xenoverse, or RWBY-those fantastic worlds and characters belong to Akira Toriyama, Toei Animation, Rooster Teeth, and Monty Oum respectively. I only own my original characters, alongside Tarro and Daikon, who are the property of ComparedDread12, kindly loaned to me with permission for this crossover project!

Chapter Two: Initiation and Teams, Part II
There are certain experiences that bond people together with an efficiency that years of ordinary acquaintance simply cannot match.
Being pinned to the side of a giant, hostile Nevermore at high altitude, for instance.
Wind was not supposed to be this loud.
That was the primary thought occupying a small, indignant corner of Weiss Schnee's mind as she clung to the colossal Grimm's talon with both hands and whatever reserves of composure she had left. The creature banked hard to the left, shifting Weiss's grip and subjecting her to a wall of wind designed specifically to be maximally unpleasant.
"Ruby!" she screamed toward the blurry figure clinging to the opposite talon. "I told you this was a terrible idea!"
"We're fine!" Ruby yelled back with the cheerful optimism of someone who defined fine much more loosely than the rest of humanity. "Stop worrying about it!"
Weiss looked down at the plunging drop, up at the sky, over at the giant bird she was currently riding, and back at Ruby.
"I am so far past worrying," she shouted, though the wind snatched half the words away.
Ruby's expression lit up. "In a good way?"
"In a bad way! In a comprehensively, categorically, irredeemably bad way! This is-" Weiss cut herself off, realizing cataloguing her grievances would take longer than their current altitude permitted. "Why don't we just jump?!"
"Oh, that's easy! Just-"
Weiss blinked at the sudden absence where Ruby had been hanging a second ago.
She stared at the talon. She stared at the sky. She stared back at the talon.
A muscle near her left eye began to twitch violently.
"Ruby," Weiss shrieked into the gale. Then, carrying all the heat of an abandoned heiress stranded at terminal velocity: "You insufferable little-"
The wind swallowed the rest.
The Temple Ruins
The clearing at the center of the forest was, technically speaking, a ruin.
It carried the architectural vocabulary of a place that once mattered-broad stone flags smoothed by centuries of foot traffic, stone columns erected before time and Grimm claimed the foundation, and the fractured remnants of a central dais. Now, it served as the natural rally point for the first-years converging from all directions, and it was quickly filling up.
Yang and Blake had arrived first, just as Yang anticipated. Blake moved with the quiet stealth of someone accustomed to slipping through shadows, while Yang strode with the casual confidence of someone who had decided to win and simply made it happen. They sat on adjacent stones at the clearing's edge when Yang noticed the others trickling in.
Odyn was already there.
He stood near the central dais accompanied by an unfamiliar girl with pointed ears, silver-gray armor, auburn hair, and the watchful posture of a seasoned sentinel. She had already placed two silver chess pieces on the stone between them-not searching, not browsing. She had known exactly what she wanted.
Yang filed that away mentally: New girl. Knows what she's doing. Has Odyn's full attention.
Blake returned from the temple interior a moment later, holding a pair of black chess pieces. She turned them over once before sitting beside Yang.
"Should we head back?" Blake asked.
Yang shook her head. "Not yet. Give the others time to get here." She glanced toward Odyn's corner of the clearing. "Besides, I want to see who else shows up."
Blake followed her gaze, then looked back down at her pieces, feigning an interest she didn't quite possess.
They didn't have to wait long.
Roy emerged from the western tree line accompanied by a fox-eared girl-chestnut hair, steel-gray gauntlets folded at her wrists, and the dazed expression of someone who had just survived something intensely stressful. Roy walked straight to the temple, calmly collected two silver pieces without a shred of hesitation, and walked over to stand beside Odyn.
Then Khanna stepped out of the southern entry alongside the spiky-haired boy with the red eyes and brown tail, collecting a pair of gray pieces. Finally, Baron arrived-an expected sight, though the two tagalong teenagers flanking him were not. A boy and a girl in matching dark gear, both sporting tails and the wary expressions of people whose worldview had just been violently upended.
Baron casually retrieved three gray pieces from the temple.
Yang stared. Three.
She glanced at Blake.
