A Lost Hero's Hunt.

[GhostJade45]

Note: Yo, Jade here.

Felt like trying out different fic ideas so now I'm uploading a MHA x RWBY crossover fic.

I'm someone who probably hasn't fully watched or remembers all the series I have MHA crossover with, so I'm actually updating myself as I make each chapter which requires more knowledge to work as the story moves forward.

I decided to go for a shorter chapter compared to my other fan fic, especially its chapter one, but I figured it would work out as I do see not every getting sent into another world fic needs a big amount of time spent in the previous world to set up him getting sent.

But I would be ok with people saying it's rushed or needs some fixing.

I'm not sure if I'll follow the canon events of each volume of RWBY or try to branch into something else, Izuku being around would change things but it wouldn't go too far depending on how I handle things.

I'll hopefully release other Izuku Isekai fics, but idk if that would get old fast in most people's eye's. Might release a normal AU MHA fic as well.

You can give me feedback, see what I got wrong or anything else. I'm open to suggestions.

I'll see you all later for now.

---

The forest echoed with the rhythmic, concussive sounds of splintering wood.

Izuku Midoriya exhaled a sharp breath, his knuckles slamming into the trunk of a massive oak.

The bark shattered on impact, sending wooden shrapnel flying into the underbrush.

He pulled his fist back, shifting his weight with practiced precision, and delivered a devastating roundhouse kick to the adjacent tree. It groaned under the immense force, leaning precariously as the trunk splintered inward.

He lowered his leg, wiping a line of sweat from his brow.

His features had sharpened over the last year, the soft roundness of his youth replaced by a defined, hardened jawline and cold, focused eyes.

He was taller now, his muscles densely packed under his workout clothes, carrying the undeniable weight of the war he had survived.

'I still have enough,' he reminded himself, staring at his scarred hands. 'The embers are fading, but I can still do this. I can still be a hero.'

Yet, a bitter chill settled in his chest. He was in his final weeks of his second year at U.A., and while his body and skills were sharper than ever, the well of One For All was drying up. He could handle the lower percentages with absolute mastery, but the undeniable truth gnawed at him.

'Bakugo... Todoroki... Iida... Tokoyami. They're all getting stronger.' He clenched his fists, the leather of his gloves creaking. 'Can I really close the gap they're leaving behind just by training my body? When the embers are completely gone... will I just be a relic?'

He sighed, the cold edge in his eyes softening for just a fraction of a second. 'I miss them.'

The sudden absence of the vestiges left a quiet, hollow ringing in his mind. He missed the chaotic guidance of the past users.

He missed Daigoro's shouting. Most of all, he regretted not having more time to speak with Nana Shimura. Gran Torino and All Might had always kept the details of Toshinori's younger years so guarded, and Nana could have filled in those blanks.

'Stop it,' he scolded himself, his expression hardening into a stoic mask. 'They're gone. I need to focus on what I have left.'

Frustration boiling over, Izuku drove a straight punch entirely through the trunk of the leaning oak.

The tree snapped completely, crashing to the forest floor in a cloud of dust and leaves.

Before the dust could settle, his ears twitched. He pulled a fraction of the fading embers into his senses, enhancing his hearing without risking too much drain.

Over the rustling wind, he picked up the distinct sounds of shouting. Arguing. The violent crunch of trees being uprooted.

Then, a massive shockwave ripped through the air, followed by a deafening crash.

Izuku winced, a sharp pain lancing through his ears as the enhanced sense caught the brunt of the explosion. He dropped the quirk usage instantly. 'That sounded like a fight. Could be a hero and a villain, and it sounds like the hero is losing ground.'

He didn't hesitate. He pivoted and sprinted toward the clearing where he'd left his belongings. He grabbed his metal hero suitcase, unlatching it with practiced speed.

Within moments, he was suited up. The dark green fabric of his post-war costume fit snugly over his broader frame, the reinforced Iron Soles locking into place, and the specialized Air Force gloves securing over his forearms.

Green bio-electricity flared to life around him, illuminating the dark woods. With a powerful leap, Izuku launched himself toward the commotion.

In a decimated clearing, Shishido, the Lion Hero, let out a ferocious roar as he swiped at a barrage of jagged boulders hurtling toward him.

"Stand still, you oversized rug!" the villain screamed, his hands glowing with a strange, twisting purple light.

A swirling portal opened in the earth, swallowing a massive chunk of debris before reopening directly above Shishido, dropping a three-ton boulder on the hero's position.

Shishido narrowly rolled out of the way, snarling. "You're just delaying the inevitable, scum!"

The villain sneered, preparing to warp another tree, completely unaware of the green blur descending from the canopy above.

Izuku dropped like a meteor. He spun mid-air, bringing his Iron Sole down in an axe kick directly into the center of the villain's back.

The impact was loud and brutal. The villain choked on his own breath, his body skidding violently across the torn-up earth, trenching through the dirt until he slammed into a boulder.

Shishido blinked, his fierce eyes widening. "Midoriya?"

The villain groaned, pushing himself up on shaking arms. He spat blood and looked up, ready to curse the newcomer—but the words died in his throat.

His eyes locked onto the towering, scarred figure in dark green, surrounded by crackling emerald lightning.

It was Deku. The hero who brought down All For One.

Absolute horror washed over the villain's face. Izuku just stared back, his expression entirely unreadable, his eyes cold and devoid of any warmth.

The villain panicked. He thrust his hands out, ripping open a portal directly behind Izuku to warp a massive, splintered tree trunk straight at his head.

Izuku's combat instincts flared; he sidestepped with effortless grace, letting the tree crash harmlessly against the ground.

Taking advantage of the split-second distraction, the villain scrambled to his feet and bolted into the thicket.

"Don't let him get away!" Shishido bellowed, bounding forward on all fours. Izuku was immediately beside him, matching the Pro Hero's frantic pace.

"What's the Commission thinking?" Shishido panted, leaping over a fallen log. "Sending the greatest hero in Japan all the way out here for a simple prison escapee?"

"I'm not the greatest," Izuku replied flatly, his eyes locked on the villain ahead. "Especially not right now. I wasn't called in. I was training nearby. Couldn't ignore the noise."

Shishido barked a laugh. "Should've expected that from you! Good thing you're here, though. This rat's from the Tartarus breakout. We busted his crew trying to steal a shipment, but he slipped away."

"Why hasn't he warped himself away?" Izuku asked, analyzing the villain's movements. "His quirk handles large objects just fine."

"Can't," Shishido grunted, swiping aside some heavy brush. "He can't warp his own body. And he has a strict range limit on how far he can send other people or objects. He tried dropping me through one earlier, but it only put me a few miles back. Bought him a few minutes, tops."

"Understood," Izuku said, narrowing his eyes. "We still need to be careful."

Ahead of them, the villain stumbled into a ravine, hitting a dead end of sheer rock. He spun around, chest heaving, his eyes darting frantically between the imposing Lion Hero and the emotionless stare of Deku.

"Damn it! Damn it all!" the villain cursed, his hands shaking. 'I'm not going back to that hellhole!'

He reached into a duffel bag that's around his shoulder and yanked out a thick, metallic injector. The liquid inside glowed an ominous, sickening red.

Shishido stopped in his tracks, his mane bristling. "Hey, isn't that—"

"Trigger," Izuku finished, his voice turning to ice.

Green lightning erupted around Izuku as he pushed Full Cowling to its absolute safe limit, dashing forward to intercept.

But he was a second too late. The villain slammed the needle into his neck, depressing the plunger.

The reaction was instantaneous and horrifying. The villain shrieked in agony, dark, pulsing veins webbing across his forehead and down his arms. The purple light in his hands turned violently unstable, tearing at the air itself.

He thrust his hands forward, aiming directly at the approaching green hero.

A vague, prickling sensation of pure malice—a faint, ghostly echo of Danger Sense—flared in the back of Izuku's skull.

He violently twisted his body to the side just as the space he previously occupied twisted into a massive, jagged portal, instantly eating away a massive crater into the earth.

'He's gotten too dangerous with trigger now, I need to take him out quickly!' Izuku continued his blinding dash.

The villain clicked his tongue in frustration, abandoning his offense.

He focused entirely on a point in front of him, trying to forcibly rip open a portal large enough and stable enough to push his own body through, bypassing his quirks' natural limits via the Trigger.

"Stop him!" Shishido roared, charging forward.

The villain panicked, his quirk lashing out wildly. The ravine tore itself apart as massive boulders and whole trees were warped and thrown directly at the heroes.

Shishido roared in pain as a thick tree trunk materialized directly in his path, slamming into his chest and pinning him to the ground.

Izuku ducked under a flying slab of rock, pivoted off a falling tree, and vaulted into the air, closing the distance in a heartbeat. He wound his right arm back, channeling the dense power of the embers.

The villain looked up, utterly terrified. Abandoning his escape portal, he poured every ounce of his Trigger-enhanced power into his right hand, charging a violently unstable singularity meant to crush the man into nothingness.

"DIE!" the villain shrieked, thrusting his hand forward.

Izuku didn't flinch. He swatted the villain's wrist outward with his left hand, cleanly redirecting the unstable quirk, and drove his right fist directly into the villain's sternum with a sickening crunch.

The villain's eyes rolled into the back of his head. The escape portal he had been trying to build instantly shattered like glass and his duffel bag got loose from his shoulder and fell to the ground.

But as the villain's limp body collapsed, the concentrated singularity in his right hand detonated.

The blast didn't explode outward; it inverted. 'Huh!? What is–'

A terrifying, silent vacuum of purple light expanded instantaneously.

Izuku threw his arms up to block, crossing his Air Force gauntlets over his face, but the light swallowed him whole, along with some debris and the duffel bag the villain had.

"MIDORIYA!" Shishido screamed, throwing the tree off his chest just in time to see the vortex violently snap shut, leaving nothing behind but the unconscious villain and a smoking crater.

Izuku was gone.

Weightlessness.

-------------------------------------------------------

Izuku tumbled through an endless, swirling void of violently shifting colors. 'Where am I?' his mind raced, fighting the disorientation. 'Warp quirks are instantaneous. You enter one side, you immediately exit the other. Why am I here!?'

Instinct took over. He tried to focus on his center of gravity, reaching for the familiar, weightless sensation of Nana's quirk. 'Float—!'

Nothing happened. The quirk was simply gone, burnt out of the embers.

A blinding white light erupted below him. He barely had time to cross his arms before he was violently expelled from the anomaly.

He was falling through the morning sky.

The wind roared in his ears, ripping at his hair. Below him, the dark canopy of a vast forest rushed up to meet him.

He twisted his body, trying to bleed off his momentum, but he hit the canopy hard.

Branches snapped against his suit, tearing at it as he plummeted through the leaves before slamming face-first into the dirt.

For a long moment, everything was still.

Izuku groaned, his vision swimming. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, spitting out a mouthful of dirt.

Every muscle ached, but nothing was broken. He slowly got to his feet, dusting off his scuffed costume, and looked around.

A few visible thick, ancient trees loomed over him, with the morning mist concealing the rest.

'Where the hell am I?' he thought, rubbing his temples. 'Did he just warp me higher up into the air? Is this the same forest?'

He stepped up to the nearest tree, placing a gloved hand on the bark. His brow furrowed.

The texture was different and the foliage as well, plus the leaves. This wasn't the forest outside Musutafu.

'Well... at least I'm alive,' he reasoned, his pragmatic nature taking over. 'Shishido will have that villain in custody by now. I just need to get a ride back.'

He reached into his utility belt, pulling out his reinforced smartphone. The screen cracked to life, but the top corner was completely empty.

No service. No GPS signal. Nothing.

Izuku sighed, putting the phone back into his pouch. "Huh... Guess he must have sent me pretty far. Probably somewhere deep in the countryside."

He looked up at the unfamiliar canopy, taking a deep breath of the cool, crisp air.

He needed to find a town, or at least a road. Without another word, Japan's lost hero began to walk into the depths of this forest.

-------------------------------------------------------


Wind swept across the high cliff, sharp and cold, carrying the distant scent of pine and earth from the forest far below. Two figures stood at the edge.

The first was a tall woman, posture rigid as a drawn blade. Pale blonde hair was pulled into a tight bun, a single curl escaping to frame the right side of her face.

Thin oval glasses sat neatly on the bridge of her nose, green eyes sharp and assessing behind the lenses.

A white blouse with a deep keyhole neckline clung to her frame, the sleeves ending in crisp, flared cuffs. Below it, a black high-waisted pencil skirt hugged her hips, bronze buttons running down the front.

A dark cape draped from her shoulders, black on the outside and rich purple within, its lower edge cut into jagged, flame-like shapes.

She held a slim tablet in one hand, thumb scrolling with precise, impatient flicks.

Beside her stood a man of quieter presence. Silver hair fell in soft, slightly tousled strands around a sharp, thoughtful face. Thin brown eyes regarded the students from behind small, shaded round glasses.

A dark green scarf was wrapped snugly at his throat, pinned with a small purple cross.

He wore an open black suit jacket over a buttoned dark-green vest and matching shirt, the whole ensemble neat yet somehow a little rumpled.

In one hand he held a plain white mug stamped with the Beacon emblem; the other rested lightly on the head of a slim black cane. He took a slow sip, completely unhurried.

"For years," the man said, voice mild against the wind, "you have trained to become warriors. And today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest."

The biting wind whipped across Beacon Cliff, tugging at the coats and cloaks of the gathered initiates.

They stood poised on silver platform tiles, each engraved with a pair of crossed axes.

On one of the forward platforms, a small girl in a bright red cloak shifted her weight, black-and-red skirt fluttering around her thighs.

Short black hair with vivid red tips stirred in the breeze. Silver eyes were wide with dismay.

Ruby Rose shifted her weight from foot to foot, her fingers twitching toward Crescent Rose.

She'd been waiting for this moment her whole life, but now that it was here, she couldn't stop the flutter of nerves in her stomach.

'This is it. This is actually it. I'm going to Beacon. I'm going to be a Huntress. Just... don't mess up. Don't mess up. Don't—'

Glynda Goodwitch stepped forward, her eyes locked on the data scrolling across her tablet.

