Hey guys, RoseSaiyan2 here again! I'm back with part two of the update. The initiation sequence will closely mirror the overall flow of Flame and Crimson, but with a few key differences and adjustments tailored around Weiss being the primary female lead this time around.
When mapping out how the wider circle of friends will be organized into official squads for the coming arcs, I've put together a revised breakdown of the teams. Of course, these arrangements are still flexible depending on reader feedback, but here is what I currently have in mind:
Odyn's Team
Odyn Albanar (Team Leader)
Lazuli Kitsune (Android 21 — Flare's adopted sister)
Roy Albanar (Odyn's brother)
Hailfire Caldern
Khanna's Team
Khanna Branwen
Daikon Koizumi
Note Nightcrow
Baron Caldern
Sarai's Team
Sarai Albanar
Zero Nakazaki (Arcosian OC)
Flare Kitsune
Beat Bronzewing
Any remaining characters not listed here will be introduced later down the line, either making their entrance during the Vytal Festival Tournament or stepping in as recurring supporting figures as the narrative unfolds.
Opening theme:

Opening Theme
Song: Alive by ReoNa (Arknights: Prelude to Dawn Anime Opening)
Visuals
Introduction: The track surges forward with its striking, melancholic drive as the screen comes alive, substituting the original Arknights cast with the ensemble characters of this crossover narrative.
The Conflict: The visuals flash between the deep-seated, systemic political divide splitting the dark elves from humanity, juxtaposing quiet, tense standoffs against heavily armed Atlas patrols. The tempo accelerates as elite Huntsmen and Huntresses plunge into chaotic combat, slicing through massive waves of Grimm.
The Chorus: As the chorus hits its powerful stride, the choreography shifts to highlight the broader friction of the world. Odyn and his fellow dark elves are shown locked in desperate, uphill struggles against human forces, mirrored by Faunus and Saiyan characters fighting fiercely for their place and survival.
The Climax: The music begins to soften into a resonant, echoing cadence. The camera glides smoothly to a windswept overlook, capturing Odyn and Weiss standing side-by-side as they gaze out over the horizon. Odyn turns his head to look quietly at Weiss. Catching his gaze, Weiss offers a soft, genuine smile.
Title Card: The screen cuts abruptly to black, leaving the dramatic, glowing crimson and icy blue title card to flash across the darkness:
FLAME AND ICE
Chapter 5 — First Steps; Part II: Into the Emerald Forest
The Emerald Forest did not wait for anyone to be ready.
It received its students the way it received everything else that entered it—without ceremony, without accommodation, possessing the complete, ancient indifference of a place that had existed for ages and fully intended to continue doing so regardless of what dropped into it from above. The canopy overhead was dense enough at its center to filter the morning light into a diffuse, emerald-toned haze, and the undergrowth pushed back with stubborn resistance against anyone trying to carve a path through it. The acoustic landscape was layered—distant birdsong and wind stirring the high branches, the heavy rustle of something large moving in the middle distance, and that particular, watchful silence beneath all of it that seasoned fighters instantly learned to read as occupied.
The forest had distinct opinions about uninvited intruders. And it was entirely prepared to voice them.
◈ — Odyn
He descended through the upper canopy in a controlled, fluid drop—catching branches on the way down with the precise timing of someone who had executed tactical insertions in environments considerably less forgiving than a Beacon initiation. Using each rapid contact point to bleed off momentum before the final descent, he hit the forest floor cleanly in a low crouch, absorbing the impact through his legs.
He straightened up instantly. Listened.
The forest had already marked his arrival. He could feel it in the subtle shift of the atmosphere—the sudden, telling absence of small animal sounds, indicating that something much larger was paying attention.
Fine, he thought. Come, then.
He closed his eyes, extending his awareness outward in the traditional manner taught by the elders of the Albanar clan. It wasn't about reaching out, exactly, but rather opening inward, making the surrounding environment's hidden currents more accessible. The forest's energies moved in distinct patterns of undisturbed wildness and sudden, artificial disturbances. And woven right through those patterns lay a familiar signature.
He knew that signature instantly. He had recognized it since childhood, back when it had been smaller, brighter, and far less carefully contained. He oriented toward it without opening his eyes, verified the vector, and let his gaze snap back open.
Roy.
He began to walk.
His thoughts settled into the easy, rhythmic momentum of someone whose mind operates best in motion. The various students he had met over the last two days organized themselves neatly in his memory, falling into place like pieces of a newly mapped landscape.
Ruby Rose possessed a rare, unvarnished genuineness—belonging to those who hadn't yet learned to project a curated mask different from their actual self. Her intense fixation on her oversized scythe was unusual by any standard he had encountered, but it leaned heavily toward deeply devoted rather than unhinged. He figured Roy would prove to be a stabilizing anchor for her, providing that steady, grounded contrast to her high-speed energy—each balancing out what the other lacked.
Blake Belladonna was tightly guarded, carrying the wariness of someone who viewed emotional openness as a structural liability. He recognized the posture instantly, because he had worn it himself for years, and because he had watched it take root in people driven to self-preservation. Whatever heavy baggage she was hauling around, it was significant. And he certainly wasn't one to judge someone for carrying heavy things in silence.
Yang Xiao Long radiated a bold confidence born of real substance rather than performative bravado. In her general register if not specifics, she reminded him of Khanna—boasting an effortless directness, the kind of magnetic presence that naturally commanded a room without seeming to try. With the attentive eye of an older sibling, he had caught a fleeting micro-expression in Yang's eyes back at the docks—one she had masked almost instantly. He had filed that observation away for later.
And then, Weiss.
He paused in his stride for a brief second. Not physically—his boots continued forward at a steady pace—but internally.