Blake's expression clearly communicated: I noticed. I have no comment.
Deciding some mysteries were better solved by watching than interrogating, Yang turned her attention back to the skies.
Crash Landing
The sound of an arrival from above rarely registered as a direct noise; it hit as an instinct-a sudden shift in air pressure, a shadow moving too fast-followed half a second later by a voice.
"Heads up!"
Every head in the clearing snapped upward.
Ruby Rose was in a sheer, unadulterated free fall. Why she was falling-and where the giant Nevermore had gone-was entirely unclear, though her terminal velocity suggested a violent launch rather than a planned descent.
Odyn moved instantly.
Covering the distance from the dais in three massive strides, he intercepted Ruby barely two meters above the stone. He absorbed the impact across his braced forearms, pulling her into a tight, controlled carry designed to neutralize her momentum. She crashed against his chest, and for a brief, breathless second, the entire clearing went dead silent.
Then, Jaune Arc dropped out of the canopy.
Jaune's trajectory happened to intersect with Odyn just as the rescue concluded. The resulting collision was neither graceful nor dignified; it was simply what happened when two bodies occupied the same space at the wrong time. The impact sent all three of them careening sideways into a thick tree trunk near Yang and Blake with a resounding thud.
When the dust cleared, Odyn was pinned against the bark, Ruby was clutched in his arms staring up with stars swimming in her vision, and Jaune was wedged into a high branch directly above them by pure, unadulterated accident.
"...What was that?" Ruby mumbled to the sky.
The spinning stars faded. She blinked-and found herself staring straight into the amber depths of Odyn's right eye at point-blank range. He was trying desperately to maintain a composed expression, and failing.
A furnace-like blush rushed across her face.
"A-are you okay?" he asked softly.
"Y-yeah." She suddenly found a patch of dirt to the left incredibly fascinating. "T-thank you."
"Of course." A beat passed. "I figured your sister would have strong opinions if I let you face-plant into the stone."
"Oh," Ruby said, which wasn't even close to what she meant to say. "R-right. That." She cleared her throat frantically. "Um. Odyn?"
"Yes?"
"C-could you maybe-" She gestured awkwardly at the fact that she was still bridal-style in his arms.
Odyn blinked, processing the physics of the situation before his brain caught up. A deep, thorough flush climbed up the bridge of his nose.
"O-oh-right, sorry-"
He carefully set her on her feet. They stood roughly eighteen inches apart, both vigorously avoiding eye contact.
From above them came a muffled cry.
"...Hey. Ruby. Odyn."
Both snapped their heads upward. Jaune was dangling from a branch by his hoodie, feet kicking uselessly in midair, wearing the look of a man who knew he held compromising blackmail material.
"Hi," Jaune called down. "Could someone get me down?"
Odyn recovered his composure with impressive speed. "On it. My fault-hang on."
"I am hanging on," Jaune groaned. "That's kind of the issue."
Off to the side, watching the utter disaster unfold, Blake delivered the only commentary that truly mattered.
The Deathstalker Approaches
The forest answered before anyone could speak.
It roared with the sound of something massive and fast tearing through the southern trees-specifically, Pyrrha Nikos sprinting at breakneck speed, closely pursued by a Deathstalker the size of a small building. The terrifying beast uprooted ancient trees with every stride as if they were mere toothpicks. Pyrrha kept ahead of it with the focused, economic pace of a warrior who had faced worse and possessed the steady nerves to handle it.
"Jaune!" Pyrrha called out, spotting him just as Odyn cleanly sliced him down from his branch-trapped suspension.
"Pyrrha!" Jaune hit the ground standing-an achievement exceeding all reasonable expectations.
Ruby had already whirled around, Crescent Rose gripped in her hands, her weight shifting forward. Odyn was beside her before she could take a step, his own blade intercepting the Deathstalker's massive forward claw. Bracing both hands against the flat of the weapon, he absorbed the staggering impact; the sheer force carved twin trenches into the stone floor of the clearing, yet he brought the creature's momentum to a dead stop.
The maneuver bought Pyrrha the split second she needed to clear the monster's reach and fall back into the group.
High above, the Nevermore shrieked.