"I'm sure many of you have heard rumors about the assignment of teams." She paused, letting the words hang. "Well, allow us to put an end to your confusion. Each of you will be given teammates. Today."

Ruby's shoulders instantly slumped. "What? Ughhh..." she groaned, her head tilting back in despair.

"Teammates?" she whispered. 'No, no, no. I don't want a teammate. I want Yang. What if I get stuck with someone mean? Or someone who doesn't talk? Or someone who thinks I'm just a kid?'

A tall blonde girl stood beside her— with lilac eyes half-lidded, and long golden hair cascading down her back.

The brown cropped jacket she wore left a strip of toned midriff bare above black shorts. An orange scarf fluttered at her throat.

Ruby glanced at Yang Xiao Long, who had her arms crossed and her expression relaxed.

Yang caught her sister's eye and gave her a small, reassuring smile.

"Relax, Rubes," Yang spoke out, her lips quirking upward. "You'll be fine. Just look for someone who isn't a total jerk."

Ruby didn't look reassured. She looked like someone had just told her that cookies were being outlawed.

Ozpin continued, his voice dropping slightly. "These teammates will be with you for the rest of your time here at Beacon. So it is in your best interest to be paired with someone with whom you can work well."

Weiss Schnee stood rigid, her hands clasped behind her back, her posture perfect. Inside, her mind was racing.

'I will need someone competent and who will listen to me. Not that childish girl in the red hood or that bumbling oaf.'

Her eyes scanned the line, landing on Pyrrha Nikos—the four-time Mistral tournament champion, the girl on the front of every Pumpkin Pete's box.

'Pyrrha. She's the only one here who might be worthy of my partnership. If I can just make eye contact with her first...'

"That being said," Ozpin said, and something in his tone made everyone straighten. "The first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years."

Ruby's brain short-circuited.

Her eyes went wide. Comically wide. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

For a moment, she looked like a fish gasping for air. "WHAT?!"

A girl with short, bright orange hair bounced lightly on the balls of her feet, pink skirt flaring.

Teal eyes sparkled with barely contained energy as she leaned toward the calm young man at her side.

His long black hair, marked by a single pink streak, was tied low. Magenta eyes remained half-closed, expression unreadable.

"See? I told you," the orange-haired girl whispered, grinning.

He only sighed and lowered his head a fraction.

Yang snorted, barely suppressing a laugh. 'Oh, this is going to be good.'

A tall young woman with a long crimson ponytail stood quietly, green eyes thoughtful as they lingered on the nervous blond boy still trying to get the headmaster's attention.

Bronze armor gleamed at her wrists and calves. A red sash was knotted at her waist.

The blond boy was fidgeting, his hand half-raised, his face a mask of barely concealed panic.

And near the rear, a dark-haired girl with a black bow perched atop her head kept her gaze lowered. Amber eyes remained half-lidded, posture still and self-contained.

A white, jagged-edged panel cut across the black of her sleeveless top. She looked as though she would rather be anywhere else.

Blake Belladonna stood apart from the others, her arms crossed, her expression carefully neutral.

She'd positioned herself at the edge of the group, close enough to hear but far enough to avoid conversation.

Blake stared straight ahead into the forest canopy, her amber eyes cool and detached. 'I don't care who I end up with, just let it be someone quiet,' she prayed silently. 'And who won't ask too many questions about me.'

Jaune Arc swallowed hard, his hands fluttering nervously around his waist. He forced an awkward laugh. 'Okay, Jaune, keep it together,' he thought, his eyes darting through the line of other students.

'Just find a cute girl. Someone nice. Someone who doesn't mind that you have no idea what you're doing.'

Further along the line, a tall boy with burnt-orange hair combed sharply back stood with arms crossed over a silver chest plate marked by a spread-winged bird in gold.

Indigo eyes narrowed with open impatience. A red sash was knotted at his waist over black clothing.

'This is going to be easy,' Cardin Winchester thought. 'I'll find one of my guys, or someone strong I can boss around.'

Ozpin's voice cut through the silence.

"After you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the forest."

The wind howled across the cliff, whipping at cloaks and hair.

"You will meet opposition along the way."

A bird screeched overhead—a sharp, piercing cry that made several students flinch.

"Do not hesitate to destroy anything in your path... or you will die."

Jaune's nervous laugh cracked through the air.

He gulped audibly. 'Die? Did he just say die? I'm going to die.'

Ruby stood beside him, arms hanging limp, red cloak snapping around her legs.

Her silver eyes were wide. 'Destroy everything… or die. Got it. No pressure.'

A few platforms down, Cardin rolled his shoulders, silver-gray armor catching the light.

The gold bird emblem on his chest plate gleamed as he smirked. 'Finally. Something that actually sounds fun.'

Yang cracked her knuckles, a fierce grin spreading across her face.

Ozpin continued, his voice steady. "You will be marked and graded for the duration of your initiation. But our instructors will not intervene."

He glanced at Glynda. She met his gaze, then looked back at the students.

"You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path, containing several relics. Each pair must choose one. And return to the top of the cliff. We will guard that item, as well as your standing, and grade you appropriately. Are there any questions?"

Jaune immediately shot his hand into the air. "Yeah, uhm, sir?"

"Good," Ozpin said seamlessly, gazing right past him. "Now, take your positions."

Jaune's hand slowly lowered. 'He totally ignored me….'

A flurry of movement swept across the cliff.

Cardin rolled his shoulders, loosening up before settling into a heavily braced stance.

Yang threw her fists up into a classic boxer's guard, while Ruby dropped into a low, predatory crouch, one hand hovering over Crescent Rose at her hip, the other raised in a focused, two-fingered martial arts guard.

Nora dropped into a low crouch, practically vibrating with kinetic energy.

Ren drew his twin StormFlower pistols, keeping them leveled at his sides.

He glanced at Nora once.

Nora bounced lightly on her toes, pink skirt fluttering, and leaned toward Ren. "I'll see you soon down there, okay?"

Ren's long black ponytail shifted in the wind as he gave the smallest nod. "We won't know if we will run into each other first," he said quietly. "But I wouldn't be surprised if we did."

Weiss remained perfectly still on her platform, rapier angled forward, white ponytail streaming straight in the wind.

Her blue eyes were already fixed on the forest below.

Beneath Weiss, the metallic platform suddenly hissed. The gears engaged, and with a violent clack, she was shot forward into open air, white dress and long ponytail streaming behind her.

She drew Myrtenaster in a flurry of white snow and steel.

"So, this landing... strategy thing... Uhm, wha—what is it?" Jaune stammered, watching the student with the white mohawk strike a bizarre hand pose with his pinky and thumb extended just before the catapult hurled him screaming into the blue. "Are you, like, dropping us off or something?"

Ozpin took a sip from his mug. "No. You will be falling."

Pyrrha's gaze turned towards Jaune for a moment.

She watched the way he kept glancing at the edge of the cliff, the way his hand hovered near the hilt of his sword as if for comfort.

'He doesn't have a landing strategy,' she realized. 'Once I'm down, I'll find him.' She was launched and she leapt gracefully, her shield already in hand, her expression serene.

"Oh... uhhh." Jaune scratched the back of his head, looking up into the sky. "I see... so, like, did you hand out parachutes for us?"

Nora launched with a whoop of joy. "Woo-hoo!"

"No," Ozpin said. "You will be using your own landing strategy."

Ren launched silently, his StormFlower pistols gleaming in the morning light.

"Uh-huh..." Jaune's voice was barely a whisper now.

Cardin's gold bird emblem on his chest plate gleamed as he smirked and settled into a slight crouch. 'Better not get stuck with any dead weight.'

Cardin was launched, his scowl firmly in place.

Yang turned toward Ruby, offering a confident wink as she slid her aviator sunglasses over her eyes.

She faced the forest, settled her weight. "See you down there, sis."

She was launched, a golden blur, her laughter trailing behind her.

Ruby took a breath and grinned, a confident smirk replacing her earlier panic, and let the catapult throw her forward into the rushing wind.

Jaune stared at the empty space where Ruby had just been, his eyes wide with absolute horror. He threw his arm back up. "Uhm, what exactly is a landing strateg—"

The mechanism snapped. The heavy metal plate slammed upward, launching Jaune Arc into the abyss mid-sentence.

"STRATEGYYYYYYY!" his voice faded into the clouds, joining the distant trails of the other initiates.

And then he was gone.

Ozpin turned, watching the last of the students disappear into the forest. He took a slow sip from his mug, his eyes lingering on the treeline.

'They're all so young,' he thought. 'So eager. So unprepared for what's coming.'

His gaze drifted to the forest, to the distant shimmer of the Emerald Forest's canopy.

Glynda stepped up beside him, her voice low.

"Do you think they're ready?"

Ozpin didn't answer immediately. His eyes were on the forest, but his mind was elsewhere.

"They will have to be," he said quietly.

He turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the stone.

Glynda watched him go, her expression unreadable. Then she turned back to the forest, her scroll tablet held tight against her chest.

The wind howled across the cliff, and the last of the morning sun disappeared behind a cloud.

----------------------------------------------------------

 

[GhostJade45]

Note: Heya, sorry for the late upload of the next chapter. I have been working on other chapters for my other works. Hopefully this one turned out well.

It's quite a long chapter so brace yourselves. Also someone and others in my server felt like the Izuku joining TEAM RWBY was overdone so now they gave me their OC's to use. They'll be in Izuku's team, but Izuku won't simply be a regular student at Beacon later on as well.

Please give your honest feedback and I'm gonna try to get other fics out so be sure to watch out for them.

---

The forest was quieter than Izuku expected.




He moved through the underbrush at a steady pace, his eyes scanning the treeline for any sign of civilization. The trees here were unlike anything he'd seen before—towering giants with bark that seemed to shimmer faintly in the dappled sunlight.




The air smelled clean, almost sweet, with none of the industrial undertones he'd grown accustomed to in Japan.




'There's no roads, power lines or any signs of anyone living out here.'




He'd been walking for nearly an hour, and the only sounds he'd encountered were the rustling of leaves and the distant calls of unfamiliar birds.




Every so often, he'd hear something larger moving through the forest—a pack of animals, judging by the coordinated sounds of their movement.




He'd wisely chosen to steer clear of them, not wanting to waste energy on creatures that weren't a threat.




But something was bothering him.




It was faint—barely a whisper compared to the roaring inferno of his old Danger Sense—but it was there.




A prickling sensation at the back of his skull that told him something was wrong. Multiple somethings, actually. The malicious intent he could sense felt too sharp, too focused to be simple predatory animals.




'What is this feeling?' Izuku thought, rubbing the back of his neck. 'Danger Sense shouldn't be working at all… The embers are almost gone.'




He paused, pressing his palm against a nearby tree trunk. The bark was rough beneath his gloves, grounding him. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the sensation, to parse out what his instincts were telling him.




The malicious intent wasn't directed at him. Not yet, anyway. It felt... distant. Scattered. Like a predator hunting prey that wasn't him.




'Not my problem,' he told himself. 'I need to find a town. Get back to Japan. Shishido probably has that villain in custody by now, and they're probably already looking for me.'




He pushed off the tree and continued walking. But the nagging feeling didn't fade. If anything, it grew stronger the further he went. The forest was too quiet, too still. The birds had stopped singing. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.




Izuku stopped again, his hand instinctively reaching for the Air Force Gauntlet on his right forearm. He scanned the treeline, his eyes narrowing. Something was wrong.




A scream split the air.




Izuku stopped dead.




It was distant—maybe a mile away—but it was unmistakably human. A boy's voice, high and terrified, cutting through the forest like a knife.




"What the—?" Izuku muttered, turning toward the sound.




Izuku's body tensed, his muscles coiling like springs. 'A person. Someone's in trouble.'




Then another sound. A whoop of excitement. A girl's voice, loud and joyful. "Woohoo!"




'Huh?' Izuku blinked, confused.




Before he could process the contradiction, more sounds erupted. Gunshots—multiple, rapid, echoing through the trees. Then an explosion, low and rumbling, like thunder underground.




'What the hell is going on?'




The screaming continued, punctuated by more gunfire and another explosion. Then he heard a voice—young, female—shouting something he couldn't quite make out.




Izuku's jaw tightened. He didn't know what was happening, but he knew one thing for certain: people were in trouble. And he'd never been able to ignore that.




Izuku reached for the embers of One For All, pulling them to the surface with practiced ease. The familiar warmth spread through his body, and green lightning crackled along his skin. He'd been conserving his power, but this was exactly the kind of situation the embers were meant for.




"Full Cowling," he muttered, and launched himself forward.




The forest blurred around him as he dashed through the trees.




Branches whipped past his face. His feet barely touched the ground.




The sounds of chaos grew louder with each passing second—screams, gunfire, the roar of something that didn't sound human.




'Just hold on,' he thought, his eyes locked on the direction of the sounds. 'I'm coming.'




----------------------------------------------------------




High above the sea of green, the sky belonged to the initiates.




The wind roared at terminal velocity as dozens of teenagers plummeted toward the Emerald Forest, each hurtling toward the earth on trajectories launched from the edge of Beacon Cliff.




Near the front of the formation, Ruby Rose tumbled through the clouds, her black-and-red cloak snapping wildly around her shoulders.




She squinted through the rushing gale, trying to spot the ground through the mist, when a flash of black caught her eye.




A stray crow flapped lazily through the air, minding its own business.




WHAM.




Ruby collided directly with the poor bird, sending feathers exploding in every direction.




"Birdie, no!" she wailed, flailing her arms before remembering the thousands of feet of empty air beneath her.




Reaching behind her back with practiced muscle memory, she unlatched Crescent Rose. The massive mechanical frame unfolded and locked into place with a series of sharp, metallic clicks, settling into its heavy rifle configuration.




Ruby spun mid-air, aimed the barrel toward the oncoming earth, and pulled the trigger.




BANG! BANG! BANG!




The massive recoil of the high-caliber sniper rounds shoved hard against her momentum, instantly bleeding off her falling speed.




Flipping gracefully through the air, she toggled the weapon's mechanism, the massive scythe blade extending with a vicious hiss.




She hooked the curved edge over a thick redwood bough, swung completely around it to dissipate the remaining kinetic energy, and vaulted down to a lower branch




She swung around it once, twice, using the momentum to bleed off speed before letting go and landing on the forest floor in a crouch.