She was essentially the same. That was the one development he hadn't fully braced for: not that she had changed, which nine years of painful separation might reasonably produce, but that her core remained entirely intact. Still unnecessarily defensive around strangers. Still leaning on sharp retorts where a bit of warmth might have served her better. Yet, underneath all of the rigid Atlas armor, she was still undeniably her. He had caught glimpses of it whenever the pristine heiress persona cracked—in the way her breath hitched when she heard him say princess, and in the quiet, vulnerable way she had let him hold her while recounting the long, isolating years under Jacques Schnee.
He needed to talk to her again. Properly. Not about anything heavy or urgent—just a return to the effortless banter of their childhood, back when speaking to each other had felt as natural as breathing.
He was deep in these thoughts when the first Beowolf broke through the dense treeline.
He had sensed its approach seconds before impact—the forest's ambient silence had been steadily thickening toward an ambush, and in the Emerald Forest, an ambush invariably meant Grimm. He drifted sideways without breaking his stride, letting the Beowolf's vicious lunge tear through empty air, and smoothly used the beast's forward momentum to hurl it violently into a thick oak trunk.
The rest of the pack revealed themselves immediately, pouring out from the shadows of the underbrush.
Without a moment's hesitation, Odyn drew ArdynFangh.
---
He was not, by nature, a showy fighter. Khanna was showy—she possessed a natural flair for combat theatrics that was entirely genuine, wonderfully dramatic, and utterly effective, because it suited her personality down to the ground. Lylah was devastating in the quiet, terrifying way of things that did not need to announce their own deadliness. Odyn's personal fighting style, however, resembled water far more than fire: it sought out the path of least resistance, flowed around obstacles rather than smashing blindly through them, and always seemed to arrive precisely where it was needed a fraction of a second before the danger actually manifested.
The pack of Beowolves bearing down on him were large, fast, and uncomfortably coordinated for mindless creatures of Grimm. They attacked in the overlapping rhythm of predators that had hunted together before—two lunging straight down the center, one sweeping in from each flank, while the remainder hung back to exploit whatever gaps the initial wave opened up.
Odyn let the first two commit entirely to their momentum, sliding effortlessly between them at the absolute last microsecond. Instead of connecting with him, the two beasts collided heavily with one another. As he spun smoothly on his heel, the Grimm on his left caught the edge of his blade along its flank—a shallow, perfectly measured cut—while the one on his right took a brutal, bone-crushing elbow directly to the snout, backed by the full rotational weight of his body. He felt the cartilage shatter beneath the impact.
That particular wolf was neutralized instantly by a secondary blade of condensed light—a proprietary Albanar technique his clan called sunglass (for reasons long lost to linguistic drift), which channeled concentrated, hyper-dense beams of Aura straight through the sword's crystal core. It burned through organic tissue with the clinical efficiency of a tool that simply had no time or patience for theatrics.
The pack adapted. Grimm always adapted, which was the primary reason they remained genuinely dangerous; they learned and recalibrated mid-combat much faster than most people gave them credit for.
Odyn adapted right along with them.
The pair of Ursa Majors that lumbered out next presented an entirely different problem. Massive, heavily armored across the spine and shoulders, and wielding the kind of raw, kinetic tonnage that made it clear they couldn't simply be nudged out of the way. Against them, his approach shifted—he became more direct, more grounded, willingly accepting their brutal terms rather than trying to out-maneuver them, because an off-balance Ursa Major was still an unpredictable wrecking ball of lethal mass.
With a flick of his wrist, he launched ArdynFangh spinning skyward in a controlled, vertical arc. As the blade climbed, its hilt gem flashed through a rapid cycle of color configurations. Ninety seconds later, when it plummeted back down toward his outstretched hand, the heavy sword had mechanically transformed into a sleek, balanced spear form. He caught it, drove it through the final remaining beast with ruthless precision, and then effortlessly cycled it back into its sword form before clicking it securely into its scythe-harness sheath.
"Decent warmup," he muttered to the settling, leaf-strewn forest.
Re-orienting his senses toward Roy's familiar signature in the distance, he resumed his steady pace through the underbrush.
He found his younger brother waiting in a wide sunlit clearing where three massive trees had very recently been introduced to the devastating, explosive business end of lightning-infused Aura. The remaining Grimm were already dissolving into thick black smoke—Roy putting the finishing touches on the last straggler with the clean, mechanical efficiency of someone who had been swinging a blade since before he was tall enough to carry one, and who had long since stopped finding combat particularly remarkable.
Roy caught the sound of Odyn's approaching footsteps a fraction of a second before Odyn spoke, already pivoting around.
"I could've handled—"
"The two Ursa Majors you missed behind you," Odyn interrupted smoothly, gesturing to the clearing's perimeter. "Not to mention the flock of Nevermore chicks."
Roy paused, processing the information. He knew, with the stark, unblinking honesty of someone who respected hard data, that he genuinely hadn't noticed the second wave of threats. He also knew, with equal certainty, that failing to notice things like that was precisely how Huntsmen ended up on a casualty list.
He let out a slow, heavy breath. "Right. Thanks."
"We're partners," Odyn said simply.
In that single, understated phrase lived half a dozen unvoiced sentiments, and Roy understood every single one of them.
Without another word, they bumped fists—their private, rhythmic knuckle-knock—and broke into a jog.
No spoken directions were necessary. They both knew exactly where the path led.
---
◈ — Hailfire
The clearing she stepped into sat atop a gentle, rolling rise, overlooking a shallow basin in the forest floor below. It possessed the natural staging and acoustics of an intimate amphitheater viewed from the very back row.
What was currently happening on that stage, however, was highly unusual.
A massive Ursa—an alpha specimen, heavily armored with thick, bone-like plating across its joints and spine—was charging headlong toward a single figure standing dead center in the clearing. The beast moved with the terrifying, unyielding momentum of a creature convinced this fight was already over.
The figure standing in its path didn't flinch. He didn't even drop into a fighting stance. He simply stood completely upright, one finger lazily extended forward, waiting until the exact microsecond the Ursa's snarling maw collided with his airspace.
Then, he fired.