Yang had been watching her sister. She had watched Ruby rise from the catch, still flushed, holding Crescent Rose with both hands as she instantly pivoted toward the monstrous threat. Not to show off; not out of ignorance of fear-simply because charging headlong into danger was fundamentally, uniquely what Ruby Rose did.
The anger flared instantly within Yang-the hot, instantaneous fury that always accompanied her protective instincts.
Her eyes flashed crimson.
"Can everyone please," she snapped, the controlled intensity threatening to shatter, "chill out for approximately two seconds before something else-"
She cut herself off.
The entire clearing fell dead silent.
Yang let out a breath. The red faded from her eyes. She scanned the courtyard: Ren pulling Nora back from an impulsive charge; Baron and his companions locking down a loose defensive perimeter; Odyn and Hailfire securing opposite flanks; Blake already slipping into motion with Gambol Shroud drawn.
The two seconds ticked away.
"Yang."
Ruby's voice was quiet, heavily laced with warning. Yang followed her sister's outstretched finger upward.
Dropping fast from the cliff's edge above was a single human figure.
Specifically: Weiss Schnee, who had either been shaken loose, slipped, or voluntarily bailed from the Nevermore's talon-the exact physics were hard to parse-and was now descending toward the center of the clearing at a velocity that was going to turn extremely hazardous in roughly six seconds.
Jaune looked up. His expression hardened into the legendary, terrifying resolve of a young man recognizing his cinematic moment.
"Jaune, don't-" Odyn warned.
Jaune leaped.
The physics were, in hindsight, entirely predictable. He successfully intercepted Weiss-that part worked-and then immediately remembered that catching someone mid-fall only works if you have an exit strategy for the second half of gravity. He did not.
They hung suspended for a fraction of a second.
"...Oh boy," Jaune muttered.
He faceplanted directly into the stone flooring, while Weiss miraculously executed a clean, controlled roll beside him-a feat born of pure luck, Aura, or both. She stared down at him with the frosty serenity of a young woman refusing to grant him the satisfaction of a reaction.
"My hero," she deadpanned.
Jaune emitted a sound that defied categorization.
Meanwhile, Daikon had moved without a sound. He was the reason Weiss had landed with a controlled roll rather than a cracked spine; he had caught her momentum mid-air with casual efficiency, set her gently on her feet, and was already spinning back toward the approaching Deathstalker before she even registered the assist.
The Deathstalker, shaking off Odyn's initial block, lunged forward once more. The Nevermore banked overhead for a punishing second pass. The twin terrors converged on a clearing full of teenagers who had just endured an exhausting, high-stakes marathon through the Emerald Forest and were running on fumes.
Yang stood up.
Roy had already drawn his sword. He turned to face her with that same calm, unshakeable clarity she had noticed on the airship-a deep-seated steadiness that existed entirely apart from adrenaline.
"Never give in," he said. It wasn't a cheap platitude; it carried the heavy, resonant weight of a vow spoken and tested before. He stepped closer, grasping the collar of her jacket-not rough, not aggressive, just impossibly steady-and locked eyes with her.
"I am not letting you die here," he promised. "Not today. Not while I'm standing."
Yang stared at him.
A slow, confident smirk broke across her features, and the fire returned to her eyes-not the blind rage of before, but the bright, gold-and-violet spark of someone taking a chaotic world and making it deeply, personally their problem.
"Now you're talking," she said.
Ruby, who had been holding back at the edge of the clearing waiting for the right opening, heard the clash and moved. She took three swift running steps, brought Crescent Rose up in a high sweep, and struck the Deathstalker's forward leg with a spinning arc that chipped its heavy shell.
The Deathstalker strongly disagreed with this development.
Ruby disagreed right back.
The creature's massive claw whipped around in a horizontal backhand, catching the haft of her scythe and sending her sprawling. She rolled instinctively with the momentum, popped back up on one knee, and reached for Crescent Rose's frame to chamber a fresh round. But her cape snagged on a shower of razor-sharp feather-projectiles dropped by the Nevermore during its low pass, pinning the red fabric flat against the stone.
She yanked backward. The cape held fast.
Above her, the Deathstalker's colossal stinger reared back to strike.