'Okay,' she thought, her heart pounding. 'I'm alive. That's good.'




She stood up, dusting off her skirt, and looked around. The forest stretched out in every direction, dense and green and completely unfamiliar.




'I need to find Yang,' she decided. 'We're supposed to be partners, right? That's how it works. First person you make eye contact with.'




She started running, her boots pounding against the earth.




------------------------------------------------------------




Further to the east, a short boy with messy, dark navy hair was screaming at the absolute top of his lungs.




"THIS ISN'T IN THE BROCHURE! THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT IN THE BROCHURE!"




Raymond Novalis plummeted through the morning sky, his goggles rattling wildly against his forehead and his oversized toolbelt clattering against his mechanic's jumpsuit.




He flailed wildly, clutching a massive, baseball-bat-sized monkey wrench to his chest.




He'd known Beacon's initiation would be intense—everyone said so—but he hadn't expected to be launched off a cliff. That particular detail had been conspicuously absent from the orientation materials.




"This is insane!" he screamed as he tumbled through the air, his limbs flailing uselessly. "Who designs a school like this?!"




The ground was rushing up to meet him at an alarming speed. Raymond's brain, which had always worked best under pressure, kicked into overdrive.




'Think, Ray, think! Terminal velocity equals mass times gravitational pull minus atmospheric drag—which means I'm about to become a pancake!'




Gritting his teeth, Raymond thumbed a pneumatic switch on the wrench's handle.




With a hydraulic hiss, the heavy jaws clamped shut, the shaft extended, and the tool rapidly reconfigured into Novasurge—a sleek, futuristic plasma rifle glowing with azure conduits.




He flipped upside down, aimed Novasurge directly at the ground, and pulled the dual triggers.




PZAZZ! PZAZZ!




Twin superheated plasma bolts erupted from the muzzle with a sharp crackle, the concussive thermal recoil shoving hard against his downward descent. It bought him a second, but the ground was still rushing up way too fast.




"Too fast! Still too fast!"

Panic spiking, Raymond forced his Aura into overdrive.




Supernova-blue energy surged across his skin, crackling with intense, flickering light.




'Alright, Warp Phasing time!' he thought.




With a sharp pop of displaced air, Raymond's entire body vanished from the sky, instantly rematerializing twenty feet above the ground amidst a dense thicket of pine branches.




He fired one more shot from his rifle, then tucked the weapon against his chest and braced for impact.




He hit a tree branch first, then another, then tumbled through a thick bush before finally slamming into the ground.




Raymond lay flat on his back, his goggles crooked over one eye, staring up at the canopy as his stomach violently rebelled against the sudden spatial jump.




He dry-heaved, pressing a heavy leather work glove against his mouth. "Ugh…okay…," he wheezed, staring up at the canopy. "That... that was…something."




Groaning, he slapped a release stud on his rifle, collapsing Novasurge back into its monkey-wrench form before latching it onto his magnetic back harness.




He scrambled to his feet, adjusting his utility pouches, his blue eyes wide as he looked around the eerie, misty woods.




He slowly pushed himself to his feet, dusting leaves and dirt off his dark blue jumpsuit.




He straightened his goggles and took another deep breath.




"Alright, let's do this. Gotta find your team, make some friends and not die." He nodded to himself. "You got this, Raymond."




With an anxious swallow, Raymond broke into a nervous jog through the trees.




The sounds of gunfire and explosions were coming from somewhere ahead.




He wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one, but it was definitely a sign that other people were around.




'Please let them be friendly,' he thought. 'I really don't want to deal with this alone.'




-----------------------------------------------------------




A half-mile to the southwest, another initiate was descending—though with an entirely different demeanor.




Tyler Greystone fell through the air with the cold, immovable composure of a mountain.




His long, dust-brown leather duster whipped ferociously in the gale, but his right hand remained firmly clamped over the crown of his weathered stetson, keeping it pinned against his head.




Beneath the brim, his straight brown hair framed a sharp, sun-baked face, his hazel eyes completely calm as they tracked the terrain below.




Just beneath his hairline, two distinct, faded circular scars—the remnants of a point-blank double execution—stood stark against his tanned skin.




'Steep angle. Heavy canopy. No glide harness,' Tyler calculated coldly, the wind roaring past his ears. 'Old man Ozpin sure doesn't kid around with his welcome mat.'




'This is definitely a Beacon initiation,' he thought, watching the other students plummet toward the forest below. 'They really don't kid around.'




Reaching beneath his duster with his free hand, Tyler smoothly drew Revenge, one of his twin heavy .44 Magnum double-action revolvers.




With a flick of his wrist, a hidden catch in the cylinder frame clicked. A razor-sharp, bearded hatchet blade snapped out from beneath the revolver's barrel and grip, locking rigidly into place.




Tyler flipped his body upright, pinpointing a massive, ancient oak racing toward him.




He didn't wait to hit the leaves. As he broke through the upper canopy, Tyler drove the hatchet blade of Revenge deep into the thick, weathered bark of the oak's trunk.




SKRRRRRRRRT!




Sparks erupted from the steel as the blade carved a deep, smoking furrow down the length of the massive tree, violently bleeding off his kinetic momentum. Wood chips and burning sap sprayed across his leather sleeve.




When his speed finally decayed to a manageable drop, Tyler yanked the blade free, kicked off the trunk.




He landed on the forest floor with a combat roll, came up in a crouch, and stayed still for a moment, listening.




The forest was alive with sound. Gunfire in the distance. Screaming—probably that blonde guy. And explosions.




Tyler rose to his feet in one continuous motion, holstering the hatchet-revolver with an effortless twirl. He walked over, picked up his stetson, slapped the dust from the brim against his thigh, and set it squarely back over his forehead.




He reached over his shoulder, unhooking Payback—a heavy lever-action rifle—and racked the lever with a crisp, authoritative clack-clack.




Stone-grey Aura flickered briefly across his knuckles before settling.




"Alright," Tyler muttered in a low, gravelly drawl, his eyes sweeping the silent brush with the instincts of a seasoned tracker. "Let's see what this damn forest has to offer."




He started walking, his boots crunching softly on fallen leaves. His hands rested on the grips of his revolvers, ready to draw at a moment's notice.




The forest was beautiful, in a wild sort of way. Towering trees, dappled sunlight, and a sense of ancient stillness that reminded him of the frontier towns back in Vacuo.




But there was something else beneath the beauty—a tension that made his skin prickle.




'Grimm,' he thought. 'They're here. I can feel it.'




He'd learned to sense them years ago. They weren't like people. People had complex emotions—fear, greed, anger, love.




Grimm were simpler. They radiated pure malicious intent, like a storm waiting to break.




And right now, that storm was gathering.




"Better get moving," Tyler muttered, picking up his pace. "Don't want to be caught out here alone."




--------------------------------------------------------




Meanwhile, weaving through the highest branches of the eastern ridge, a silent shadow descended.




Magenta Khan dropped through the air like a phantom, her gloved fingers tightly pinning the hood of her cropped white-and-black jacket over her vibrant, wild magenta curls.




Unlike the others, she made no sound. Her sharp, cat-like magenta eyes scanned the horizon, darting from one plummeting initiate to the next with frantic, desperate focus.




'Where are you, Blake...?'




She didn't spot the familiar black bow, and her chest tightened with an ache born of shared childhoods, burned rallies, and bloodstained banners. She couldn't afford to lose her.




'Where did Blake land?' she wondered, scanning the treeline for any sign of her. 'I didn't see her during the launch.'




That was concerning. Blake was resourceful, and Magenta knew she could take care of herself. But being separated meant she couldn't protect her. And protecting Blake was the entire reason Magenta was here.




She drew out her twin short-swords—Sunder and Spark from their waist sheaths—and spun them in her hands. The blades gleamed in the morning light, their edges wickedly sharp.




She positioned herself carefully, arms extended, and let herself fall toward a cluster of thick branches.




With breathtaking agility, she began spinning mid-air like a lethal gyroscope, the reinforced steel edges cleanly shearing through a barrage of thick branches to dissipate her fall.




Twisting her torso, she hooked the inner curve of her left blade around a sturdy bough, using the swinging momentum to propel herself onto the branch above it.




She landed in a dead crouch, her boots silent against the bark, her breathing completely controlled despite the adrenaline.




She stood up slowly, her shoulders shifting under her jacket as she pressed a mechanism on both swords that extended a that connected to each other, turning then into a steel shortbow.




She nocked an arrow with effortless grace, her eyes scanning the dark, sprawling maze of the Emerald Forest below.




'She's down there somewhere,' Magenta thought, her jaw setting with quiet resolve.




Magenta hummed softly to herself, a habit she'd picked up as a child. She needed to find Blake. That was the priority. Everything else—passing the initiation, making friends, surviving—could wait.




'She's strong,' Magenta reminded herself. 'She'll be fine. I just need to find her before anything else does.'




She leapt from the branch, landing on another, then another, moving through the canopy like a shadow.




------------------------------------------------------------




Yang Xiao Long was having the time of her life.




"Woohoo!" she shouted, blasting herself through the air with Ember Celica. The recoil from her gauntlets sent her spinning through the sky, her golden hair streaming behind her like a comet's tail.




This was fun. This was the kind of thing she'd been waiting for since she first decided to become a Huntress.




The rush of wind, the freedom of flight, the knowledge that soon she'd be beating up Grimm with her bare hands—it was everything she'd dreamed of.




She fired another blast, angling herself toward a particularly thick tree. Her boots hit the trunk, and she used the momentum to launch herself toward the next tree, then the next, each jump carrying her closer to the ground.




She hit the forest floor running, her boots digging into the soft earth. She rolled once, twice, then came up in a sprint, her arms pumping.




"Nailed it," she grinned.




The forest around her was quiet, but she could hear distant sounds of chaos—gunfire, explosions, someone screaming. She recognized that scream.




"Jaune," she muttered, shaking her head. "Poor guy's not having a good day."




She considered heading toward the noise, but her instincts told her to focus on finding Ruby first. She'd promised her little sister they'd find each other in the forest, and Yang always kept her promises.




"Ruby!" she called out, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Ruby, where are you?!"




No response. Just the echo of her own voice.




Yang frowned. She didn't like this. The forest felt... wrong. Too quiet. Too still. Her instincts—honed by years of training and more than a few dangerous situations—were screaming at her to be careful.




"Okay, Rubes," she muttered, cracking her knuckles. "Big sister's coming."




She started jogging through the forest, her eyes scanning for any sign of her sister.




The sooner she found Ruby, the sooner they could find the relics and get the hell out of here.




------------------------------------------------------------




Weiss fell with all the grace and dignity she could muster, which—given that she was falling from a catapult into a monster-infested forest—was considerable.




Her rapier, Myrtenaster, was already in her hand. She pointed it downward and summoned a glyph—a glowing white circle with a snowflake pattern—directly beneath her feet.




She landed on it lightly, her heels clicking against the shimmering surface, and then immediately launched herself off it toward the forest below.




She descended in a controlled arc, using a series of smaller glyphs as stepping stones.




Each one appeared just long enough for her to push off before dissipating into particles of light.




'This is fine. This is perfectly fine. I just need to find Pyrrha, make eye contact, and everything will go according to plan.'




She landed on a mossy rock, her white dress billowing around her, and scanned the forest.




There was no sign of Pyrrha.




She sighed and started making her stride to find her or anyone else who was competent.




--------------------------------------------------------




Ren fell like water—fluid, silent, and completely in control.




His StormFlower pistols were in his hands, the green blades gleaming in the morning light.




He twisted his body mid-air, hooking one of the blades onto a massive tree trunk.




He spiraled around it, using the momentum to slow his descent, and then released, landing on the forest floor in a crouch that barely disturbed the leaves.




He straightened, dusting off his sleeves, and looked around.




A distant explosion echoed through the trees. Then another sound: a high-pitched, joyful scream that could only belong to Nora.




Ren allowed himself a small smile.




'She's certainly having fun.'




He walked off into the bushes, carefully watching for any threats that could be lurking around.




----------------------------------------------------------




Nora fell like a meteor.




She didn't bother with slowing down. She didn't bother with strategy. She just spread her arms wide and laughed as the wind whipped through her orange hair.




"WOOOOOOO!"




She crashed through a canopy of leaves, bounced off a thick branch—"Ow!"—and then slammed into the ground with enough force to create a small crater.




She lay there for a moment, staring up at the sky, before bursting into laughter.




"That was AWESOME!"




She bounced to her feet, completely unharmed, and looked around.




"Ren? Rennnnn? Where are you?"




No response.




She shrugged and started skipping through the forest.




------------------------------------------------------------




High above an ancient clearing, Pyrrha fell with a warrior's calm.




Her shield, Akoúo̱, was raised in front of her, and she held Miló—her spear—in her other hand.




She crashed through a series of branches, her shield absorbing the impacts, and then tucked into a roll as she hit the ground.




She came up on a thick tree branch, standing tall, and immediately shifted Miló into its rifle form. She brought the scope to her eye, scanning the forest below.




There—a flash of blonde hair, flailing arms, and a scream that was unmistakably Jaune Arc.




He was falling fast, completely out of control, and heading straight for the ground.




Lowering the scope, Pyrrha fluidly shifted Miló back into its heavy javelin form. She planted her feet, raised her left thumb to gauge the wind drift, pulled her right arm back, and hurled the spear with all the power her Aura could muster.




The javelin broke the sound barrier with a hollow crack. Seconds later, a heavy THUNK echoed through the woods below.




It caught Jaune by the hood of his sweatshirt, pinning him to a tree trunk just inches above the ground.




A moment of silence.




Then in the the distance: "THANK YOU!" Echoed out from Jaune.




Pyrrha let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. She waved, even though he probably couldn't see her.




"I'm sorry!"




She hoped he heard her.




-----------------------------------------------------------




Jaune fell like a sack of potatoes.




He screamed the entire way down, his arms flailing, his legs kicking uselessly. The ground rushed up to meet him, and he closed his eyes, preparing for the end.




Then something yanked him backward, hard. He felt himself slam against something solid—a tree—and then he was dangling, his feet kicking in the air, his hood caught on something sharp.




He opened his eyes.




He was alive.