A brilliant beam of deep, vivid red energy lanced out. It was shockingly narrow. It passed clean through the center of the Ursa's skull with the clinical precision of a scalpel, driven by someone who had clearly executed that exact maneuver a thousand times before.
The massive beast dropped like a stone. The remaining stragglers of the pack dissolved into heavy black smoke in the standard sequence—largest to smallest, heaviest to lightest—the dissolution rippling through the remnants like an afterthought.
The stranger stood alone in the center of the clearing as the morning light filtered down through the dense canopy. In the pale rays, his skin possessed a faint, unmistakable tone of pale blue.
Hailfire stepped out from the dense treeline, resting her mace casually over her shoulder.
"I was actually considering stepping in to help you," she said, her voice dry. "Though it didn't look like you needed the assist."
He turned slowly to face her. His eyes were dark, sharp, and carried the acute wariness of someone assessing a variable they weren't entirely sure of. Behind him, a long, heavily armored tail shifted with an organic fluidity, moving with an eerie independence that suggested it possessed its own distinct train of thought.
"My partner, then, I presume?" he asked.
"That's the logical assumption." She strode forward, extending her hand across the intervening space without hesitation. "Hailfire Caldern. My friends call me Hail."
He looked down at her outstretched hand, then up into her eyes. A beat passed before he finally took it. His grip was firm and exact—not testing her strength, merely assured.
"Zero Kazamaki." He paused, his gaze lingering on her features with a silent question forming behind them. "How did you recognize what I am?"
Hailfire offered a faint, knowing smirk. "The Albanar clan maintains historical archives stretching back over four hundred years. Arcosians pop up in them from time to time. Not often, but often enough." She seamlessly pivoted, falling into step beside him as they oriented their course toward the center of the forest. "We're a people who prefer to know the history of our neighbors. Especially the ones the rest of the world has a habit of giving strange names to."
"The dark elves," Zero noted evenly.
"Referred to officially in Atlesian records as The Forsaken," she replied, a faint edge of disdain clipping her tone. "We have several colorful opinions about that terminology."
"I imagine you do." He fell silent for a moment, his natural stride effortlessly matching her own. "You mentioned your friends call you Hail."
"They do."
"Then, Hail," he murmured, tasting the syllable as if weighing its physical heft. "What is the dark elf word for 'reluctant partner in an unpredictable survival scenario neither of us fully understands'?"
She considered this for a second, her eyes scanning the treeline. "The closest accurate translation would be vethkayn. It loosely means one who walks the same path without having been commanded to do so."
He absorbed the word, rolling it over in his mind. "I've certainly been called worse."
"Considerably worse, I'd imagine."
"Yes." The corner of his mouth twitched upward into something that wasn't quite a smile, but lived right next door to one. "Lead on, Vethkayn."
And she did.
◈ — Sarai
The Grimm burst from the dense underbrush in the classic, predictable manner of predators operating under the comforting illusion of total surprise—a strategy that never, under any conceivable circumstance, worked against someone raised in the Albanar encampment and personally drilled by Lylah since the age of eight.
Sarai had her blade cleared from its scathing sheath and wreathed in roaring, orange-gold fire before the lead Beowolf had even finished its mid-air lunge.
She called the technique Searing Gale—a personal name she had given it herself, which Lylah had accepted with characteristic, silent approval and Odyn had simply nodded at as accurate. The flames hugging the razor-sharp edge of her sword were hyper-focused; they burned strictly what she willed them to burn, a masterclass in Aura-channeling discipline that ensured the fire never flared out of her control. She cut through the center of the pack with the pristine footwork she had spent three solid weeks drilling—the exact footwork Khanna had critiqued for being slightly rushed, which she had successfully corrected, and which was now executing its geometry with flawless lethality.
She was in the middle of executing the final strike on the last remaining beast when a foot materialized out of nowhere.
It arrived from her left side at blistering speed, halting abruptly a mere centimeter from her temple—a chilling demonstration of absolute, terrifying control by someone who possessed both the physical capability to decapitate her and the restraint to stop on purpose.
Sarai froze her blade at that exact microsecond, the roaring fire instantly snuffing out against the cold steel.
They locked eyes.
The girl who had nearly kicked her head clean off her shoulders possessed striking crimson hair, matching crimson eyes, and the thoroughly startled expression of someone who had expected to find an empty clearing and instead found an equally lethal obstacle. The faded scars jagged across her lower face and forearms were the unmistakable badges of someone who had seen actual combat—not simulated academy practice—and the long, rust-red tail thrashing behind her moved with an expressive twitch that betrayed the fact that her emotional state and her tail were currently having a minor disagreement.
"I wasn't exactly expecting company," the crimson-haired girl admitted, offering the most accurate summary of the situation possible.
"Mutual," Sarai replied flatly.
Slowly, deliberately, both of them lowered their weapons. The quiet of the Emerald Forest rushed back in to fill the space between them.
"Scarlett Reinhardt." The girl extended a hand forward, direct, unhesitating, and entirely unpretentious. "And for the record, sorry about the near-concussion."
"Sarai Albanar." She took the hand, meeting the grip with equal firmness. "Just Sarai, to people I actually know." She paused, her eyes flickering down to Scarlett's ears and tail. "Those distinct features didn't just happen by accident, did they?"
"Fairly hard to disguise," Scarlett said, completely devoid of the condescending edge people usually carried when they substituted the word different with distinctive as a polite formality. She spoke with the detached practicality of someone simply stating an obvious observation. "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're the other half of my mandatory survival squad."
"That appears to be the operational arrangement."
Scarlett turned her gaze toward the deeper, shadowed interior of the forest, then looked back at Sarai with the decisive look of a person who had finished calculating her options. "Then let's get moving." A brief beat passed. "Though, on the walk over, you'll have to fill me in on the dark elves. All I've ever seen are old Mistralian text records, and they were—"
"Fundamentally wrong about almost everything," Sarai finished for her.
"I was actually going to say woefully incomplete."
"That too."
And together, they walked into the trees.