Yang's voice cut through the chaos like a siren: "Ruby!"
Two things happened at the exact same moment-the only possible sequence that could have averted disaster.
A flash of white swept in from the left. Weiss, Myrtenaster already drawn, spun her glyph revolver as the blade flared with piercing cold. She drove the weapon down, intercepting the descending path of the stinger and discharging a max-output freeze-glyph. The lethal barb stopped dead. Crystalline fingers of ice raced up the shell, locking the limb firmly in place.
Simultaneously, a blur of dark motion struck from the right. Odyn slid beneath the frozen stinger, bracing his blade with both hands against its underside. Dropping his weight deep into his hips, he absorbed the staggering shock; the flagstones beneath his boots fractured in a webbed pattern as he redirected the immense kinetic energy harmlessly into the earth.
The stinger held.
Ruby opened her eyes.
She stared at the thick frost.
She stared at the steel cross-guard.
She looked up at Weiss, who was breathing heavily, wearing the signature expression of someone simultaneously exasperated and intensely relieved.
Then she looked at Odyn, who watched her from across his blade with an expression she had never seen on him before-steady, heavy with lingering adrenaline, carrying an unmistakable edge of you nearly gave me a heart attack, please don't ever do that again.
"Weiss," Ruby whispered. "And... Odyn."
"Yes," Weiss breathed.
"Don't," Odyn warned softly.
Weiss snapped Myrtenaster free and stepped back, letting the ice maintain its grip on the stinger while she worked to regain her composure. When she spoke next, the sharp frost in her tone had melted away.
"I may, on occasion, be somewhat difficult to work with," she admitted, an admission that clearly cost her pride dearly. "But if we are going to do this-and it is abundantly clear that we are-then we do it together. Which means you stop throwing yourself at hazards without a backup plan, and I will endeavor to be..." She paused, hunting for the right word. "...less exacting."
Ruby blinked, stunned.
"You're not-"
"I am not," Weiss cut in preemptively. "Now please stop being suicidally reckless before I reconsider."
Ruby turned her gaze to Odyn.
He held her look for a long beat. Slowly lowering his guard, he reached out and tapped her gently on the head with a closed fist.
"There's a time to take the point," he said quietly, "and a time to let your team have your back. Knowing the difference is what this is all about, Ruby. It isn't weakness." He held her eyes. "Promise me you'll think before you leap next time."
Ruby looked up at him, recognizing the truth in words she already knew deep down, but needing to hear them from him.
"...I promise," she murmured.
He extended his fist.
She bumped it back.
"Good."
Yang sprinted over, wrapping Ruby in a bear hug that violently squeezed half the oxygen out of her lungs, wearing a wide, knowing smirk even as she pulled away. She glanced between her sister and Odyn with the amused, unhurried expression of someone cataloging a memory for future teasing.
"So glad you're safe," Yang beamed innocently, then added in a stage whisper right beside Ruby's ear: Little love-struck there, Rubes?
"Yang," Ruby hissed, her face instantly turning crimson.
"I'll leave you two to it."
"Yang!" Ruby repeated, shoving her arm.
Yang walked off willingly, entirely satisfied with her handiwork.
Hailfire was already tracking the Nevermore's movements.
The beast was colossal, and it was still an active, breathing threat. While the Deathstalker was temporarily pinned, the giant bird had cleared the treeline and was banking wide for another strafing run. The open courtyard between the ruined columns offered the only viable staging ground for the final push.
She made a snap decision.
"Everyone, move!"
It wasn't a suggestion; it carried the unyielding authority of an order meant to be obeyed instantly.
The group fragmented across the ruins-Odyn and Hailfire anchoring the defense against the immobilized Deathstalker, while Ruby and her team sprinted toward the broken stone bridge at the cliff's base. The Nevermore screeched, zeroing in on the motion and raking the ancient flagstones with a volley of razor-tipped feathers before swinging upward to cycle for another dive.
What followed across the fractured terrain of the ruined bridge and the courtyard below was the kind of chaotic, desperate combat that looks like pure bedlam in the moment, but is ultimately built on absolute trust.