He looked up. A spear—no, a javelin—was embedded in the tree above him, and his hood was wrapped around it.




"THANK YOU!" he yelled, hoping whoever had thrown it could hear him.




A distant voice replied: "I'm sorry!"




Jaune blinked.




'Sorry? Sorry for what? She just saved my life!'




He looked down. The ground was maybe three feet below him.




He could just... drop.




Jaune grabbed the javelin and tried to pull it off his hood, but it wouldn't budge. 'You got to be kidding…'




------------------------------------------------------------




Blake fell in silence.




She didn't fire a weapon. She simply twisted her body, caught a branch with her bare hands, and swung herself down from tree to tree like she'd done it a thousand times before.




She landed on the forest floor without a sound, her amber eyes scanning her surroundings.




No one was nearby.




Good.




She adjusted her bow—making sure it was secure—and started walking north.




'I just need to find someone quiet. Someone who won't ask questions. Someone who—'




A twig snapped behind her.




She spun, her hand reaching for Gambol Shroud.




Nothing.




She waited a moment, then turned and continued walking.




She didn't notice the shadow that flickered between the trees.




------------------------------------------------------------




Cardin fell with a grunt.




He didn't bother with finesse. He just braced himself, crashed through a few branches, and landed in a heap on the ground.




He groaned, pushing himself up, and dusted off his armor.




"That's gonna bruise." He looked around, his indigo eyes narrowing.




No one in sight.




'Perfect. Now I just need to find one of my guys and we can—'




A rustle in the bushes.




Cardin grinned and raised his mace. "Finally. Something to hit."




------------------------------------------------------------




Ruby Rose hit the forest floor in a low, three-point crouch, dead leaves swirling in a tight red vortex around her boots.




She popped up immediately, Crescent Rose held horizontally across her waist, her silver eyes scanning the endless maze of trunks.




'Gotta find Yang! Gotta find Yang!'




She took off at a dead sprint, the wind whipping at her hood as red rose petals fluttered frantically in her wake.




"Yang! Yang!" she called out, cupping one hand around her mouth as she vaulted over a fallen birch. No answer. Just the hollow rustle of wind through the branches.




'Ugh, this is bad. This is really, really bad,' Ruby groaned internally, her thoughts spiraling into hyperdrive. 'What if I can't find her? What if someone else finds her first?!'




A childish, frantic image flashed across her mind.




'There's always Jaune! He's nice!' In her head, she pictured a cute, cartoonish sketch of herself and Jaune giving each other a friendly fist-bump, big goofy smiles plastered across their faces. 'He's funny!'




The mental image shifted to the two of them laughing together over comic books. 'Though... I don't think he's very good in a fight.' The sketch instantly morphed: cartoon Jaune stood triumphantly with his sword raised, only for three snarling Beowolves to dogpile on top of him while he flailed helplessly.




Ruby winced, shaking the thought away. 'Nope! Not Jaune!'




'Ooh, what about Blake?!' Her smile returned, her silver eyes narrowing with excitement. A mental portrait of the quiet, dark-haired girl materialized, surrounded by floating books and glowing candles. 'So mysterious... so calm... and she likes reading!'




Then the image twisted: Ruby tried excitedly chattering to her, while cartoon Blake crossed her arms, glared down her nose, and stepped into the shadows without uttering a single syllable. 'Then again, I'm not even sure I could hold a conversation with her without making things weird...'




Ruby puffed out her cheeks, grumbling under her breath as she dodged another oak. 'Okay, okay! Who else do I even know at this school? There's Yang, Jaune, Blake, annddd—'




Her boots dug into the dirt, leaves spraying forward as she frantically tried to kill her momentum.




Right in the middle of a sunlit clearing stood Weiss Schnee.




The heiress turned around at the sound of tearing soil, her pale blue eyes blinking in cold surprise.




Ruby skidded to a dead halt, wobbling on one heel before catching her balance. She blinked back.




The two girls stood there in absolute, agonizing silence. Neither moved a muscle. Five seconds crawled by like hours.




Then, without a single word, Weiss scoffed, spun on her heel, and marched straight into the thick brush.




"Wait!" Ruby flailed her arms, taking two running steps forward before stopping in disbelief. "Where are you going?!"




The only response was the loud, aggressive snapping of twigs as Weiss shoved her way through the foliage.




Ruby's shoulders slumped. She kicked a stray pebble into the grass, pouting miserably. "We're supposed to be teammates…."




--------------------------------------------------------




A few yards deeper into the thicket, Weiss was currently regretting every life choice that had led her to this moment.




"Ow!" she hissed, hopping on one leg as a jagged bramble scraped against her pristine white thigh-highs.




She shoved a heavy pine branch out of her face with Myrtenaster's hilt. "Stupid, overgrown, uncultivated—"




A pathetic, muffled groan drifted down from the canopy above.




Weiss paused, her brow furrowing. She tilted her chin up.




Hanging fifteen feet in the air was Jaune Arc. Pyrrha's bronze javelin was driven clean through the fabric of his black hoodie, pinning him securely against the trunk of a massive pine.




His arms and legs dangled limply, like an oversized puppet whose strings had been cut.




Jaune looked down, his blue eyes widening as he noticed Weiss.




He forced an agonizingly awkward grin and raised a trembling hand. "Oh, hey!" he called out, waving awkwardly. "Weiss! Great to see you! Could you maybe—?"




Weiss stared at him for three full seconds, her expression deadpan.




Then, she turned around and walked right back the way she came.




She ignored him. She had more important things to worry about than some bumbling idiot who couldn't even land properly.




Jaune dropped his hand, his head lolling backward against the bark with a miserable groan. "Great..."




Back in the clearing, Ruby was still kicking dirt when the bushes parted.




Weiss strode out, marching straight past her with her nose in the air.




"By no means does this make us friends," Weiss declared sharply. As she passed, her hand darted out, grabbing Ruby by the hood of her cloak and hauling her forward like a disobedient puppy.




Ruby's feet dragged along the ground, but her face lit up with pure, childish glee. "You came baaack!"




'This is going to be a long four years,' Weiss thought miserably.




Behind them, echoing faintly from the treetop, Jaune's desperate voice carried over the wind: "Hey, wait! Come back! Who's gonna get me down from here?!"




Light, metallic footsteps sounded beneath the tree, followed by a calm, polite voice: "Do you... have any spots left on your team?"




Jaune crossed his arms with a sullen pout. "Very funny, Pyrrha."




--------------------------------------------------------




Yang Xiao Long was having the time of her life.




She soared through the air like a golden comet, her gauntlets firing in controlled bursts to keep her aloft. The wind whipped through her hair, and she laughed with pure, unfiltered joy.




"Woohoo! Haha, yeah!"




She bounced off a tree, then another, using her momentum to propel herself forward. The ground rushed up to meet her, and she rolled into a sprint, her boots kicking up dust.




"Nailed it," she said, grinning.




She slowed to a walk, her eyes scanning the forest. 'Now, where's Ruby?'




A rustling sound caught her attention. She turned, pushing through some bushes.




"Ruby? Is that you?"




A growl answered her.




Yang looked up—slowly—and found herself staring into the red eyes of an Ursa. A big one.




"Nope," she said, popping the 'p'.




She leaped back as the Grimm charged, its massive claws swiping through the space she'd just occupied.




Her Ember Celica expanded around her forearms with a mechanical click, and she landed in a fighting stance.




Another Ursa burst from the bushes behind her, and she backflipped away from its attack, landing smoothly as both Grimm circled her.




"Two on one, huh?" Yang cracked her knuckles. "That's not fair."




The first Ursa charged. Yang met it head-on, her fist connecting with its chest in an explosion of fire and force. The Grimm flew backward, crashing through a tree.




The second one came at her from the side. She ducked under its swipe, drove an uppercut into its jaw, then spun and kicked it away.




"You guys wouldn't happen to have seen a girl in a red hood, would you?" she asked casually.




The Ursai roared.




"You could just say no."




The first one stood on its hind legs, roaring in fury.




Yang sidestepped its charge, then backflipped away from its follow-up swipe.




She landed lightly, a laugh bubbling up in her throat.




"Geez, you two couldn't hit the broad side of a ba—"




A strand of golden hair floated down in front of her face.




Yang's eyes widened. The world went silent. Her vision tunneled, and something hot and furious bubbled up from her chest.




"You..."




The Ursai exchanged confused looks.




Yang's eyes blazed red. Fire erupted from her body, and she raised her arms.




"YOU MONSTER!"




She launched herself forward, her fist connecting with the first Ursa's chest in an explosion of fire. She uppercased it, then blasted herself forward with both gauntlets, pummeling it with a barrage of explosive punches.




The Grimm flew backward, crashing through trees, and Yang stood in the center of the destruction, her chest heaving.




She turned to the second Ursa, her gauntlets cocking with a sharp click.




"What, you want some too?!"




The Ursa stood on its hind legs, roaring—




And then something whipped through the air and struck it in the back.




The Grimm looked down, confused, before collapsing.




Blake Belladonna stood behind it, her Gambol Shroud in whip form, her amber eyes calm.




Yang blinked, her eyes fading back to lilac. "I could have taken him."




Blake smirked.




------------------------------------------------------------




Weiss was starting to regret her decision to drag Ruby along.




The younger girl was... enthusiastic. Too enthusiastic. She bounced from topic to topic like a hyperactive puppy, asking questions about Beacon, about Weiss's weapon, about her family, about everything and nothing all at once.




"—and then I thought, what if I added a sniper rifle to my scythe? And my uncle Qrow said it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen, and he's like, really hard to impress, so—"




"Does it ever stop?" Weiss muttered.




"What?"




"Nothing."




Ruby shrugged and kept talking. "—and that's when I knew I wanted to be a Huntress! My mom was a Huntress, you know. She was amazing. Everyone says so."




Weiss's grip on her rapier tightened. "My mother was a Schnee. She ran the largest Dust company in the world."




"Really?" Ruby's eyes widened. "That's so cool! Do you get free Dust and stuff?"




"No," Weiss said flatly. "That's not how it works."




"Oh. Well, still cool."




They walked in silence for a few moments before Ruby spoke again.




"Hey, Weiss?"




"What?"




"I'm sorry. About earlier. The explosion thing. I didn't mean to—"




"Save it," Weiss snapped. "We have more important things to worry about than your inability to control your own weapon."




Ruby flinched, and Weiss felt a small pang of guilt. She shoved it down.




'She's just a child,' she told herself. 'I don't have time to babysit.'




"So, what's the hurry?" Ruby asked, jogging alongside her.




Weiss didn't slow her stride. "I will not let my mission be delayed because you're too slow! I swear, if I get a bad grade because of your childish—"




SWOOSH.




In a swirl of crimson rose petals, Ruby vanished from beside her, reappearing three paces ahead, walking backward with a cocky grin.




"Hi!" Ruby pointed a thumb at her own chest. "I'm not slow, see? You don't have to worry about me!"




Weiss halted, her jaw dropping. "When did—"




"Weiss, just because I don't exactly know how to deal with people doesn't mean I don't know how to deal with monsters!"




Ruby swung around, throwing an arm casually over Weiss's shoulder and leaning into her personal space.




Weiss stiffened, her head pulling back in disgust.




"You're about to see a whole different side of me today, Weiss," Ruby continued cheerfully, waving her free hand through the air as if painting a grand mural. "After this is all over, you're gonna be like, 'Wow, that Ruby girl is really, really cooool... and I wanna be her friend!'"




Before Weiss could slap her hand away, Ruby dissolved into another explosive burst of rose petals, rocketing forward into the trees and kicking up a thick gust of dust and dry leaves.




Weiss coughed, waving the dirt out of her face, her temper flaring. She planted her fist onto her hip, glaring at the empty path. "You may be fast, but you still excel at wasting time!"




Silence answered her.




The wind suddenly died. The gentle rustle of the canopy went completely still.

Weiss blinked. "...Ruby?"




A low, guttural vibration rumbled through the earth.




Twigs snapped behind her. Then to her left. Then to her right.




Weiss's breath hitched. She spun around, drawing Myrtenaster in a tight defensive guard.




From the dense shadows of the brambles, pairs of glowing crimson eyes ignited in the gloom.




Bone-white masks adorned with red markings tore through the brush as heavy, black-furred bodies slithered into the light.




A pack of seven Beowolves stepped into the clearing, their jaws dripping black saliva, snarling hungrily as they formed a lethal circle around her.




Weiss's knuckles turned white against the rapier's hilt. Her voice cracked with genuine panic.

"RUBY!"




The largest Beowolf threw its head back and let loose an ear-splitting howl.




The lead Beowolf lunged, its jagged claws swiping downward in a lethal arc.




Weiss reacted on instinct. She thrust Myrtenaster upward, deflecting the heavy strike with the reinforced guard of her rapier.




The sheer kinetic force drove her backward, her heeled boots carving two parallel ruts through the soil.




She gritted her teeth, centering her weight as her heart hammered in her ears.




'Remember your training, Weiss,' she commanded herself, forcing her breathing to steady. 'Head up... Shoulders back... Right foot forward... No, not that forward!'




She shifted her stance back an inch, narrowing her eyes. 'Slow your breathing. Wait for the right time to strike. And...'




She thumbed the revolver cylinder above Myrtenaster's hilt. The mechanism spun with a sharp mechanical whir, locking a vial of vibrant red Fire Dust into the ignition chamber. The blade glowed molten hot.

'Now!'




Weiss surged forward, aiming a piercing thrust at the beast's chest.




"Gotcha!"




A flash of crimson petals exploded between them. Ruby dropped out of thin air, Crescent Rose already swung back in a massive arc, intent on decapitating the Grimm before Weiss could land her blow.

"What?!" Weiss gasped, her eyes flying wide in absolute horror.




Ruby's scythe slammed into the Beowolf's shoulder, completely cutting off Weiss's line of attack. To avoid impaling Ruby through the back, Weiss violently jerked Myrtenaster upward, aborting her strike.




The contained Fire Dust discharged in a wild, uncontrolled wave. A torrent of scarlet flame roared from the rapier's tip, tearing across the clearing and engulfing an ancient, dead oak tree.




Within seconds, the dry bark erupted into an inferno.




"Ruby, look out!" Weiss shrieked.