---
◈ — Baron
He descended through the upper canopy in a sequence of controlled, braking drops—branch to branch, methodical and quiet—and arrived at the forest floor with the muted efficiency of someone who had practiced this enough times to have formed strict opinions on the ideal technique.
He checked his gear purely by feel, a tactile habit deeply ingrained by now. Then, he stood completely still and listened.
The forest spoke in its own distinct vernacular—not in words, but in the subtle shifting patterns of presence and avoidance. He had learned to read these binary states during childhood survival drills in the woods surrounding the Albanar encampment. What the Emerald Forest was communicating right now was simple: somewhere nearby, something was locked in combat, and whatever was doing the fighting was decisively winning.
He slipped silently toward a high vantage point—a slight ridge behind a thick-trunked oak with enough low-hanging canopy to keep him effectively obscured—and peered down into the clearing below.
Two girls.
They were fighting back-to-back. Their combat coordination carried the unmistakable hallmark of long, grueling practice—the tiny, reflexive adjustments they made for each other's blind spots and attack arcs; the way the shorter girl's footwork naturally flowed into space the taller girl was already vacating; the unspoken, real-time negotiation of target distribution. They had fought side-by-side long enough to operate as a single, fluid unit rather than two separate combatants.
What they hadn't factored into their geometry, however, was a flanking pack of Beowolf remnants stealthily circling around to blindside the shorter girl.
Baron moved.
The tactical calculations took less than half a second: angle of descent, estimated arrival time of the Grimm, optimal interception vectors, and the operational pros and cons of deploying twin blades in a cramped, multi-target environment. He launched himself off the ridge, clearing the canopy's edge before the Beowolves had even committed to their final charge, placing himself squarely between the beasts and the girl before they had processed his arrival.
His twin blades blurred into motion. They were fast, though in their fully converted configuration, they were admittedly a bit noisier than strictly necessary—an engineering compromise he had willingly accepted, and was now mildly second-guessing.
The Beowolves evaporated into black mist. The girl—possessing soft fox ears, rich chestnut hair, and striking ice-blue eyes visible just above the forearms she had raised defensively in reflex—slowly lowered her guard to find him crouching right in front of her.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
She stared at him, her breath hitching slightly. A rapid sequence crossed her features: sheer surprise, the swift relief that follows a sudden scare, and finally, a sudden, warm flush of color rising up her cheeks. To combat her embarrassment, she hastily averted her eyes, choosing to study a patch of dirt beside his boot rather than meet his gaze directly.
"Y-yes," she stammered softly. "I think so. Thank you."
From right behind him came a voice dripping with the deliberate amusement of someone who had been waiting for the exact right moment to deploy a tactical observation: "Sure that's all you wanted to say to him, Flare?"
The fox Faunus girl—Flare, apparently—snapped her head up to glare at her companion with a look that promised a very long, very thorough sibling interrogation later that evening.
"Nee-san," she hissed, packing enough older-sibling-please-not-in-front-of-guests desperation into the single word to require zero translation.
The other girl—taller, sporting rich reddish-brown hair, a sophisticated scientific-looking coat over an otherwise battle-ready outfit, and gold jewelry that caught the filtered sunlight—shifted her full attention to Baron. She wore the appraising look of someone who found him intensely interesting for reasons she had no immediate plans to disclose.
"Lazuli Kitsune," she said smoothly, extending a hand. "And that's my sister, Flare. Thanks for the remarkably timely save."
Baron took her hand, meeting her firm grip. "Baron Caldern."
With the heightened sensitivity common to anyone who grew up surrounded by sisters and had therefore developed an instinctive radar for subtle social dynamics, he immediately realized that both girls were currently studying him from two entirely different angles—and that he was going to need to navigate this conversation with extreme care.
He defaulted to practicality.
"The three of us are partners, then," he stated.
Lazuli considered this, her expression tightening into the look of someone running mental calculations. "By the strict administrative rules of the exercise, it would appear so. Tell me, do you happen to know the actual way to the ruins?"
"Roughly." He stood up, dusting off his gloves. "I can get us there in a reasonable timeframe without getting anyone killed, which I believe safely qualifies as a 'yes' under current field conditions."
Flare had scrambled to her feet as well, maintaining a dedicated, heroic effort to look at literally anything in the forest other than Baron. "A-alright," she squeaked out, her face still slightly pink. "Then... please, lead the way."
Lazuli offered a knowing, enigmatic smile, kept her mouth shut, and fell into step behind him—while privately hoarding at least three different jokes she was saving for a much later date.
◈ — Khanna
She had been standing completely motionless for four whole minutes. It was longer than stillness was naturally comfortable for her, but Lylah had drilled it into her head early on: patience in the field wasn't the absence of motion; it was the active presence of absolute readiness.
The Grimm arrived when they arrived. She was already exploding into motion the moment the lead beast committed to its lunge.
She fought with her characteristic, heavy-hitting rhythm—holding her massive warhammer in one hand while leaving the other completely free for the brutal, close-quarters striking arts Lylah had spent thirty years refining and passing down in full. Her hammer was named Cathraylboldr—which, translated roughly from the First Tongue, meant the stroke that ends the argument—and it consistently lived up to the billing. She used its immense physical mass the way heavy weapons were intended to be used: generating unstoppable momentum, delivering crushing force that required zero supplementary effort.
The martial arts she unleashed with her free hand were technically supplementary, but practically devastating. A Beowolf busy trying to parry the devastating arc of the hammer wasn't paying attention to the elbow crashing into its jaw. A beast trying to recover from the jaw-strike was suddenly crushed by the hammer's lethal follow-through.
She had cleared out a massive swath of the clearing before she finally had a spare second to notice that something at the far perimeter of the pack wasn't dissolving from her own attacks.
Interesting.
She caught Cathraylboldr mid-air on its return arc—having tossed it skyward moments prior purely as a gravity-timed reset, an old combat habit—and surveyed the smoking aftermath of the clearing. The edge of the dispersed Grimm cloud carried the distinct signature of a weapon style she didn't immediately recognize.