On the lower ground:
Baron hit the Deathstalker's midsection with a kick that had been building pressure for half a second and released every ounce of stored impact. The massive beast actually left the ground-an indignity no creature of that scale should ever suffer-and both of Baron's blades were already charged, flashing as they moved before the monster even hit the dirt.
Simultaneously, Roy warped to the apex of the creature's recoil. He came down on its dorsal shell with the flat of his blade in a downward swing that hit with the destructive force of a structural collapse. The cracking sound was deafening.
"Khanna!"
She was already moving. Her hammer descended with the definitive sound of an ending, driving the Deathstalker's shattered shell directly into the stone flooring in a deep crater that would scar the ruins for weeks. The dark, inky mist of its dissolution began to rise slowly into the morning air.
Weiss stared blankly at the newly formed crater.
"He punched it," she whispered, echoing her own sentiment from earlier. "He literally punched a Deathstalker."
Nora, standing right beside her, nodded with the solemn, unbothered acceptance of someone logging a completely normal data point. "The tall one did it too," she offered brightly. "Twice."
Hailfire caught Weiss's eye, offering a small, unhurried shrug that carried the weight of seasoned experience. "You get used to it."
Weiss looked as though she had severe, impassioned opinions regarding this logic, but she was entirely out of time to voice them.
On the bridge:
The Nevermore's stubborn resilience was, by this point, a matter of established record. Blake had zipped across its spine twice with Gambol Shroud, leaving little more than surface scratches for her trouble. Yang had clocked it squarely in the beak and only managed to mildly irritate it. The beast circled above the bridge with the patient, arrogant confidence of a predator that knew it was nearly untouchable.
Ruby was watching it intently.
Her face wore that familiar look she got when Crescent Rose's internal mechanism was misbehaving in a way she had to figure out-not panicked, precisely, but utterly locked in, gathering variables and calculating angles. The rest of her team had seen that expression twice before and were rapidly learning what it meant.
It meant she had a wild, brilliant idea.
"Cover me!" she called out to Weiss.
What followed was the kind of tactical maneuver that, on paper, possessed at least seven distinct points of structural failure, but in execution, simply worked with terrifying efficiency.
Blake whipped Gambol Shroud out, anchoring the ribbon tight between two ancient stone pillars. Yang lunged forward, grabbing the ribbon and hauling it taut. Ruby stepped into the center of the improvised slingshot, Crescent Rose locked in its heavy scythe configuration, and bent the line backward until the tension was at its absolute limit.
She met Weiss's glyph at the exact release point. The black sigil flared brilliant crimson, multiplying the stored kinetic force and redirecting it upward. Ruby shot toward the cliff face in a blinding spiral of red rose petals and muzzle flash. Crescent Rose's massive scythe blade bit into the frozen Nevermore's neck with the combined momentum of a girl who had been building toward this exact moment all morning.
The head severed clean.
The massive body plummeted.
The silence that followed lasted for roughly two heartbeats, though it felt infinitely longer.
Down on the lower ground, Odyn watched the rose petals drift slowly downward through the cool morning air. The tight, controlled vigilance he maintained as a baseline melted away, replaced by the quiet, settling relief of a threat neutralized.
"Not bad, Ruby," he muttered to himself, a soft smile touching his lips. "Not bad at all."
All around him, the others began offering their own commentary, releasing the gathered tension at slightly different intervals:
Hailfire: "I knew they'd pull it off."
Khanna: "Good work, all four."
Daikon, speaking with the reluctant integrity of a warrior who rarely handed out free praise: "Acceptable."
Flare: "That was... they were incredible-"
Roy, quieter than the rest, watching the final petals settle into the grass: "Yeah."
Baron: "Great team."
Yang, standing back and surveying the chaotic aftermath with her hands on her hips: "Well. That was quite a morning."
Ruby landed lightly beside the massive, severed head, slightly out of breath, her red cape torn and trailing behind her as rose petals continued to dance in the breeze. She looked out across the ruined courtyard at the faces looking back up at her-at her sister, at Blake, at the eclectic group of friends who had rallied around her without anyone ever explicitly planning it.
She smiled.
