{THIRD PERSON POV}
Miles let out a sigh as he leaned back in the seat of the Bullhead.
"Orleans to Vale... three hours at most... and it's not like the pilot is rushing..." he said to himself before looking out the window.
Usually, a journey from Orleans to Vale would take half a day, but that was only if they used a commercial Bullhead rather than Ozpin's personal one-well, as "personal" as a vehicle owned by an institution of Huntsmen could be.
The difference in size and weight also helped, with the smaller Bullhead able to fly faster, along with all that aerodynamic nonsense.
"Shit... does Ozpin really need me to do this mission? I... I really hoped I could... bond... with Jaune today..." Miles sighed again as he thought about the chance he had missed to spend time with Jaune.
He knew he had done wrong by his boy. He should have been smarter and thought of better ways to stop his son from training to become a Huntsman.
He tried. He really did try to prepare Jaune to become a Huntsman, but as the years passed and he didn't see any improvement from his son, he couldn't take it anymore.
The image of his father's bloodied face as he died in Miles's arms wouldn't leave his mind. Miles had seen pictures of his father when his father was ten years old, and his face looked so much like Jaune's that it made his chest tighten.
Whenever he looked at his son, all he could see was his father reborn, just with a different personality.
Jaune's personality was more like Luna than Miles, but his looks were all John Arc. Give Jaune another decade or two, and he would be the spitting image of John Arc.
Miles couldn't have asked for a better son. Jaune was so loving that it unsettled him sometimes. Jaune forgave him-his own father, who had decided he wasn't good enough to chase his dream.
Who would do that? If John had decided to forbid Miles from becoming a Huntsman, Miles didn't think he could ever have forgiven him.
Jaune deserved a better father, and Miles wanted to be it. He wanted to be a better father to Jaune, and not only to Jaune, but to his other children too-Mordred, Saphron, Artoria, and the rest. They all deserved better.
Miles pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath.
"Shit... why am I thinking about this? I've got better things to think about... like the..." The unspoken word-"Maiden"-caught in his throat as he remembered the last time he had seen her.
Miles pressed his forehead to the window and shut his eyes tight as he took another breath. "Shit... fuck... Dad... fuck..."
<=======]==¤
"Dad!" Miles shouted over a horde of Grimm as he sliced through them with his greatsword. "Dad!"
Shit, shit, shit. All I wanted to do was grab a couple of beers from the bar. So how the fuck did this happen?
That was all Miles could think before he got swarmed by even more Grimm.
A Beowolf tried to bite his head off, but he jerked aside, grabbed its jaw, forced it open, and tore it apart. "Raaagh! Get out of my way!"
Miles swung his greatsword and split an Ursa in two as it charged him. "Dad!"
Beyond the hordes of Grimm, he could see a battle that only one word could describe: catastrophic.
He saw the Maiden's elemental magic raging across the dunes. He heard the ringing of swords clashing against steel, and the heavy thud of a shield stopping blows that could only be his father's.
"What the fuck is happening in Vacuo?"
Miles jumped high, trying to clear the Grimm, but a Nevermore intercepted him in a dive.
"Fuck off!" He used the flat of his greatsword like a bat and knocked it away, but another Nevermore dove in and slammed him down with a crash.
He tried to push himself up, but a Boarbatusk smashed into him and sent him flying.
With a heavy impact, Miles's body hit the side of an overturned boulder that had come from somewhere in the chaos.
Probably from the Maiden, he thought.
When he forced himself upright, he wiped sweat from his forehead. Aura could make someone hard to injure, but a strong enough hit still left bruises and minor injuries. He could feel the bruises forming, and it hurt like hell, because Aura did nothing to dull the immediate pain of getting hit.
Miles used his greatsword to steady himself as the Boarbatusk charged again.
"What the fuck? A Boarbatusk? We're in Vacuo, for fuck's sake. They're not supposed to be here!"
When the Boarbatusk was only a few meters away, Miles dodged to the side and stabbed into its flank, letting its own momentum drive the blade through its body and kill it.
Miles looked up and saw hundreds of Grimm still in front of him. At the same time, the ones closest to the main battle were dying to stray attacks from the Maiden, and their numbers were slowly thinning. He didn't think he would survive if he had to fight them all, because his Aura was already down nearly forty percent, which was absurd. Miles had three to four Huntsmen worth of Aura, and if he weren't an Arc, he would already be dead.