Then, the weapon's owner stepped out from behind a cluster of ferns.
Vibrant red hair, the specific russet hue of wolf ears, and a matching tail flicking behind her with sharp intelligence. She carried a sleek naginata with the casual ease of an extra limb rather than a clumsy tool. She walked across the clearing toward Khanna with the direct, unbothered confidence of someone who had assessed the chaos, deemed it entirely manageable, and adjusted her stride accordingly.
"I actually came over to see if you needed a hand," the girl said evenly, "though it appears you had it completely under control."
"Your timing was impeccable," Khanna replied, which was the truth. "I always appreciate assistance I didn't strictly need, but might have used. It demonstrates solid combat instincts." She glanced down at the naginata. "Fine weapon."
"Thank you." The girl drove the butt-end of the polearm point-first into the soft forest loam in a gesture that looked casual, yet was executed with micro-controlled precision. "Aiko Reinhardt. And by my math, that makes us mandatory partners."
Khanna let the name settle into her mental index. "Khanna." She studied Aiko for a moment with the sharp curiosity she reserved for people worth knowing. The surname Reinhardt tickled the back of her memory—she had heard it floating around recently from an entirely different context. She'd connect those dots later. "No last name," she added preemptively, cutting off the incoming question. "Long story."
Aiko tilted her head, amused. "Is that a 'this is a giant administrative hassle' long story, or a 'personal and complicated' long story?"
Khanna met her gaze. "Mostly the first one, with a few healthy layers of the second."
"Fair enough." Aiko effortlessly hoisted her naginata back onto her shoulder with practiced ease. "I won't pry. Shall we?"
Khanna cracked her knuckles—not for dramatic effect, but because it was her physical trigger before moving out, a habit she had long since stopped censoring around others. "After you, partner."
Aiko offered a genuine smile—the look of someone who had braced herself for a difficult, abrasive teammate, only to find something entirely unexpected, and was quietly thrilled about the discovery.
And together, they walked into the trees.
---
◈ — Ruby and Weiss
Ruby Rose fell through the upper canopy of the Emerald Forest in the exact way Ruby Rose did most things: with absolute, unbridled commitment to the objective, some rapid mid-air adjustments, and an outcome that was approximately correct even when the method relied entirely on improvisation.
Crescent Rose caught a sturdy branch on the way down. The wood held firm against the sudden kinetic load. The forest floor came rushing up at a manageable pace, and she planted her boots in the deep-crouch landing she had been drilling relentlessly since she was twelve, a flurry of crimson rose petals scattering around her in the signature, momentary dispersal of her Semblance.
She was back on her feet in the exact same fluid motion.
"Gotta find Yang," she muttered to herself, wasting no time before breaking into a jog.
The forest was dense, yet navigable, the morning sun slicing through the upper foliage at sharp angles that provided just enough bearings to keep her moving in the right direction. She pushed forward at a swift pace—Crescent Rose locked in its compact travel configuration, the heavy scythe collapsed to a manageable length, and her red hood pulled up to deflect the occasional sharp branch.
As she ran, she began working her way through a mental inventory of possible partners: Yang, Roy, Blake, Jaune... looping back to Yang, and then drifting back to Roy with a suddenly uncomfortable volume of extra thoughts that she forcibly slammed the brakes on and redirected elsewhere.
Then, the dense undergrowth abruptly fell away, opening into a quiet, sunlit clearing.
Standing in the center of the opening was Weiss Schnee. Weiss was in the middle of turning around, wearing the distinct expression of someone who had spent the last ten minutes walking through a forest that fundamentally disagreed with her fashion choices and had arrived at a deeply complicated emotional state as a result.
Their eyes locked.
The moment stretched outward, expanding with the heavy, unexplainable significance of encounters that matter long before you fully understand why.
Then Weiss turned squarely on her heel and marched off in the opposite direction.
"Wait!" Ruby called out to Weiss's briskly departing back. "We're supposed to be—we're partners!"
Weiss didn't even break her stride.
Ruby stared at the empty patch of grass. Then she stared in the direction Weiss had disappeared. Following a brief internal debate, she let out an irritated huff and kicked the forest loam in the classic, expressive manner of someone whose morning was going significantly worse than planned and felt a deep, pressing need to communicate that fact to the universe.
Then, she bolted after her.
There was a brief moment—short, but entirely real—where Ruby Rose genuinely impressed her.
Weiss had been maintaining a brisk, deliberate pace. One second, Ruby was trailing behind her, and the next, Ruby was running right alongside her—a physical impossibility given the math of the speed Weiss had been traveling. Weiss whipped her head around to stare at the silver-eyed girl, finding her jogging along with breezy indifference, entirely unbothered by having closed a dozen yards of dense forest without a sound.
"I told you I'm not slow," Ruby said brightly. "See?"
Weiss processed this. Intellectually, she was well aware that Ruby's Semblance allowed her to move at velocities operating entirely outside normal physical parameters, and logically, she knew she shouldn't be surprised. In practice, however, it remained deeply irritating.
"When did you—"
"I'm trying to tell you," Ruby interrupted, adopting the quiet, unshakeable certainty of someone who knew her own capabilities and rarely got a safe platform to prove them, "that you don't need to worry about me out here. You're about to see a whole different side of things compared to this morning's absolute disaster, Weiss, and when this whole test is over—"
"Ruby—"
"—you're going to think: wow, that girl is actually remarkably competent, and perhaps I severely misjudged my initial impression of her—"
"Ruby."
Just like that, she vanished in a brilliant burst of rose petals, leaving the air swirling with pink dust while the forest ahead suddenly dropped into an eerie, unnatural hush.
Weiss paused, bracing herself.
Then the Grimm arrived.