The Afternoon After
The auditorium of Beacon Academy possessed a vastly different atmosphere in the afternoon than it had in the morning. The pre-initiation morning hours were always tight and anticipatory, charged with the nervous energy of people performing composure. The afternoon-after, however, was quieter. Looser. It carried the distinct, warm comfort of a room full of teenagers who had stared down real danger together, survived, and come out the other side intact.
The stage was brilliantly lit, the tiered audience buzzing softly. Professor Ozpin stood behind the podium, nursing his familiar coffee mug with the unhurried serenity of a man who had presided over this ceremony countless times and found it never lost its meaning.
Team CRDL went first-Cardin Winchester standing arrogantly at the front, his teammates arrayed behind him with that specific bravado of individuals convinced that volume and aggression were synonymous with strength. The audience offered a polite, muted reception.
Team JNPR stepped up next.
Ozpin read the names with deliberate weight, understanding that names spoken aloud before witnesses acquire a new, permanent gravity: Jaune Arc, Lie Ren, Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie.
Led by Jaune Arc.
Jaune reacted to the announcement the way one reacts to discovering a major, slightly unbelievable historical event has just occurred in their backyard. "...Me?"
Pyrrha promptly bumped his shoulder, sending him stumbling sideways off balance-a gesture the audience appreciated considerably more than Jaune did.
Ozpin waited for the rolling applause to settle before continuing.
"Khanna Albanar. Daikon Koizumi. Baron Caldern. Note Nightcrow. Beat Ravenwing."
A mild murmur rippled through the auditorium. Five members. An unconventional number, which Ozpin acknowledged with the mild, unbothered expression of someone who had calculated the anomaly in advance.
"The five of you retrieved the gray rook pieces. You will be known as Team KDBNB." He paused briefly. "Led by Khanna Albanar."
Khanna accepted the title with her customary equilibrium: no overt shock, just that slight, satisfied upward twitch at the corner of her mouth.
Daikon fell into step beside her as they turned to exit the stage. "Should've known you'd end up running point," he muttered.
"I know," she replied smoothly.
He looked as though he couldn't even bring himself to disagree.
"Odyn Albanar. Hailfire Caldern. Roy Albanar. Flare Kitsune."
The four of them stood bathed in the stage lights, and Ozpin looked them over with an intensity that transcended mere procedure. Hailfire stood tall beside Odyn with the disciplined posture of someone standing exactly where they had fought to be. Roy wore the calm, controlled stillness of a man guarding a secret. Flare stood slightly to Roy's right, locked in an internal debate over whether to look at him, ultimately resolving the crisis by staring fixedly ahead.
"The four of you retrieved the silver bishop pieces." A beat. "You will be known as Team OHRF." Another brief pause, signaling a choice carefully weighed and finalized. "Led by Odyn Albanar."
The applause from the crowd was warm, genuine, and loud. Odyn offered a single, measured bow-an inclination born of Arkynorean custom rather than standard Vale military academy protocol, though he didn't care about the difference.
As they stepped down, Ozpin turned his gaze toward the final four.
"Blake Belladonna. Ruby Rose. Weiss Schnee. Yang Xiao Long."
Ruby heard her name drift across the hall like a sound at the edge of sleep-registering, present, but feeling entirely surreal. She walked mechanically to her place in the line, standing stiffly while Ozpin looked down at them with an expression suggesting he had expected this exact configuration all along.
"The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces. You will be known as Team RWBY." He paused, letting the weight settle. "Led by Ruby Rose."
The shock hit her cleanly, washing over her like a cool wave-she felt it rush through her chest and down to her fingertips. A second later, Yang's arms wrapped tightly around her from behind, whispering something unintelligible over her shoulder. Blinking rapidly against sudden, hot moisture in her eyes, Ruby looked out across the sea of applauding strangers.
And then, she found him.
Odyn was standing near the stage's wing, watching quietly. When their eyes met, a genuine, unhurried smile broke across his face-the kind that meant he was truly, deeply happy for her. He raised one hand, fingers loose in a soft, casual wave.
Ruby smiled back. The nervous shaking in her hands instantly stopped.
To her right, Weiss looked like she was undergoing a complete internal system reboot. She studied Ruby for a long moment, her expression visibly shifting away from its original frosty disapproval.