"How the fuck did all of this happen?" Miles gritted his teeth.
He wasn't wrong to question it, because it had started like every average mission with his dad when it came to escorting or protecting the Maiden.
Miles was trusted enough, through his father, to join Headmaster Ozpin's inner circle. It shocked him when he learned Ozpin wasn't young at all. His body might have looked young, but his soul wasn't, and it made sense when you considered how he became the youngest headmaster at twenty-nine years old. John explained it in more detail: Ozpin was cursed with immortality and reincarnated every time he died, and Ozpin's previous incarnation had been John's professor at Beacon.
It had taken a lot of convincing for Miles to keep Luna in the dark, because she had been pregnant with Saphron at the time, and Miles couldn't put more on her than necessary. What was necessary was the baby.
Usually, these missions ranged from protecting the Maiden, or searching for a new Maiden when Ozpin heard one had died. The search missions were usually handled by Qrow, because Miles couldn't be away for long while Luna was pregnant. The protection missions typically lasted only a few days or a week.
The secret Miles feared telling Luna most was the Grimm queen. Ozpin called her Salem, and he claimed she had existed as long as he had. Ozpin told them he had nearly killed Salem before, more than once, and it gave the inner circle a thin but stubborn hope.
What else could they do except hope? Ozpin had been fighting longer than all of them combined had been alive, so if he believed Salem could be killed, then maybe they had a chance.
The mission had started as normally as possible. Miles and his father flew in a Bullhead to Vacuo-well, not Vacuo exactly, but close enough to the border to avoid unwanted attention-then switched to an off-road vehicle to reach the Maiden's location.
A couple of years earlier, when Miles first met the Fall Maiden, Anbar Collins, he had been surprised by how old she was. She was only a year younger than his father. He expected someone younger, because with a title like "Maiden," he expected to meet a fourteen-year-old, not a woman in her fifties.
When they met her, she looked fine-no wounds, no visible injuries-and she and John spoke like old friends.
Given how long they had known each other, Miles wouldn't have been surprised if they were more than old friends, and the thought made him feel conflicted. His mother had died giving birth to him. His father deserved to feel romantic love again after everything he had endured. Raising a child alone while working as a full-time Huntsman wasn't easy. Miles still remembered being on his father's shoulders while John showed him how to hunt Grimm.
Those memories, along with the times John brought him along on easier jobs, were some of Miles's strongest childhood memories.
After a few days of guarding Anbar, Miles assumed it would be another easy mission, so he left the inn to grab a few beers for the three of them. He didn't expect a massive sand dune to explode, bury the town in sand, and start spewing Grimm like there was no end.
Miles fought for at least thirty minutes before he felt the ground shake as the Fall Maiden started using her magic.
He knew something was wrong, because if Anbar was using magic, then something had gone completely sideways.
And now he was back in the middle of it, fighting Grimm as best he could, losing ground bit by bit against sheer numbers.
This wasn't a battle he could win by attrition. The Grimm would tear him apart if he tried. He had to take risks, because if he didn't, he would die.
Miles lifted his greatsword as high as he could and brought it down with a savage swing.
"Aura Burst!"
The Grimm in front of him dropped, and a crescent of Aura tore free from the blade, slicing through multiple Grimm as it flew.
"You're all done now, you fucktards!" He drew the sword back and spun, cutting in a wide circle. "Aura Burst!"
He used his Semblance again, and Aura crescents carved through the Grimm around him.
Miles couldn't keep this up forever. Each use of his Semblance drained around five percent of his Aura. He had two ways of using it. The first was activating his Semblance through his body, infusing himself with Aura and expelling it in an instant for a brief but massive physical boost.
The second way was to infuse only his weapon with Aura and expel it through an attack, which worked best with a sword, throwing an Aura crescent that cut targets with little resistance.
That was why he was called the Sword of Orleans. When he was nineteen, he protected Orleans alone against a horde of Grimm while his father and other Huntsmen were away dealing with the Mountain Glenn incident. He killed so many Grimm that he became one of the coastal town's most beloved figures.
Luna had been in Orleans at the time as Miles's teammate and girlfriend, and she played a huge role by healing everyone she could with her Semblance, earning the title of the Saint of Orleans.