Ruby looked back at the roaring flames in bewilderment, completely dropping her guard. "Wait, did you just—"




A second Beowolf slammed its massive skull directly into Crescent Rose's haft.




The impact sent Ruby flying backward, crashing violently into Weiss.




Both girls went down in a tangled heap of skirts, cloaks, and weapons.




"Hey, watch it!" Ruby yelled from the dirt.




Weiss scrambled up, her face burning with fury. "Excuse me?! You attacked out of turn! I could have incinerated you!"




Ruby sprang to her feet, Crescent Rose clicking into her hands. "You'll have to try a lot harder than that!"




Around them, the situation spiraled into absolute chaos.




The burning tree groaned, collapsing across the clearing and igniting the surrounding brush. A ring of crackling orange fire and thick, choking black smoke boxed the two girls in.




The heat was blistering.




Driven mad by the flames, the remaining five Beowolves snarled, their red eyes fixed entirely on the trapped teenagers.




"We have to go!" Weiss yelled, coughing through the smoke as she raised her rapier.




"They're blocking the exit!" Ruby shouted back, crouching low.




Two massive Beowolves lunged simultaneously through the curtain of fire, their claws outstretched to tear the girls to shreds.




CRACK-BOOM!




The air itself seemed to rupture.




Two hyper-compressed concussive shockwaves tore through the smoke, shrieking like artillery shells.




The kinetic blasts struck both airborne Grimm dead-center, shattering their bone masks into jagged fragments and hurling their heavy bodies fifty feet backward into the burning timber.




Before the girls could even process what had happened, the canopy above parted violently.




A green blur fell like a thunderbolt.




Izuku Midoriya crashed into the earth between the girls and the remaining Grimm.




The impact cratered the soil beneath his heavy Iron Soles, kicking up a protective gale of wind and pulverized dirt.




Without breaking stride, Izuku pivoted on his heel, drove his fist into the ribs of a third charging Beowolf with a sickening crunch, and followed through with a brutal, spinning sweep kick that sent the monster crashing through a burning log.




The beast twitched once before its body dissolved into billowing black vapor.




Izuku straightened, his broad shoulders rising as green bio-electricity sparked across his dark green costume.




Ruby and Weiss sat frozen on the ground, staring at him with dinner-plate eyes.




"Who are you?!" Ruby gasped.




Izuku glanced over his shoulder. His green curls were tossed by the heat, his defined jaw set, and his scarred Air Force gauntlets were held in a tight, disciplined guard. 'They speak English?'




"I'm a hero," he said, his English spoken with a calm, flat gravity that carried over the crackling flames. "I'm here to help."




Izuku turned his attention back to the perimeter, his sharp eyes taking in the scene in an instant.




'Black and white masks... they dissolved into ash upon death. Definitely not animals, so these must be someone's quirk creations.'




His fist tightened. 'These are the things, I probably felt earlier. They're giving off that feeling now.' Izuku's emerald eye thoroughly scanned each of them around him. 'Not a lot of people can make this many. Only Dark Might did before with the help if Anna's quirk.'




His gaze flicked back to Ruby and Weiss. 'A transforming scythe-rifle and a rapier. No body armor. Flowing skirts. Are these two hero students? What country sanctions high schoolers in an uncontained combat zone?'




Four more Beowolves charged through the fiery perimeter, snarling with unrestrained savagery.




Izuku didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, meeting the beasts head-on. With fluid, ruthless economy of movement, he ducked beneath an incoming claw, drove his elbow into a Grimm's throat, and caught a second by the skull, slamming it face-first into a boulder.




Ruby scrambled to her feet, her eyes sparkling with sudden adrenaline. "He's amazing! Weiss, come on, we're not letting him have all the fun!"




"Wait, you dolt—!"




Ruby rocketed forward with Crescent Rose, while Weiss lunged from the opposite flank. But just like before, their coordination was a trainwreck. Ruby swung wide, forcing Weiss to duck, while Weiss's glyphs nearly tripped Ruby mid-dash.




Izuku sidestepped a lunging Beowolf, snapped his wrist forward, and flicked his middle finger.




THWIP-BANG!




A targeted Air Force blast drilled through the Grimm's skull like a rifle shot.




Ruby froze mid-swing, her jaw dropping as she stared at his gauntlets. "What kind of gauntlets are those?! There's no barrel! How did you fire an air shot without Dust?!"




"Ruby, pay attention!" Weiss screamed.




Above them, a massive burning pine branch cracked under the thermal strain, snapping free and plummeting directly toward Ruby's head.




Weiss lunged forward, thrusting Myrtenaster upward. A pale blue glyph flashed above the blade, sending a concentrated frost beam that froze the branch solid before it could crush Ruby, deflecting it into the ash.




"I told you to focus!" Weiss scolded, chest heaving.




"I am focusing!" Ruby snapped back.




Izuku dodged a swipe, catching a Beowolf by its forearm. With a fluid judo throw, he hoisted the two-hundred-pound monster over his shoulder and hurled it directly into two others, sending the pack sprawling into the blazing underbrush.




'Are they serious?' Izuku thought, his brow furrowing in disbelief. 'Arguing in the middle of an active fire zone?!'




The wind was picking up, fanning the blaze. The heat was becoming unbearable, and the thick smoke was beginning to poison the clearing.




'If this fire crowns the canopy, the entire valley will burn. I have to put it out right now.'




Izuku pivoted, sprinting straight toward the two girls.




"Hold on," he ordered in English.




"Wait, what—" Ruby squeaked.




"Hey! Let go of—" Weiss protested.




Before either could react, Izuku's arms scooped them up, pinning Ruby under his right arm and Weiss under his left like a pair of unruly parcels.




"Full Cowling," he muttered.




Emerald lightning flared violently around his legs. Izuku flexed his knees and drove upward with raw, explosive power.




The ground cratered beneath them as the three of them rocketed forty feet straight into the sky, clearing the smoke, the burning canopy, and the ring of monsters in a single heartbeat.




Suspended at the apex of the jump, Ruby's eyes widened as she heard a distinct mechanical click echoing from the reinforced heel assemblies of his boots.




Izuku held both girls securely against his sides with one arm, while his free right leg wound back in the open air. The green current along his calf compressed, glowing with blinding brilliance.




'Twenty percent... Shoot Style...' Izuku's voice tore through the wind:

"SMASH!"




He kicked the empty air downward with terrifying velocity.




The resulting shockwave didn't just push the air—it pulverized it.




A hurricane-force atmospheric blast cascaded downward in a violent, expanding cone of raw kinetic pressure.




The shockwave slammed into the clearing like an invisible hammer.




In a fraction of a second, the sheer concussive force starved the blaze of oxygen, completely snuffing out the flames in a deafening WHOOSH.




Pulverized dirt, smoking embers, and shattered brush exploded outward in a massive shock ring.




The concussive pressure wave crushed the remaining Beowolves flat against the earth, shattering their bone plates and instantly disintegrating them into billowing clouds of black mist.




Below them, the raging inferno was replaced by a silent, smoldering crater of dirt and ash.




Ruby and Weiss hung in his grip, their eyes wide, completely paralyzed by the sheer, terrifying display of unassisted physical power.




As they began their descent back toward the earth, Izuku's teeth suddenly clicked together.




GAAAH!




A searing, nauseating cramp seized the center of his chest.




It felt as though a pair of invisible, burning hands had reached inside his ribcage and violently squeezed his heart.




The emerald sparks crackling around his skin sputtered and died instantly. His lungs seized, starving for oxygen, and his vision swam with dizzying black spots.




'What... what was that?!' Izuku mentally gasped, his boots hitting the smoldering dirt with a heavy, unsteady thud. 'That was barely twenty percent... why does it feel like my soul is being ripped out through my ribs?!'




He fought the urge to collapse onto his knees, locking his trembling joints through sheer willpower as he gently set the two speechless girls back onto their feet.




Weiss and Ruby slipped out from under his arms, their boots landing with light scuffs against the charred earth.




For a moment, neither of them spoke.




They just stood there, brushing soot from their skirts and staring at the massive, smooth crater Izuku had carved into the clearing with a single kick.




The lingering smell of ozone and burnt wood hung thick in the air, but the fire was completely gone.




Weiss adjusted her bolero jacket, her hand visibly shaking before she smoothed it over her hip. "Well... that was unexpected."




Ruby blinked slowly, Crescent Rose hanging limp in her hands. "Yeah… I'll say."




Izuku took a deep, steadying breath, willing the violent tremble in his chest to subside.




He turned toward the two girls, his eyes scanning them from head to toe for any visible burns or open wounds.




"Daijōbu desu ka?" he asked reflexively.

Ruby tilted her head, her black-and-red hair swishing across her shoulders. Her silver eyes blinked in pure confusion. "Dai-what now?"




Weiss's brow pinched together, her sharp gaze narrowing. "What language was that? Mistralian?"




Izuku blinked, his mind catching up to his tongue. He raised his hands slightly in an apologetic gesture, switching back to English. "Ah, right. Sorry. Force of habit. I asked... are you two hurt?"




Ruby shook her head rapidly, a nervous smile returning to her face. "Nope! We're fine! Well, for the most part. Aside from nearly getting squashed by a tree."




Weiss scoffed, crossing her arms tightly across her chest as her haughty scowl returned in full force. "Luckily so, considering how this child attacked completely out of turn and nearly incinerated us along with half the forest!"




Ruby whipped around, her temper flaring right back up. "Hey! It is not my fault you needed my help to take down those Grimm!"




Izuku's brow twitched. 'Grimm? Is that what those creatures are called?'




"Help?!" Weiss gestured violently toward the smoking wreckage behind them. "Oh, congratulations on being the youngest child to ever sneak her way into Beacon, but that doesn't mean you can just charge in without a single tactical thought in your head!"




Ruby's hands clenched into fists, her teeth gritting as she prepared to scream back.




Before the argument could reignite, a heavy, scarred glove rested gently on Ruby's shoulder.




Ruby froze. She looked up, startled by the sudden weight.




Izuku didn't look angry, but his presence was immovable. He kept one hand on Ruby's shoulder, anchoring her, and raised his other hand toward Weiss in a firm, commanding gesture.




"That's enough," Izuku said.




His voice wasn't loud, but it carried the blunt, no-nonsense authority of a squad leader who had coordinated defensive lines under artillery fire.




Both girls fell instantly silent, staring at him.




"I don't know what you two were doing before I dropped in," Izuku continued calmly, looking between them. "And I don't know the rules of this exercise. But I do know you shouldn't be screaming at each other in an active combat zone. You're teammates, aren't you?"




Weiss's mouth thinned into a sour line. She looked away, muttering begrudgingly, "...Unfortunately."




Ruby squinted her eyes and let out a frustrated groan, crossing her arms.

"Then you should be trying to find a rhythm, not tearing each other down," Izuku told them.




"It's obvious this is the first time you've ever fought together. When two people with completely different styles share a battlefield for the first time, coordination errors happen. It's normal."




He shifted his gaze down to Ruby, his sharp features softening just enough to remove any sting from his words.




"You're not used to fighting with others. That's okay. But you need to be mindful of the people beside you. Don't overestimate yourself."




Ruby frowned. "I'm not overestimating myself. I know what I can do."




"I'm sure you do," Izuku said gently. "But no one can do everything alone. That's why teams exist."




"Confidence is good," he said gently. "You have incredible speed and a great instinct for momentum. But I can tell you're used to fighting alone. In a group, charging in without reading your ally's firing line doesn't make you helpful—it makes you a hazard. Don't let your eagerness trick you into thinking you have to handle every threat by yourself."




Ruby fidgeted under his steady gaze, her cheeks dusting with a faint pink. She looked down at the grass, kicking a clump of dirt. "...Fine. I hear you."




Behind her, Weiss watched the exchange with a sudden, calculating spark in her blue eyes.




'He recognized her flawed combat habits immediately,' Weiss thought, her posture straightening as a pleased smirk touched her lips.




'And he actually managed to make that hyperactive dolt listen without a childish tantrum. And his physical strength rivals a professional Huntsman, his reaction time is absurd, and he has actual battlefield awareness. If Pyrrha Nikos is unavailable... this boy would be more than enough to guarantee my standing as top of the class.'




Weiss cleared her throat delicately and stepped forward, exuding all the poise of the Schnee family name. "Why, thank you," she said smoothly, offering Izuku a small, approving nod. "It is refreshing to see that someone here has the sense to recognize who was actually at fault, and what she must do for us to function."




Izuku slowly turned his head to look at her.

"You're at fault as well," he said flatly.

Weiss stopped dead. The smirk vanished from her face, her jaw slacking. "Excuse me?! What do you mean?!"




"She made a rookie mistake," Izuku replied, pointing a finger directly at Weiss's rapier.




"But instead of communicating like a partner, you mocked her. You threw insults in the middle of a fight. Antagonizing someone who is already panicked will never make them listen to you; it just guarantees they'll ignore you next time. You're older than her, but you let your temper control your strikes. That wild fire blast was born out of frustration, not tactical necessity."




He crossed his arms over his chest, his green eyes boring into hers.




"You have an attitude problem, miss. A leader who can't control their own irritation has no business giving orders."




Weiss gasped, her face flushing crimson with pure, unadulterated outrage. "How dare you! I do not have an attitude problem! I have practiced immaculate etiquette and discipline since I was a child!"




Behind Izuku's shoulder, Ruby slapped a hand over her mouth, muffling a fit of giggles.




Izuku didn't blink. "Right. If that's what you need to tell yourself."




He turned away from her, scanning the trees. "In any case, we're wasting daylight standing in an open crater. Those monsters were drawn by the noise. More will come."




Weiss took three deep, ragged breaths, silently chanting every breathing exercise her tutors had ever taught her to avoid screaming. She forced her voice to remain civil, though it vibrated with suppressed rage.




"Yes... fine. We have wasted enough time," Weiss spat out, turning her back to him. "Regardless of your rude assessment, I suppose I should thank you for your intervention. But Ruby and I have an objective to complete. We are heading north to the temple ruins."




Ruby bounced over to Izuku's side, her earlier sulking completely forgotten as she beamed up at him. "Yeah! I'm still not totally sold on working with Miss Crabby over there, but passing this initiation will be a piece of cake with someone as cool and strong as you! Once we find my sister, Yang, our four-person team will be totally unstoppable!"