They burst out from the heavy underbrush with the sudden, terrifying commitment of predators that had decided patience was off the table. Weiss flicked her eyes across the clearing, tallying seven Beowolves in her initial threat assessment. She drew Myrtenaster with a crisp snap of steel, immediately dropping into the precise, rigorous combat stance drilled into her by her father's high-paid private instructors, refined by Winter's punishing corrections, and hardened into pure muscle memory by nine years of grueling practice.
Head level. Shoulders set. Right foot forward—not that far. Breathe through it. Wait.
She waited for the exact opening, the precise tactical window her training insisted existed in every single engagement if you possessed the patience to spot it. It materialized—a momentary stutter in the pack's synchronization as the two lead beasts split their angles. She surged forward to exploit it.
And right at that exact microsecond, Ruby reappeared out of thin air directly between Weiss and her chosen target, materializing in a whirlwind of rose petals and a sweeping, horizontal arc of Crescent Rose. Weiss's lunge went disastrously wide, her momentum threw off her aim, and the concentrated ice-dust vial she had been channeling discharged wildly in the wrong direction—instantly setting a massive tree to her left on fire with enthusiastic, roaring intensity.
What followed immediately after was a rapid, furious exchange wherein both girls shouted entirely accurate points at one another, none of which were remotely useful to their immediate survival.
The fire spread with the terrifying enthusiasm of a blaze that had just discovered a pristine buffet of dry timber and held strong opinions about consuming it. The Grimm panicked and scattered into the underbrush—which ironically turned out to be the only beneficial outcome of the entire sequence. Seizing the moment, Weiss grabbed Ruby firmly by the wrist and hauled her into a sprint. They tore through the thicket as the forest behind them crackled with hungry flames, both of them breathing far too hard to keep arguing at full volume.
"You attacked entirely out of turn!" Weiss gasped out as they ran. "I could have killed you!"
"I was helping!" Ruby shouted back, pumping her arms.
"By materializing out of nowhere directly between me and my designated target?"
"I thought you needed—"
"I did not need anything! You are supposed to communicate!"
"How was I supposed to communicate when you were already—"
"There are infinite ways! Words, Ruby! Actual human beings use words to convey intent!"
"I know what words are!"
By this point, they had finally cleared the smoke, sprinting deep into a cooler, shaded corridor of the forest where the canopy grew thick and the choking underbrush gave way to soft moss. Both of them were panting heavily, radiating a white-hot fury that—under any other circumstance—would have been an effective combat catalyst if they weren't too busy glaring daggers at each other.
Weiss managed to corral her temper first, dragging her breathing back under control through the sheer, practiced force of will she had spent nine years perfecting out of absolute necessity.
"Perhaps," Weiss said, slipping back into the cool, authoritative register of someone firmly reasserting a position that remained mathematically correct even after a chaotic disaster, "if you had exercised even a modicum of caution in your—"
"I'm sorry you needed my help!" Ruby snapped. The words spilled out jagged and raw, missing the mark of what she actually meant, but hitting painfully close to the bleeding edge of what she was feeling.
"I didn't need your help, I needed you to stop—"
"Well, congratulations, then!" Ruby's voice cracked, rising sharply in pitch. The anger in her tone shifted into something entirely different—losing its heat, replaced by the brittle, agonizing vulnerability of someone carrying a crushing physical weight and pushed entirely past the point where they could keep pretending it didn't hurt. "Congratulations on being the absolute best, most accomplished girl at Beacon! You must be so endlessly proud of yourself! It must be so wonderful to be so devastatingly good at everything that you never need anyone's help, and you never have to—"
"I never said—"
"You didn't have to!" Ruby's chest heaved, her fists clenched so tight her knuckles turned stark white. "Every single time you open your mouth around me, you imply it! And I'm trying, Weiss—God, I'm trying—but you make it practically impossible to—"
"You are simply too young to be here!" Weiss fired back, the harsh truth slipping out before she could check the velocity. "That is an objective fact! The entire curriculum is designed for students two full years older than you, and—"
"I know I'm young!"
Ruby's voice broke entirely, the aggressive edge evaporating into something small, hollow, and sharp. The anger vanished, leaving behind the raw, trembling reality of a kid who had been running on fumes.
"I know I don't fit the program," Ruby whispered, staring down at her boots as her hands began to shake violently. "I know people look at me and just see the pathetic little kid who got skipped ahead, wondering if she's going to crack under the pressure. But I can't just pack my bags, go home, and try again in two years, Weiss. I can't go back to my mom and ask her if she thinks I should wait. I... she can't—"
Her sentence cut off abruptly, choking on a sob she tried and failed to swallow down.
The forest around them plunged into a profound, suffocating silence.
"My mom died," Ruby said, her voice dropping into a quiet, fragile register—not weak, but intensely private, sounding like someone reading aloud from a closed diary for the very first time, still testing how the syllables felt on her tongue. "She died when I was little. Out on a mission. So I can't go home to her, and I can't ask her what she thinks I should do."
She stared fixedly at the dirt between her boots, her shoulders curled inward. "I hope you're happy now."
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked away.
The stillness that followed in her wake was heavy and absolute—the deafening quiet that descends the second a person realizes they have just said something cruel and final that can never, under any circumstance, be unsaid.
Weiss stood frozen in the filtered green light of the Emerald Forest. She was entirely alone, hit with the sickening, hollow realization of what it meant to deploy a mathematically accurate fact as a blunt-force weapon against someone who deserved infinitely better, now forced to reckon with the brutal truth that being accurate was miles away from being right.
"Ruby," she whispered toward the empty path. Then, forcing volume past the tight knot in her throat: "Ruby, wait. I'm—"
She took off down the trail after her.
High up in the tangled canopy overhead, a single, large dark feather drifted slowly down through the branches, floating unnoticed toward the forest floor behind them both.
---
◈ — Pyrrha and Jaune
He was stuck in a tree. This was entirely Pyrrha's fault, a fact she had already acknowledged with a formal apology. Unfortunately, her first attempt to extract him had involved a calculated spear-tossing angle that she hadn't quite thought all the way through, leaving her standing at the base of the trunk, apologizing for that as well.