Without her, Miles would have died from his wounds.
Miles shoved the memory away, because right now he was fighting for his life, burning through Aura Burst again and again.
"Aura Burst!"
"Aura Burst!"
"Aura Burst!"
"Aura Burst!"
Miles started panting heavily. He didn't need his Scroll to know his Aura was in the critical red. He hadn't noticed it, but Anbar's magic was nowhere in sight anymore. He saw that he had cut down most of the Grimm in his immediate area, and for the first time he could clearly see his father and Anbar.
Anbar was lying on the sand, blood covering her body. A wound ran straight down her chest.
How the fuck did someone defeat her? She had magic.
"Anba-" Miles cut himself off as the dust fully cleared and he finally saw what stood over them.
What he saw belonged in nightmares.
A knight, wearing full armor that looked like it was made from shadow itself. Dark smoke curled from the plates. Its sword was bone-white, with red running down its fuller.
And that sword was stabbed straight through his father's chest.
"Dad!" Miles's voice broke. "How dare you, you fucking bastard!"
Miles rushed the Grimm knight. When he got close enough, he jumped high with his greatsword raised overhead.
He pushed his Semblance into both his body and his weapon, preparing the strongest attack he had ever attempted, not caring if it shattered him, because a human body wasn't meant to handle that kind of output.
"Aura Burst!!!"
A normal Aura Burst could cut steel walls. What Miles unleashed now was far beyond that, an attack that could rival a Maiden's magic.
He brought the greatsword down in a titanic swing.
Clink.
Miles's eyes widened in horror.
The knight stopped the blow with a simple block, raising the gauntlet on its free arm. The impact shattered Miles's greatsword in two.
"What?"
The word slipped out in disbelief. That strike had left him with only two percent Aura. He had poured twenty-three percent into it in one burst. He could feel his bones screaming from the backlash of overdriving his Semblance.
How could this thing stop it so easily?
The Grimm knight didn't even acknowledge Miles. It stared at John, still impaled.
"Ÿœ'řə ŋøţ ĥịm, Přēțĕñɗëŕ."
The knight swung, still impaling John, and launched his body aside. The force of the swing threw Miles back as well.
Miles hit the ground in a roll and skidded to a stop.
"Fuckers..." Miles glared at the Grimm knight and forced himself upright as he watched it walk away.
"You bastard! Don't you run away, you stupid fuck!" Miles shouted, voice raw. "I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!"
Miles started to chase, but he froze when he heard his father's voice.
"My... boy..."
Miles spun and staggered to John. "Dad!"
He dropped to the ground, and with what little strength he had left, crawled to his father.
"Dad, please. Don't leave me." He lifted John's head carefully and rested it on his knees.
"M... Miles..."
Miles leaned closer, trying to hear him.
"Miles... promise me... that you... you'll live..."
Miles's eyes widened as he looked down at his father's face.
"Please, Dad, don't leave me. You told me you wanted to see Artoria. Please." His voice shook as he begged. "Please! I promise I'll be a better son! Please! Don't leave me, Dad!"
Miles hugged his father's body as it grew colder, trying to hold him together, trying to make it mean something.
John Arc died at fifty-four years old, in the arms of his only child.
---
[AN: This chapter is a woozy. I wrote this from 6:30 PM to 9:16 PM, which was almost three hours of writing.
I also need to explain about how miles knows about the secret.
I did my research by watching RWBY and using Google, and I found a Reddit post that summed it up well:
{What Ozpin told the inner circle
Salem
The Maidens
The Relics and how Salem can't get a hold of them
His reincarnation system
What Ozpin didn't tell them
The Relics being Grimm magnets
His romantic relationship with Salem
Being the second round of humanity
His mission from the gods to unite humanity and how they'll all die if he fails
Salem being immortal and how there's no stopping her (he led everyone to believe they had a chance)
How he has no plan to stop Salem other than keeping things in an eternal stalemate}
That sums it up pretty well. Thank you for reading.
AN2: I forgot to mention this, but Miles is 21 years old in the flashback and "anbar" is an oc, this is not a misspelled amber as.. you know.. the original amber from rwby.. i know.. similiar name.. don't blame me... i'm not good with names...]
[You could read up to 10 chapter ahead if you support me on patr30n. At patreon.com/Zaneninjacat]