Izuku stopped walking. His brows drew together, his analytical mind piecing together the fragmented clues.




He glanced back at the two girls. 'They seem to be around my age. And the white haired girl mentioned that the black haired girl seems to have snuck into Beacon… so it's hero school, huh?'




Izuku pivoted and looked around. 'They fought those Grimm as they called them, with pretty unique support items. And didn't seem that worried, so they really must be having a entrance exam for that hero school.'




His eyes squinted and he turns back to them. 'Guess overseas hero schools have later entrance exams, but U.A. may have intense practical exams, but they use controlled combat robots. Sending high schoolers into an uncontained forest crawling with murderous shadow beasts with spiked bones... they really aren't playing it safe here.'




He exhaled a long breath through his nose. "I think there's been a misunderstanding."




Ruby and Weiss both paused, glancing back at him curiously. "A misunderstanding?" Ruby asked.




"I'm not a student here," Izuku stated, keeping his tone measured. "I'm not part of your school or taking this initiation test."




Weiss scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Oh, please. If you're going to try and act like some mysterious, rogue lone wolf, save it for someone who cares. You're wearing a specialized combat suit, you have customized equipment, and you're in the Emerald Forest. You were launched from Beacon Cliff just like the rest of us."




"I wasn't launched from a cliff," Izuku said, his voice dropping into a serious, grounded register. "I don't even belong in this country. I'm from Musutafu, in Japan. I'm a hero student from U.A. High School. I was assisting a Pro Hero with a villain apprehension when the suspect overdosed on a drug called Trigger and detonated an unstable spatial warp quirk. It threw me through an anomaly, and I crashed into this forest awhile ago."




He looked directly at Weiss, his gaze sharp and earnest. "Could you point me toward the pro heroes or instructors overseeing this exam? I need to contact the Hero Public Safety Commission and find a way back home."




A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the crater.




Ruby blinked. Once. Twice. Her head tilted to the side like a puzzled puppy. "Uhm... what?"




Weiss rubbed the bridge of her nose, letting out a long, exhausted groan that sounded like a tea kettle whistling. 'Warp quirks? Villains? A country called Japan? What is this lunatic babbling about?! Just when I thought I had found a prodigy, he turns out to be entirely delusional! Why does this always happen to me?!'




"Did you... hit your head really hard during your landing?" Ruby asked gently, stepping closer with genuine concern in her wide silver eyes. "I know almost all the combat schools—Signal, Sanctum, Pharos, Shade, Haven, Atlas... but I've never heard of a kingdom or a school called 'U.A.' anywhere in Vale. Or anywhere on Remnant, actually. And what's a 'quirk'? Is that an Atlas word for Semblance?"




Izuku's breath caught in his throat.

The air in his lungs suddenly felt freezing.

'Never heard of Japan? Never heard of quirks?'




His heart gave a violent, sickening lurch against his ribs. 'That's impossible. Quirks make up eighty percent of the global population. Even if this were some isolated island off the coast of Europe or America, the word 'Quirk' is universal. And she called the world... Remnant? Kingdom of Vale?'




Izuku's eyes widened. A prickle of cold sweat ran down the back of his neck.




'No. No, they're messing with me. It's an exam scenario. They're trying to throw me off balance. They have to be.'




Without moving a muscle, Izuku drew upon a fraction of his fading embers.




A quiet emerald spark flashed across his ears as he enhanced his auditory senses, tuning everything else out until the only sound in the world was the rhythmic pulsing of the two girls' bodies.




Thump-thump. Thump-thump.




Ruby's heartbeat was slightly elevated from the battle, but steady, open, and completely earnest.




Thump-thump. Thump-thump.




Weiss's pulse carried a thread of lingering annoyance, but beneath it lay total, unvarnished honesty.




There was no stutter. No micro-spike of adrenaline that signaled a lie.




They weren't acting. They truly had no idea what Japan, Quirks, or Pro Heroes were.




Izuku took an involuntary step backward, his boots sliding against the ash. The color drained from his face, leaving his tanned skin a sickly, pale grey.




"No..." he whispered, his native Japanese slipping past his lips before he caught himself. "No, that... that can't be."




He spun around wildly, his eyes darting frantically across the clearing. He looked for a satellite dish, an electrical wire, a paved road, anything that belonged to the modern world he had fought a war to protect.




There was nothing. Just colossal, alien trees and dirt.




A sudden gust of wind swept down from the mountain ridges, whispering through the canopy.




The thick morning clouds parted across the eastern horizon, clearing a wide, pristine swath of pale blue sky.




Izuku's gaze drifted upward.




And his entire world shattered.




Hanging in the pale daylight, drifting in cold, silent orbit, was the moon.




Except it wasn't a sphere.




A massive, jagged crater tore through its side. Millions of shattered, glowing white fragments trailed behind it like a shattered halo, drifting aimlessly in the vacuum of space.




It looked like an ancient porcelain plate that had been smashed against stone and left suspended in the heavens.




Izuku stared at it. His pupils contracted until they were tiny pinpricks of dark green.




His knees completely gave out.




He hit the dirt with a dull, hollow thud, his fingers plunging into the soil and dead leaves.




"No..." The word escaped him as a broken rasp.




He clutched the sides of his head with both hands, his gloved fingers tangling into his messy curls, pulling until his scalp burned.




His breathing turned erratic, shallow gasps tearing at his throat as the reality slammed into him like a runaway train.




'The moon... it's broken.'




The thought echoed in his skull, deafening and absolute.




'The moon has never been broken on Earth. Not during the dawn of quirks. Not during the Dark Age of All For One. Not during the war.'




His shoulders began to shake.

'I'm not in Japan…. Or in Europe... I'm not on Earth at all...'




The realization didn't just scare him; it tore through his soul like shrapnel.

He was gone. Ripped away from his world.




His mother was waiting for him back in Musutafu.




She had cried so many tears when he left for the war, begging him to come home safe. All Might had sacrificed his body, his pride, and his youth to pass the torch to him. Class 2-A—Bakugo, Todoroki, Uraraka, Iida—they were all rebuilding Japan together, sweating side-by-side in the dirt to forge a future where no one would ever have to live in fear again.




And he had been working so hard. He was fighting so desperately every single morning, punishing his body against trees and iron, just to keep up.




Just to prove that even as the embers died, Izuku Midoriya could still stand beside them as a hero.




And now... he was nowhere.




"Mom..." he choked out in Japanese, his voice cracking into a ragged sob. "All Might... everyone..."




Hot, heavy tears spilled over his lower lashes, carving clean tracks through the soot on his cheeks.




He curled inward, his forehead pressing against the cold dirt of an alien world, his broad, muscular frame shaking with violent, unrestrained weeping.




The hero who had brought down the greatest evil in history was kneeling in the ash, crying like a lost, terrified child.




Ruby and Weiss stood frozen, the harshness completely drained from the clearing.




They had just watched this boy drop from the clouds like a wrathful god. They had seen him shatter monsters with his bare fists, carry both of them into the stratosphere without breaking a sweat, and extinguish a raging forest fire with the wind of a single kick.




To see that same unstoppable force collapse into the dirt, weeping in utter, inconsolable grief... it was jarring. It was heartbreaking.




Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat. She stepped forward slowly, letting Crescent Rose fold up and rest securely on her back.




She knelt in the soot beside him, her small hand hesitating in the air before resting gently on his trembling shoulder.




"U-Uhm..." Ruby whispered, her silver eyes shimmering with pure, empathetic sorrow. "Hey... are you okay?"




Izuku flinched at the gentle touch.

The warmth of her hand against his fabric sent a jolt through his panicked spiral. His breath hitched in his throat.




'Stop it,' a voice echoed in his mind—sharp, stern, carrying the familiar tone of Gran Torino. 'Get a hold of yourself, kid. Look at where you are.'

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, his teeth grinding together until his jaw ached.




'Right…. I have people here. People who don't understand what's happening. And they're in the middle of an exam. I can't break down… Not here.'




He took a deep breath. Then another. Slowly, he forced himself to his feet and wiped his eyes.




Slowly, agonizingly, Izuku raised his gauntlets and wiped the tears and soot from his face.




He pushed himself off the earth, his boots finding purchase as he rose to his full height.




He kept his head tilted down for a moment, letting his wild green curls hide his red-rimmed eyes, before looking back at the two girls.




"Sorry…," Izuku said, his English thick and slightly strained, but steady. "I... apologize for that. That was unprofessional of me."




Weiss stepped forward, her rapier lowered at her side. The haughty, arrogant heiress was entirely gone; in her place was a girl looking at him with genuine, uneasy sympathy.




"You don't need to apologize," Weiss murmured softly.




She glanced up toward the broken moon, then back to his face. "I don't understand your situation... But... Professor Ozpin is at Beacon Cliff. He is the Headmaster. He is perhaps the wisest, most knowledgeable man on the continent. If anyone on Remnant can help you... it's him."




Ruby nodded fiercely, stepping up beside Weiss with a determined clench of her fists. "Yeah! We'll help you get to him! We won't leave you stranded out here!"




Izuku stared at the two of them. Despite their squabbling, despite their childish bickering just minutes ago, the instinct to help someone in pain was completely natural to them.




A faint, tired smile finally touched his lips. "Thank you. Both of you."




He turned his gaze toward the dense, untamed treeline to the north. "You said the objective is a temple ruin north of here, right? To retrieve a relic and return to the cliff?"




"Yes," Weiss confirmed, her hand resting on Myrtenaster's hilt. "Though the forest is infested with Grimm. The further north we travel, the larger the packs become."




Izuku reached down, checking the reinforced steel plates on his boots and rolling his right shoulder. The strange, dull ache in his chest was still lingering, but his muscles were warm, his mind was clear, and his resolve was set.




"Then consider me your temporary escort," Izuku said, stepping out in front of them with quiet, unwavering confidence. "I'll help you clear a path to the ruins, retrieve your relic, and make sure we all get back to that cliff in one piece."




Weiss raised an eyebrow, a faint, impressed smirk returning to her face. "Are you certain?"




Izuku didn't look back, but the edge of a smirk touched his own lips.




"Yeah," he said. "Lead the way."




Weiss nodded crisply, taking the lead as they set off through the underbrush.




Ruby quickly fell into step beside Izuku, her silver eyes repeatedly darting toward his heavy Air Force gauntlets and the intricate mechanical blowback joints on his Iron Soles.




'This is weird,' she thought. 'He's strange. And sad. But he's also strong. And kind. Maybe Beacon won't be so bad if people like him are here.'




"Hey," she said, "those gauntlets are really cool. Where'd you get them?"




Izuku looked down at his Air Force Gauntlets. "Oh, these? They're... a long story."




"We've got time!"




Weiss sighed. "Can we please focus?"




"Right, right. Sorry."




Beneath the shattered moon, the three of them vanished into the deep shadows of the Emerald Forest.




---

 

[GhostJade45]

Fifteen feet above the forest floor, Jaune Arc was still dangling from the trunk of the massive pine like an oversized coat on a hook.




He tugged at the bronze shaft of Pyrrha's javelin for the fifth time, his fingers slipping uselessly off the polished metal.




Beneath his boots, Pyrrha Nikos stood with her hands clasped politely in front of her waist, her bright green eyes tilted upward in patient amusement.




"Need a hand?" Pyrrha asked warmly.




"Nope! I've got it! Totally under control!" Jaune grunted, kicking his legs in a futile attempt to get leverage against the bark. "Just... loosening the fabric! Any second now!"




RIIIP.




The hood of his black sweatshirt finally gave way under his weight.




"Whoa—!"




Jaune plummeted the remaining fifteen feet, limbs pinwheeling wildly before he slammed face-first into a thick bed of pine needles and moss with a muffled oomph.




Above him, Pyrrha raised a hand, a faint, almost imperceptible hum of red energy rippling around her bronze bracers.




The javelin wrenched itself free from the tree trunk and dropped neatly into her waiting palm, shifting back into its compact sword-and-rifle configuration with a crisp metallic click.




Jaune pushed himself up onto his elbows, spitting a dry leaf out of his mouth. "Meant to do that," he wheezed, brushing dirt from his chest plate. "Tactical dismount. Saves time."




Pyrrha hid a small smile behind her hand. "Of course. Well, now that we're both on solid ground, we should head north toward the temple ruins."




"Right. North. Lead the way, partner," Jaune said, scrambling to his feet and falling into step behind her as they pushed into the dense undergrowth.




They had barely walked fifty yards when the distant roar of a forest fire—and the crackle of gunfire from where Weiss had marched off earlier—echoed across the southern valley.




Jaune's head whipped around. "Uh, did you hear that?"




Pyrrha paused, her brow furrowing as she looked back toward the rising plume of dark smoke above the canopy. "Gunfire. And smoke. It seems some of our comrades have already encountered the enemy."




Before she could take another step, the air pressure across the entire valley suddenly dropped.




Then—CRACK-BOOOOOOM!




A concussive, thunderous shockwave tore through the southern sector of the Emerald Forest like a detonating artillery shell.




The very earth beneath Jaune and Pyrrha's boots shuddered.




Hundreds of birds exploded from the treetops in a panicked frenzy, and a violent gale of warm, ash-scented wind roared through the pines, whipping Pyrrha's long crimson ponytail straight back and nearly knocking Jaune off his feet.




"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Jaune yelped, flailing his arms to keep his balance. "What the heck was that?! Did someone bring a cannon to the exam?!"




Pyrrha braced her boots against the trembling soil, her green eyes wide with genuine shock as she stared toward the southern ridge.




The towering column of black smoke that had been rising into the sky just seconds ago had completely vanished—blown apart by whatever titanic impact had just occurred.




'What kind of weapon—or Semblance—could generate an atmospheric shockwave of that magnitude?' Pyrrha wondered, her grip tightening on Miló. 'Even Professor Goodwitch couldn't clear an entire section of the forest with a single strike.'




"Let's... let's pick up the pace," Pyrrha said, her tone growing more serious as she turned back toward the northern trail.

"Couldn't agree more!" Jaune squeaked, hurrying after her.