"I really am sorry," she said, for what she mentally tallied as the third time that day.
Jaune peered down at her from his suspended position, wearing the resigned expression of a man who had officially accepted that his dignity was entirely gone and had moved straight on to practical logistics. "Do you think you could maybe—the shaft is caught right in the fabric of my hood, so if you could just—"
"Yes, I see. If I adjust the trajectory..." With the calm, measured precision of someone who had earned four regional tournament titles primarily through absolute spatial control, she calibrated her stance, reached up, and extracted her spear from his clothing, gently lowering Jaune back down to solid ground.
He landed neatly on his feet, retaining far more balance than the undignified rescue warranted, causing her to revise her internal assessment of him slightly upward.
"Thanks," he said, brushing off his jacket. "That's—it's fine. I'm fine."
He sported a nasty gash across his cheekbone, treating it with the casual, absentminded indifference of someone who had either spent a lot of time taking hits to the face or was working overtime to pretend it didn't hurt. She suspected it was a healthy mix of both.
"Jaune, why didn't you—" She cut herself off, pivoting to a far more critical question. "Do you even know how to activate your Aura?"
He looked down at her with the blank, honest expression of someone who had just realized a fundamental life question was being asked, but had no idea why.
"I... never actually learned what Aura is," he admitted. He spoke with the quiet, sheepish tone of someone confessing an embarrassing shortcoming without trying to sugarcoat it, which she couldn't help but respect. "Is that... a problem?"
She studied him for a moment. Her mind drifted back over everything she had observed of him over the past forty-eight hours: his swagger outstripping his actual combat capability; the genuine, unscripted warmth that surfaced whenever he dropped the bravado; and the quiet moment she had witnessed when Weiss blew him off—instead of getting angry, he had simply looked sad, revealing a lot about where his underlying drive actually came from.
"It's a significant gap," she said gently. "One we can easily fix." She gestured toward the denser treeline ahead, and they started walking. "Tell me—have you ever experienced something you couldn't quite explain? A sudden, unshakeable certainty, a sense of someone nearby before you could see them, or a gut feeling that you knew something without logically knowing how?"
He paused, thinking back. "Yeah, actually. My mom always told me I just had really good instincts."
"That's your Aura at work," she explained. "It's the physical expression of your soul reaching out into the world. It has always been there inside you—you simply haven't been shown how to unlock it deliberately." She stopped walking, turning to face him. "I'd like to unlock it for you now, if you'll allow me."
He hesitated. She liked that he took a second to consider her offer rather than instantly agreeing or automatically refusing—it was the instinctive caution of someone who respected serious matters even when he didn't fully grasp them.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Okay."
They stopped in a small, flat clearing. She stepped close, placing her hand firmly against his sternum, and closed her eyes. She softly recited the exact invocation her own master had spoken over her years ago—knowing the words themselves were secondary to the pure, directed intent behind them.
For it is in passing that we achieve immortality.
The process of Aura-transfer was a rare, demanding technique—a specialized skill of her lineage, and one of the few things in her life that genuinely tested her discipline rather than coming easily. She felt her own spiritual barrier thin out as she forced open the conduit, guiding her energy into his dormant pathways. I release your soul—and by my shoulder protect thee.
The light that erupted from Jaune Arc was, as she had privately suspected from the moment she first caught a glimpse of his soul using her instinctive reading, blindingly brighter than average.
She stepped back, the wave of exhaustion washing over her briefly before fading into a manageable hum. She watched the crimson scratch across his cheek close and vanish entirely into smooth skin, experiencing the quiet satisfaction of a craftsperson performing good work in a moment that truly mattered.
"You have a great deal of it," she noted, her voice full of quiet awe. "More than most people ever manage."
He stared down at his hands, turning them over. She had witnessed this exact reaction in others before—that disorienting, profound moment when someone first felt their own soul as an accessible, tangible force rather than an abstract concept. It carried an undeniable weight of truth, and genuine things in Jaune's orbit always made him a fascinating person to watch.
"So this is what it feels like," he whispered.
"Yes."
He looked back up at her. The practiced bravado was entirely gone, replaced by an expression of raw, unshielded earnestness. In that instant, she understood that most of his confidence had been an awkward performance, and that beneath the armor was a boy who was deeply uncertain, thoroughly out of his depth, but astonishingly determined—qualities that would ultimately prove far more valuable than any superficial charm in the long run.
"Thank you," he said. And he meant every single syllable.
Pyrrha smiled warmly.
And together, they walked on into the forest.
---
◈ — Yang and Blake
Yang Xiao Long happened to spot the Ursa Major long before the Ursa Major caught wind of her, a sequence of events she privately considered to be a polite professional courtesy on her part.
The skirmish went smoothly until the exact moment one of the heavy beasts managed to snag a fistful of her golden hair—only for the locks to tear loose under the strain, sending a cascade of glowing golden aura strands fluttering down to the forest floor. Yang froze instantly. Her eyes flared to their vibrant, burning crimson, and the Ursa Major suddenly made the terrifying realization that the creature it was wrestling had, up until about four seconds ago, been operating as a safely contained system.
The resulting aftermath was swift, efficient, and thoroughly absolute.
She was standing amid the settling quiet of the forest, shaking the lingering, high-voltage adrenaline out of her hands, when she heard the crisp, familiar snap of Gambol Shroud finding its mark deep within the skull of a second Ursa. The beast dropped like a stone. Standing at the edge of the clearing was Blake Belladonna, calmly wiping down her weapon with the practiced, meticulous cool of someone who had done this a thousand times and held strong opinions about proper maintenance.
"Thanks for the assist," Yang said, pitching her voice level. She was acutely aware that she had spent the last forty-five seconds wreathed in literal fire, that her new partner had just witnessed the whole display, and she was currently deciding how she felt about that. "Though, for the record, I totally had him."
"Yes," Blake replied simply.
"I know how that looked."