She didn't say a word. But she didn't look away with disdain either, which, for Weiss Schnee after barely twenty-four hours of acquaintance, amounted to a monumental shift.
Up at the podium, Ozpin watched the four newly formed teams settle into their places. He lifted his mug, steam curling lazily into the afternoon light.
"It looks like things are shaping up to be a very interesting year," he murmured.
He clearly meant it on multiple levels.
The Quiet After the Storm
Later that evening, in the lull between the official ceremony and the demands of settling into their dorms, the corridor outside the auditorium hosted small clusters of students lingering to process the afternoon's events.
Odyn found Ruby standing near the south-facing arched window.
She was staring out at the breathtaking view-the sprawling academic promontory, the vast, indifferent green blanket of the Emerald Forest below, and the thin, silver crescent moon just beginning to etch itself into the darkening evening sky. She was still wearing her battered initiation gear, her red cape still visibly torn at the hem where the Nevermore's quills had pinned it-a detail she hadn't even noticed yet.
"Team leader," he greeted softly.
She jumped slightly, turned, and offered an immediate, self-conscious smile. "Don't say it like that."
"Why not? It's what you are." He stepped up to the stone sill beside her, gazing out at the horizon. "You earned every bit of it."
"I almost got killed twice," Ruby countered defensively.
"And on both occasions, you diagnosed the problem, formulated a plan, and executed it with the tools at hand." He glanced at her sideways. "The almost-getting-killed part is what the armor is for."
She let out a short, genuine laugh. "That is terrible advice."
"I stand by it completely."
A comfortable silence settled between them-the kind of unforced quiet that only develops when two people have shared high-stakes chaos and realized they don't need empty chatter to fill the space. The crescent moon climbed higher as the twilight deepened.
"Odyn?"
"Mm?"
"When you said you'd be at the ruins..." She glanced up at him, then back out the window. "Did you know who your partner was going to be? Before we dropped into the forest?"
He was quiet for a beat. "I had a hope."
Ruby looked up at him inquiringly.
"She needed to be found," he said simply. "It felt important that whoever reached her understood what she was carrying and why it mattered. And the forest tends to-" He paused, searching for the right phrasing. "-arrange things, sometimes. If you're paying close enough attention."
Ruby considered this thoughtfully. "Is she okay? Hailfire, I mean."
"She will be." There was absolute, unshakeable certainty in his voice. "She has people around her now who won't let her carry it alone. That changes everything."
Ruby nodded slowly. Then, a quiet curiosity returned to her tone: "You say that like you know for sure."
Odyn didn't answer immediately. The silence stretched, heavy with the unhurried patience of someone who trusted his own path.
"I do," he said quietly. "I know."
He pushed off from the window sill.
"Get some rest, Ruby. You have a team to look after now. Tomorrow, you'll have to figure out what to do with them." A faint, fond smile touched his lips. "I'll be very curious to see what you come up with."
"Same to you, Team Leader," she replied, managing to deliver the title without her usual embarrassed stutter-which she mentally marked down as a personal victory.
He raised his fist.
She bumped it back.
With a nod, they parted ways down the corridor, heading toward their respective dorms, while the crescent moon continued its patient climb above Beacon Academy-indifferent to the trials below, yet watching over all of it.
The Shadow Between Places
Elsewhere, in the lightless void between realms-
The room possessed no windows. It had no discernible light source; rather, the gloom was simply less absolute in certain corners, the way shadows linger in spaces that have remained sequestered long enough to establish their own internal laws.
A cloaked figure approached from the distant end and dropped to one knee.
"Your Excellency," the voice murmured, steeped in the careful deference of one who had learned survival through caution. "I bring news."
The presence seated at the head of the chamber did not stir. It dominated the space the way a massive storm occupied the horizon-not through active motion, but because every surrounding element naturally oriented itself around its weight.
"Speak."
"They have made their move. The servants of the Deity of Light." A measured pause. "The Arkynorean Dark Elves have been dispatched to Vale."
Silence followed-a thick, pressurized quiet that was far from empty.
"The Arkynoreans." The voice that replied was meticulously controlled, hinting at a ferocious, unmeasured nature buried just beneath the surface. "Then the old king has finally decided the hour has arrived." A low, humorless chuckle vibrated through the dark. "He is not wrong. The hour is upon us."