As they pushed through a particularly dense wall of brambles, Pyrrha used Akoúo̱ to shove a thick, low-hanging pine branch out of her path.




She stepped clear and released it—unaware that Jaune was right behind her, still glancing nervously over his shoulder.




THWACK.




The heavy branch snapped back like a spring, smacking Jaune squarely across the face and sending him sprawling flat onto his back.




"Ow!"




Pyrrha gasped, spinning on her heel and rushing back to his side. "Jaune! I'm so sorry!"




Jaune sat up, groaning as he rubbed the back of his head, and forced a weak, awkward laugh. "It's fine! Really, it's just a scratch, see?" He lowered his hand from his face, where a thin line of crimson blood was trickling down his left cheek. "Doesn't even hurt."




Pyrrha stared at the cut on his cheek, her apologetic expression slowly shifting into one of deep confusion. "Why didn't you activate your Aura?"




Jaune blinked. "Huh?"




"Your Aura," Pyrrha repeated, stepping closer.




Jaune stared at her blankly for a beat. "...Gesundheit?"




Pyrrha's eyebrows rose. "Jaune... do you know what Aura is?"




"Pfft! Of course I do!" Jaune scoffed, leaning his head back and waving a hand dismissively while refusing to meet her eyes. "Do you know what Aura is?"




'He has no idea,' Pyrrha realized, her initial disbelief melting into patient sympathy. She offered him a gentle smile. "Aura is the manifestation of our soul. It bears our burdens and shields our hearts."




Half a mile to the east, Lie Ren moved through the shadowed fern beds with measured, silent steps.




"Have you ever felt like you were being watched without knowing that someone was there?" Pyrrha's voice echoed across the quiet woods.




Ren's boots halted on a bed of damp moss. His magenta eyes narrowed to slits.




The distant shockwave from the south had faded, leaving an unnatural, suffocating silence in its wake. A cold prickle ran down the back of Ren's spine.




Behind him, the tall grass parted.




A massive, midnight-black serpent—a King Taijitu, its skull-like face plated in jagged white bone—rose twenty feet into the air, its crimson eyes locked onto his back.




With a deafening hiss, the colossal snake lunged, jaws unhinged to swallow him whole.




Ren didn't flinch. He dropped into a low martial arts stance and leapt straight upward, flipping gracefully over the snapping fangs as the monster's head slammed into the earth.




"With practice, our Aura can be our shield," Pyrrha explained, walking slowly around Jaune as the blond pivoted in place to watch her. "Everyone has it. Even animals."




"What about monsters?" Jaune asked.

Pyrrha paused, her gaze drifting toward the dark shadows of the trees. "No. The monsters we fight lack a soul. They are creatures of Grimm. The manifestation of anonymity. They are the darkness, and we are the light."




"Right!" Jaune nodded, pumping a fist. "That's why we fight them!"




"It's not about why," Pyrrha corrected softly. "It's about knowing. Understanding both dark and light helps us manifest our Aura. Everyone has some of both."




In the eastern glade, the black King Taijitu whipped its colossal snout upward, striking Ren mid-air.




Ren crossed his forearms to block, a faint shimmer of pink Aura absorbing the bone-shattering impact as he skidded backward across the dirt.




Before he could recover, the serpent coiled its massive body around the perimeter of the clearing, trapping him inside a living ring of scales.




Ren drew his twin StormFlower machine-pistols from his sleeves.




Leaping high over the coiling tail, he twisted mid-air and unleashed a hail of green-tracer gunfire down into the monster's back, following through with a spinning axe kick that slammed the black serpent's skull into the dirt.




He landed and lunged forward, driving the curved sickles beneath StormFlower's barrels into the bone plating of its head—HSSSSSS!




From the opposite end of the massive, coiled body, a second head—pure bone-white with glowing red eyes—erupted from the brush.




Ren backflipped away just as the white head's fangs tore up the turf where he had been standing. Both heads—black and white—rose side by side, hissing in stereo.




"By baring your soul outward as a force, you can deflect harm," Pyrrha continued, turning back to face Jaune. "All of our tools and equipment are conduits for Aura. You protect yourself and your soul when fighting."




Jaune closed his eyes, his brow scrunching in deep concentration as he processed her words. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open. "It's like a forcefield!"

Pyrrha smiled warmly. "Yes, if you want to look at it that way."




Across the forest, the two-headed King Taijitu lunged simultaneously.




Ren sprinted up the black serpent's back, vaulted over the snapping jaws of the white head, and slid down the scales, firing both pistols until the black tail whipped around and struck him squarely in the chest.




Storm Flower flew from his hands, skittering into the grass.




Ren hit the dirt and rolled to his feet just as the black head unhinged its jaw and dove straight at his face.




Ren didn't reach for his weapons. He raised his bare hands.




As the razor-sharp fangs descended, a brilliant wave of pink Aura flared outward from Ren's palms, catching the tips of the monster's teeth inches from his chest.




With a sharp exhale, Ren clamped his hands around the massive fangs, wrenched sideways, and snapped the colossal tooth clean out of the serpent's jaw.




The black head shrieked, thrashing backward before lunging again in blind fury.




Ren spun to the side, inverted the broken fang in his grip, and drove the jagged point deep into the serpent's glowing red eye.




With a fluid martial arts palm-heel strike, he slammed the base of the fang, sending a concentrated ripple of pink Aura straight into the monster's skull.




The black head bulged grotesquely—and exploded into a cloud of evaporating black smoke.




Ren dropped into a low stance as the surviving white head screeched in rage.




He sprinted toward his fallen weapons, vaulted into the air to dodge its strike, hurled the second broken fang at its face, and fired a single burst from Storm Flower that struck the hilt of the fang, driving it straight through the white serpent's brain.




Back in the central woods, Pyrrha stepped within arm's reach of Jaune.




"Now, close your eyes," she instructed gently. "And concentrate."




"I—uhhh... okay," Jaune stammered, squeezing his eyes shut.




Pyrrha raised a hand, resting her fingers lightly against his scratched cheek, and placed her other hand over the center of his chestplate. She closed her eyes, and a warm, crimson glow of Aura enveloped her skin.




"For it is in passing that we achieve immortality," Pyrrha chanted softly, her voice carrying an ancient, solemn cadence. "Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee."




A brilliant, pure white light erupted around Jaune's body, interlocking with Pyrrha's crimson glow.




Pyrrha exhaled a heavy breath, her shoulders slumping slightly as she stepped back and lowered her hands.




Jaune's eyes flew open, still shimmering with white light. "Pyrrha? Hey, are you alright?"




Pyrrha straightened up, offering him a reassuring smile. "I'm alright. I used my Aura to unlock yours, but the energy that protects you now is your own."




On Jaune's left cheek, the white light pulsed once, and the bleeding scratch sealed itself completely without leaving a mark.




"And," Pyrrha added, her eyes widening slightly in genuine surprise, "you have a lot of it."




Jaune looked down at his glowing hands, a wide, amazed grin spreading across his face.




—----------------------------------------------------------




In the eastern clearing, the white half of the King Taijitu dissolved into black vapor.




Ren stood atop the fading remains, sliding Storm Flower effortlessly back into his sleeves and brushing a speck of dust from his green coat.




"Koo-koo! Koo-koo!"




A bizarre, warbling bird-call echoed from directly above him.




Ren tilted his head up. Hanging upside down from a low oak branch, her pink skirt defying gravity and a manic grin plastered across her face, was Nora Valkyrie.




"I still don't think that's what a sloth sounds like," Ren said deadpan.




"Boop," Nora whispered, reaching out a finger and poking him squarely on the tip of his nose.




Ren couldn't stop the small, fond smile that tugged at the corner of his lips. "Come on. The ruins are north."




—----------------------------------------------------------




High above the Emerald Forest, the wind whipped across the stone edge of Beacon Cliff.




Professor Ozpin stood near the precipice, his cane resting lightly against the stone as he took a slow sip from his mug.




A few paces behind him, Glynda Goodwitch was not nearly so calm.




Her emerald eyes were locked onto the glowing screen of her Scroll tablet, her fingers flying across the interface as red warning indicators flashed across the topographical grid of Sector Four.




"Headmaster," Glynda said sharply, marching up beside him and turning the tablet toward his face. "We have a serious breach in the southern sector."




Ozpin lowered his mug a fraction, glancing down at the screen. "Oh? Did Miss Xiao Long lose her temper again?"




"I am not joking, Ozpin!" Glynda snapped, adjusting her glasses with a tense flick of her wrist. "Two minutes ago, our seismic and atmospheric sensors in Sector Four registered a localized kinetic shockwave equivalent to a high-yield Dust artillery shell. It completely snuffed out a brushfire that Miss Schnee accidentally ignited."




"How fortunate for the trees," Ozpin murmured mildly.




"It was not Miss Schnee or Miss Rose who extinguished it," Glynda said, her voice dropping into a low, urgent register.




She tapped a command on her screen, pulling up a high-resolution video feed captured by one of the disguised surveillance cameras mounted in the ancient redwoods. "Look."




On the screen, the replay showed Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee boxed in by a ring of roaring orange flames and a pack of seven lunging Beowolves.




Then, twin concussive blasts of compressed air tore through the smoke, shattering two Grimm masks instantly, before a tall, heavily muscled young man in a scarred, dark-green combat suit dropped from the canopy like a meteor.




Ozpin's eyebrows lifted slightly behind his shaded spectacles.




They watched in silence as the unknown youth dismantled the pack with brutal, barehanded precision—crushing ribs, executing a textbook judo throw on a two-hundred-pound Beowolf, and firing a pinpoint air-pressure bullet from his metal gauntlets with a mere flick of his middle finger.




Then, scooping both Ruby and Weiss under his arms, the boy ignited with crackling emerald bio-electricity, vaulted forty feet into the air, and delivered a single downward axe-kick that pulverized the atmosphere itself, flattening the remaining Grimm and starving the inferno of oxygen in a single heartbeat.




Glynda paused the frame on the boy standing in the center of the smoking crater, his broad shoulders heaving as he clutched his chest for a fleeting second before setting the two girls down.




"I have cross-referenced his facial structure and gear against every initiate on our roster, as well as the transfer registries for Haven, Shade, and Atlas," Glynda stated, her expression grim. "He is not a student here, Ozpin. He was never on the cliff platforms this morning. We have an unidentified, unregistered combatant with professional-grade destructive capability operating inside an active initiation zone!"




She tapped her riding crop against her palm, turning toward the cliff edge. "He is currently traveling with Miss Rose and Miss Schnee. I am deploying to Sector Four to intercept and detain him for interrogation immediately."




"Wait, Glynda." Ozpin's voice was quiet, yet it halted her in her tracks.




"Ozpin, you cannot be serious," Glynda protested, spinning back to face him. "That boy is a complete unknown! And Miss Schnee is the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company—if he is a mercenary or a White Fang operative—"




"He is neither," Ozpin said softly. He reached out and tapped the audio waveform icon at the bottom of her tablet.




"Our cameras in Sector Four are equipped with directional microphones, are they not? Play the audio from the crater after the battle concluded."




Frowning, Glynda tapped the icon and raised the volume.




Through the tablet's speaker, the crackling of dying embers gave way to the boy's voice—speaking a foreign, rhythmic phrase ("Daijōbu desu ka?") before switching to calm, measured English.




Ozpin and Glynda listened intently as the boy diffused Ruby and Weiss's argument with the seasoned, no-nonsense authority of a veteran field commander, pointing out Ruby's tunnel vision and bluntly reprimanding the Schnee heiress for her temper and lack of communication.




Then, the tone of the recording shifted.

"I wasn't launched from a cliff," Izuku's voice came through the speaker, earnest and grounded. "I don't even belong in this country. I'm from Musutafu, in Japan. I'm a hero student from U.A. High School. I was assisting a Pro Hero with a villain apprehension when the suspect overdosed on a drug called Trigger and detonated an unstable spatial warp quirk..."




They heard Ruby's confused questions about Remnant and Semblances. They saw the boy on the video feed freeze, a spark of emerald light flashing near his ears as he listened to their heartbeats.




And then, they watched the clouds part in the sky above the clearing—and saw the unstoppable warrior who had just obliterated seven Grimm with his bare hands collapse to his knees in the dirt, clutching his hair and weeping in raw, soul-shattering agony as he stared up at the broken moon.




"Mom... All Might... everyone..."




Even Glynda's stern, unyielding expression faltered. Her hand lowered slightly as she watched the fifteen-year-old Ruby Rose kneel in the soot to comfort the sobbing boy, followed by Weiss Schnee offering to guide him to the Headmaster at Beacon Cliff.




Ozpin's thin brown eyes remained fixed on the screen, a deep, contemplative shadow passing behind his lenses.




"A mercenary does not lecture his hostages on squad cohesion, Glynda," Ozpin murmured, his voice heavy with centuries of quiet observation. "And no spy on Remnant—no matter how skilled an actor—could manufacture that level of grief simply by looking up at our moon."




"Then... what is he?" Glynda whispered, looking back at the frozen frame of the green-haired boy. "Japan? Quirks? A world where the moon is whole? Surely you don't believe—"




"I believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our textbooks, Glynda," Ozpin replied, taking another slow sip from his mug. "Whatever this young man's origin, it is clear he is no ordinary transfer student. Yet he harbors no malice toward our initiates. He saved Miss Rose and Miss Schnee, and he has agreed to escort them to the northern ruins so that he may speak with me directly."




"So we simply leave him down there?" Glynda asked, though the sharp edge had left her voice.




"He is not disrupting the initiation; if anything, he has already taught Miss Rose and Miss Schnee their first real lesson in teamwork," Ozpin said, a faint, intrigued smile touching his lips as he watched the three dots moving steadily northward on the tracking map. "Let us observe how he navigates the rest of the forest. When he arrives at the cliff, I shall be waiting to hear his story myself."




—----------------------------------------------------------




Further to the east, Raymond Novalis was having a very, very bad morning.




"Okay. Okay, Ray, just breathe," the five-foot-four mechanic wheezed, leaning one leather-gloved hand against a mossy boulder as his stomach gave another lingering lurch. "Spatial displacement nausea is temporary. Totally normal. Just don't think about spinning."