"It looked like you had him," Blake said, adopting the neutral tone of a witness stating cold facts without editorializing. "And you did."
Yang turned her gaze to the cat Faunus. This hadn't been the defensive reaction she was bracing for, which forced her to instantly recalibrate her mental model of the girl. "Are you always this literal?"
"When precision is the point," Blake answered.
"And when it isn't?"
"Less so."
Yang turned the words over in her mind, letting a grin tug at the corner of her mouth. Without another word, she fell right into step beside the taller girl. They were heading in the same direction, they were officially partners, and walking shoulder-to-shoulder was a far more productive starting point than walking behind each other.
"Blake," she said.
"Yang."
"I have a feeling this year is going to be very interesting."
"Most things usually are," Blake said quietly.
They turned their steps toward the north.
◈ — A Quiet Observation
Up on the high stone observation platform overlooking the sprawling expanse of the Emerald Forest, Professor Glynda Goodwitch tapped against her digital tablet, logging a series of rapid notes she fully intended to officially categorize during the next faculty debrief as preliminary baseline assessments. The network of hidden surveillance cameras scattered across the tree canopy was feeding a steady stream of real-time data back to the consoles. Taken in aggregate, the incoming data was vastly more fascinating—and chaotic—than any standard academy initiation class in recent memory.
"The dark elf students," Goodwitch said, glancing sideways toward Ozpin. "The captured combat footage is—" She paused, searching for the right professional term. "Remarkable is perhaps the most accurate word."
Ozpin took a slow sip from his mug, his eyes fixed on the shifting sea of treetops below. "Indeed."
"The young man utilizing the fire-core crystal—Odyn—his technique is deeply unconventional. He is employing a tactical form I don't recognize from any accredited Huntsman-academy syllabus."
"Mm."
"And the girl wielding the heavy warhammer—Khanna—her Semblance appears to operate across an energy spectrum that our standard diagnostic equipment barely registers—" Glynda cut herself off, narrowing her eyes. "Headmaster."
"Mm."
"Are you even listening to me?"
"I am listening to every word," Ozpin replied evenly. "I am simply also thinking three moves ahead on the board." He lowered his ceramic cup an inch. "Though to answer your previous point, Glynda: remarkable is precisely the word."
A few paces away, Sybyrh stood watching the forest display with a neutral, unreadable expression that nonetheless concealed a torrent of active thoughts. Next to her, Tarro was reviewing a secondary feed on a handheld slate, his face locked in the intense, calculating focus of a man cataloging variables he would be factoring into his equations for a long time to come.
Far below, the vast, ancient forest hummed with life, echoing with the sounds of students, Grimm, and the complicated, messy first steps of kids who were destined to shape the future.
Ozpin raised his mug and took another quiet drink of coffee.
— To Be Continued —
Next Time: Chapter 6 — The Emerald Forest; Part One.
---

Ending Theme
Song: Reincarnated as a Sword (Ending Theme 1)
Visuals
The Solitude: The gentle, melancholic opening chords begin as the screen fades into a dimly lit room within the grand, cold halls of the Schnee Manor in Atlas. A young Weiss sits huddled on the floor, her head bowed down with her knees pulled tightly against her chest.
The Skyward Glance: The scene softly transitions as a teenage Weiss looks skyward into the open air, breaking into a run across a wide, sunlit field. She suddenly comes to a halt, her eyes widening as she spots a young Odyn standing a short distance away.
The Convergence: The children stare at one another for a quiet beat before the scene blurs, seamlessly transitioning them into their older teenage selves. From alternating perspectives, the two sprint across the open expanse toward each other, the distance closing rapidly.
The Finale: The song reaches its uplifting final notes as the adult Odyn and Weiss are seen walking side by side. Odyn flashes a warm, easy smile, extending his open hand outward toward her. Weiss turns her head away, her cheeks flushing bright red for a brief second before she turns back and places her hand gently in his.
Freeze Frame: Interlocking their fingers, the two continue walking side-by-side into the horizon as the screen locks into a warm, glowing freeze frame.
Author's Note:
Hey guys! Finally got back to this story! Sorry for the seven-month hiatus, but I'm officially back and will try to update this as frequently as I possibly can. Moving forward, my primary focus is going to be splitting time between this story, the main story with Ruby as the love interest, and my other RWBY x DBZ crossover project (Legend of the Remnant Saiyans [REWRITE]).
I've already locked down the pairings for our two main girls—Odyn x Weiss and Roy x Ruby—but the romantic futures for the rest of the crew are still a bit of a mystery. Perhaps you guys can help me sort those out?
Drop your votes in the comments for who you think should end up together!
1. Who should Yang fall in love with?
A. Giblet
B. Valvahdern
C. Shallot
D. Zero
E. Xander
2. Who should Scarlett fall in love with?
A. Sun
B. Neptune
C. Baron
D. Cardin
E. Oscar
F. Tarro
3. Who should Blake fall in love with?
A. Giblet
B. Baron
C. Shallot
D. Sun
E. Xander
F. Zero
G. Beat
4. Who should Khanna fall for?
A. Cardin
B. Mercury
C. Yatsuhashi
D. Sun
E. Neptune
F. Oscar
G. Xander
H. Zero
I. Beat
J. Giblet
K. Shallot
5. Who should Hailfire fall in love with?
A. Sun
B. Neptune
C. Shallot
D. Giblet
E. Xander
F. Yatsuhashi
G. Oscar
H. Beat
I. Zero
J. Adam T.
K. Eleryc
Let me know your thoughts and suggestions in the comments to help me figure out the pairings for the girls who don't have an immediate match yet!
This unique retelling of the Flame and Crimson framework is going to be a fascinating challenge—especially since shifting the focus to make Weiss the primary female lead requires a lot more deliberate pacing and depth. And yes, I definitely plan on writing dedicated stories featuring both Yang and Blake as the main girls down the road, too! (Though that's still a ways off, lol 😂).
I'm just so glad you guys are enjoying the journey so far. That's really all for now—until the next update!