The towering figure at the head of the room shifted, and the surrounding shadows rippled in response.
"Alucard."
A second presence detached itself from the gloom at the room's edge-not stepping from light into shadow, for there was no light, but sharpening into distinction where it had previously blended into the dark. It knelt beside the first.
"My lord."
"There are two individuals I require located in Vale. Report back to me the exact moment you confirm their presence." The master's tone didn't rise, needing no artificial authority. "The first: a child bearing silver eyes. The primal power of the Udiya lives in that gaze, and I want it found and contained before it can be leveraged against us."
Alucard inclined his head. "And the second?"
"The child of prophecy." A razor-thin pause. "He will carry a golden flame sigil-here-" The figure briefly raised its hand, a faint, ethereal luminescence tracing the back of the knuckles before fading away, "-etched on the back of one hand or both. His hair is dark blue, falling to his shoulders. He will be embedded within the Arkynorean delegation, though he may not yet comprehend why he is the linchpin."
"I will find them, my lord."
"You will report," the voice corrected with chilling precision. "Nothing more. No premature action. No direct contact. Report to me and wait."
Alucard understood the critical distinction. He bowed low and dissolved back into the shadows.
The presence that remained-the mastermind who occupied the room like a gathering tempest, serving the God of the Underworld since before Vale was even a name-turned toward the rear of the chamber. There, the darkness was deepest, merging indistinguishably with ancient stone and heavy shadow.
A dragon. Black-horned, immemorial, sealed deep within rock, shadow, and millennia of waiting.
The dark lord knelt before it.
"We are almost ready, my Lord." In this private address, the voice shed its icy facade, revealing an undercurrent of fanaticism that had endured an eternity and was finally tasting the dawn of its fruition. "The keys are nearly gathered. The children of the light are being assembled-unaware that they are gathering themselves for our harvest."
The ancient stone did not move.
Yet the shadows coiled tighter around it, the ambient temperature of the chamber dropped by a single degree, and the figure-Astaroth of the Dark Kings-accepted the response for what it was.
Acknowledgment.
Far beyond, hidden in the pitch black, ten thousand unseen things waited for the door to finally open.
End of Chapter Two
To be continued in Chapter Three: The Badge and the Burden
The moon over Beacon that night was a sharp crescent-a broken circle, not yet whole. Above the towering spires, above the dense green forests, and above the children who had just been handed the names and burdens they would carry forward, it rose patient and impersonal, offering neither warning nor promise. What it chose to illuminate, it bathed in equal silver light: the young girl in the red hood, still smiling in her sleep; the dark-eyed boy watching the stars from a high window; and the deep, waiting shadows far to the south, where something ancient had just opened one eye.
Author's Note
Hey guys! Hopefully that chapter wasn't too... well, bad. I'm sort of piecing this epic together as I go along! Yes, there are demons introduced in this narrative-that's some original lore I'm cooking up. For the most part, we'll be sticking as close to standard RWBY canon as possible, though naturally, things are bound to diverge a bit since we have several new teams integrated right into the main cast now.
As for romantic pairings, I do really like the idea of Khanna with Mercury; I think that dynamic could be genuinely fascinating to explore down the line.
That aside, I wanted to throw another question out to you guys: Should Weiss end up with Daikon, or someone entirely different this time around? If you're curious about all the potential chemistry brewing, here are the possible pairing options on the table:
Potential Pairings
Daikon / Weiss (Deiss)
Baron / Flare (Blare)
Baron / Velvet (Belvet)
Roy / Yang (Rang... lol. Okay, maybe not the best ship name.)
Roy / Flare (Rlare)
Roy / Weiss (Reiss)
Roy / Blake (Rake)
Baron / Pyrrha (Paron)
Baron / Yang (Bang... okay, definitely need to workshop some of these portmanteaus!)
Roy / Velvet (Relvet)
Baron / Blake (Blaron)
Baron / Weiss (Bweiss)
Daikon / Yang (Daiang)
Anyway, that's all for now. Stay safe out there, and I'll catch you guys in the next update!