He adjusted the heavy steampunk goggles strapped across his messy navy-blue hair and checked the charge indicator on Novasurge—currently shifted into its sleek, azure-glowing plasma rifle configuration.




He had been jogging northward for twenty minutes, trying to follow the terrain toward the temple ruins, when the massive shockwave from the south had nearly rattled the wrench-bolts right off his utility belt.




Worse, the concussive boom had agitated every Grimm in the eastern sector.




Twigs snapped in the brush ahead of him.

Raymond tensed, bringing Novasurge up to his shoulder. "H-Hello? Is that a fellow initiate? Preferably someone tall and heavily armed?"




A low, guttural snarl answered him.




Four massive Beowolves slithered out from the shadows of the pines, their bone masks gleaming and their red eyes fixed hungrily on the short mechanic.




"Nope! Not a fellow initiate!" Raymond yelped.




He pulled the dual triggers.




PZAZZ! PZAZZ!




Twin bolts of superheated azure plasma lanced across the glade, striking the lead Beowolf dead in the chest and blasting it backward into a tree in a shower of sparks and black vapor.




The remaining three howled and lunged simultaneously from three different angles.

"Crap, crap, crap!"




Supernova-blue Aura crackled across Raymond's dark jumpsuit. With a sharp pop of displaced air, he vanished from the center of the pincer attack and rematerialized fifteen feet backward atop a fallen log.




Unfortunately, warping twice in twenty minutes was one jump too many for his inner ear.




Raymond's boots slipped on the damp bark as a wave of dizziness hit him. He tumbled off the log, landing hard on his backside as the three Beowolves spun around and charged straight at his exposed position, jaws dripping black saliva.




Raymond fumbled for his sidearm, Pulse Splitter, at his hip—he wasn't going to draw it in time—




SHING-KRAK!




A blinding crescent of scorching crimson fire and compressed wind erupted from the bamboo thicket to his right.




The elemental wave tore through the air like a guillotine, bisecting the first two airborne Beowolves in a single flash of heat and force.




Before the black ash could even hit the ground, a blur of snowy-white hair and flowing black-and-red fabric dropped between Raymond and the final monster.




The newcomer was a tall, lightly tanned girl—easily four inches taller than Raymond—with a long white ponytail adorned with red knotted ribbons.




In her right hand, she wielded a gorgeous, single-edged Tachi blade that gleamed with a sharp, Rose Gold Aura; in her left, she held the weapon's black-and-gold lacquer sheath, its edge glowing with the exact same lethal reinforcement.




The last Beowolf swiped at her head.




The girl didn't even blink. Her golden-yellow eyes compressed into vertical, serpentine slits.




Moving with terrifying, whisper-quiet speed, she parried the heavy claw upward with her reinforced sheath, pivoted inside the monster's guard, and drew her Tachi across its throat in a lightning-fast slash that severed its head clean off its shoulders.




She slid the blade back into its sheath with a crisp clack as the Beowolf disintegrated into smoke.




For a second, Raymond just sat there on the dirt, staring up at her with wide blue eyes. 'Whoa. Okay. She just dual-wielded a scabbard like a broadsword. What kind of tensile Aura reinforcement is that?!'




Then, the terrifying, slit-eyed swordmaster turned around.




Instantly, the cold, lethal efficiency vanished from her face, replaced by a blinding, ear-to-ear grin that revealed the tips of two unusually sharp, hinged fangs.




Her pupils rounded back to normal, her golden eyes sparkling like a puppy that had just found a new chew toy.




She marched straight over to Raymond, completely ignoring all known laws of personal space, and leaned down until her face was three inches from his goggles.




Her slightly forked tongue flicked out for a fraction of a second, tasting the ozone of his plasma rifle in the air.




"Names Kaen!" Kaen Daija declared cheerfully, grabbing Raymond by both shoulders and hauling him effortlessly to his feet. "You are now my friend, and you can't sshay no!"




Raymond's brain stalled out. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again as he stared at the five-foot-eight white-haired girl beaming down at him.




"Uhm—I—Raymond!" he stammered, his face flushing pink beneath his goggles. "Raymond Novalis! And, uh, thank you for not letting me get eaten! Wait—did we just make eye contact? That means—"




"Yep! Partnerssh for four years!" Kaen cheered, throwing an arm around his shoulders and pulling him against her side with enough enthusiasm to rattle the wrenches on his belt. "Ooh, what'ssh that shiny blue gun-wrench thing on your back? Did you make that? It tastes like lightning and burnt sugar! Come on, Ray-Ray, the big boom came from the south, which means the fun stuff is heading north! Let'ssh go!"




"R-Ray-Ray?!" Raymond squawked as Kaen began practically dragging him up the northern trail at a brisk clip. 'Well... I asked for someone friendly so I wouldn't die alone. I just didn't expect to get adopted by a human hurricane!'




—----------------------------------------------------------




Meanwhile, on the southwestern ridge of the Emerald Forest, the echo of Izuku's distant shockwave had stirred up a different kind of trouble.




Tyler Greystone crouched behind a felled redwood, the brim of his weathered brown Stetson pulled low over the two faded bullet scars on his forehead.




In his hands, his lever-action rifle, Payback, was braced steady against his shoulder.




Through the iron sights, he tracked a pack of five Ursai lumbering agitatedly along the ravine trail below, their hackles raised by the atmospheric tremor that had shaken the valley minutes ago.




'Something big went off to the southeast,' Tyler calculated coldly, his hazel eyes calm. 'Big enough to spook the local packs and push them north toward the ruins. If I want to get through this canyon without burning through half my ammo, I need to thin the herd.'




His Stone-Grey Aura flickered to life.

Deadeye.




To Tyler's perception, the world around him ground to a crawl. The rustling pine needles hung nearly motionless in the breeze; the heavy, lumbering strides of the five Ursai slowed to a sluggish drift.




With practiced, deadly economy, Tyler worked the lever of Payback.




BANG—clack-clack—BANG—clack-clack—BANG!




Three .357 Magnum rounds tore through the air in less than two seconds, punching straight through the eye sockets of the first two Ursai and cracking the bone skull-plate of the third.




Tyler released his Semblance just as the 5-second mark ticked past, conserving his Aura as time snapped back to normal speed.




Two of the giant bears dissolved into black mist instantly, while the remaining three roared in fury, charging up the slope toward the sound of his rifle.




Tyler smoothly slung Payback over his shoulder and drew his twin .44 Magnum revolvers, Revenge and Redemption, from his hip holsters—just as a fourth Ursa, hidden in the brush above the ridge, burst out of the trees directly behind his blind spot.




Tyler pivoted, thumbing back the hammer—THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!




Three arrows—their arrowheads glowing with vibrant blue Ice Dust and yellow Lightning Dust—streaked down from the upper canopy at impossible, time-accelerated velocity.




The arrows struck the ambushing Ursa squarely in the neck and shoulder, freezing its front limbs solid to the ground and sending a paralyzing jolt of electricity through its spine before Tyler calmly put a .44 round through its skull.




As the remaining two Ursai reached the top of the ridge, a shadow dropped silently from the branches thirty feet above.




Magenta Khan landed in a low crouch ten feet to Tyler's left, her cropped white-and-black hoodie pulled securely over her wild magenta curls.




In her hands, her compound steel shortbow split apart at the center hinge with a metallic clack, separating into her twin curved short-swords, Sunder and Spark.




A faint ripple of temporal distortion—her Time Turner Semblance—shimmered around her yellow combat boots. In a blur of accelerated motion, she darted past the fifth Ursa, her twin blades carving twin X-shaped gashes through its ribs before Tyler's hatchet-revolver cleaved through the neck of the last one.




Silence fell over the ridge as the black vapor drifted away on the wind.




Slowly, Magenta straightened up, sheathing Sunder and Spark at her waist.




She turned her head—and her sharp, bright magenta eyes locked directly onto Tyler's hazel ones.




For three seconds, neither of them spoke.




Magenta tensed slightly, her shy nature warring with her urgency as she realized what making eye contact meant. 'No... I was supposed to find Blake first. If I'm partnered with him, I won't be on Blake's team...'




Across from her, Tyler spun Revenge and Redemption once around his index fingers and dropped them smoothly into his leather holsters. He studied the quiet girl in the white hoodie from beneath the brim of his Stetson.




She didn't chatter. She didn't panic. She had spotted his blind spot from the canopy, neutralized the threat with surgical precision, and hadn't wasted a single breath bragging about it.




Tyler reached up and tipped the brim of his Stetson a fraction of an inch.




"Much obliged for the cover," Tyler drawled in his low, gravelly voice. "Name's Tyler Greystone. Looks like we're partners."




Magenta let out a quiet, resigned breath, her shoulders relaxing a fraction as she saw the steady, no-nonsense respect in his eyes. He wasn't loud or pushy like Cardin Winchester. And the sooner she finished this initiation, the sooner she could find Blake at the ruins.




"Magenta," she said softly, giving him a small, polite nod. "Magenta Khan. Have you... seen a girl with long black hair and a black bow heading north?"




"Saw a dark-haired girl and a blonde brawler tearing through a pair of Ursai about a mile northeast of here ten minutes ago," Tyler replied, jerking a thumb toward the northern ridge. "It looked like they were already headed for the temple ruins."




A wave of pure relief washed through Magenta's chest. 'Blake is safe. And she found a partner.'




"Then let's not fall behind," Magenta murmured, her hand resting lightly on the hilts of her twin swords.




"Works for me," Tyler said, falling into step beside her. "Let's move."




—----------------------------------------------------------




Deep in the central valley of the Emerald Forest, the canopy wove a shifting ceiling of emerald and gold above the northern trail.




Izuku Midoriya walked two paces ahead of Ruby Rose and Weiss Schnee, his scarred, dark-green Air Force gauntlets raised slightly at his sides as his sharp green eyes swept the shadows between the ancient trunks.




The dull, phantom ache in the center of his sternum—the lingering backlash from his twenty-percent Shoot Style Smash—had finally subsided into a faint throb, though he made a mental note to keep his output strictly at ten to fifteen percent unless an emergency forced his hand.




Every few seconds, that faint, ghostly prickle at the base of his skull—the residual instinct of Danger Sense—twitched as distant packs of Grimm prowled the outer sectors of the woods, steering clear of the trail for now.




As his boots crunched over the fallen pine needles, Izuku's mind was still racing to process the impossible reality of where he was.




'It's still hard to believe I'm in another world…,' he thought, his brow furrowing as he stared at the shimmering, alien bark of the trees ahead. 'This is a whole other planet called Remnant, but even now, it feels like I'm stuck in some kind of hallucination quirk.'




He replayed the final seconds of his battle in the ravine outside Musutafu over and over in his head. The Tartarus escapee's spatial warp quirk had possessed strict, well-documented limitations: he couldn't warp his own body, and his maximum range was only a few miles.




'Trigger forces a quirk factor beyond its biological threshold,' Izuku analyzed, his old habit of dissecting quirks kicking in to keep his panic at bay. 'We saw it during the Endeavor Agency internship and the Humarise crisis—Trigger can multiply a quirk's scale and even mutate its core mechanism. When that villain tried to force a self-warp portal open and then poured every drop of his Trigger-boosted singularity into his right hand to crush me... knocking him unconscious right as it detonated must have caused the 空間—the spatial singularity—to invert in on itself.'




Warp quirks were already among the rarest abilities on Earth, like Kurogiri's Warp Gate or All For One's spatial sludge.




For a high-density spatial collapse amplified by Trigger to tear through dimensional membranes entirely was absurd—a one-in-a-trillion freak anomaly.




Yet the shattered moon hanging in the pale blue sky above him was undeniable proof.




Izuku glanced back over his shoulder.




Behind him, Weiss Schnee was marching with her chin held high and one hand resting primly on the pommel of her rapier, while Ruby Rose walked beside her, her wide silver eyes darting curiously between Izuku's back and the heavy metal assemblies of his boots.




Izuku turned his gaze forward again, a quiet sigh escaping his nose.




'When I told them about Japan, U.A., and Quirks back in the crater, they genuinely thought I had suffered a head injury during my fall,' Izuku thought ruefully. 'And honestly, I can't blame them. If someone had dropped into the middle of U.A.'s Sports Festival claiming to be a "Huntsman from the Kingdom of Vale on Planet Remnant," I would have assumed they were under the influence of a confusion quirk or having a nervous breakdown.'




His jaw tightened with quiet resolve.




'I can't tell anyone else here that I'm from another world. Not the other students, and not the public. Until I understand this world's laws, its government, and what threats exist here, drawing that kind of attention to myself is way too dangerous. The only person I can risk telling is this Headmaster Ozpin they mentioned. If he's really the wisest man on the continent, hopefully I can convince him I'm telling the truth and get his help figuring out how to survive here—and how to find a way home.'




Behind him, Ruby's boots scuffed against a root.




She had been staring at the back of Izuku's dark-green costume for the last ten minutes, chewing on her lower lip.




Earlier, when he had dropped out of the sky and wiped out the Beowolves, he had looked like an invincible warrior straight out of one of Yang's old storybooks.




Then he had started talking about weird places that didn't exist and cried his heart out looking at the moon.




'He's definitely super weird,' Ruby thought, her silver eyes softening as she looked at his broad, scarred shoulders. 'And really sad about whatever happened to his home. But he also saved me and Weiss, and he wasn't mean when he told me what I did wrong in the fight. He's really cool... and nice.'




Unable to stand the heavy silence for another second, Ruby jogged two quick steps forward until she was walking right beside Izuku's right elbow.




"Soooo!" Ruby said brightly, rocking slightly on her heels as she beamed up at him. "We never actually got your name back there! I'm Ruby Rose, and Miss Grumpy-Pants behind us is Weiss Schnee! What should we call you?"




Izuku blinked, pulled from his thoughts, and looked down at the smaller girl in the red cloak.




For a second, he hesitated.




'Don't get attached,' a cautious voice in the back of his mind warned him. 'You don't belong in this world, Midoriya. You don't want to leave a deep impression on people here or disrupt their lives when you don't even know how long you'll be staying.'




"Midoriya," Izuku said, keeping his voice polite but intentionally brief and guarded, looking straight ahead again. "Izuku Midoriya. You don't need to worry about making small talk with me, Miss Rose. You should save your energy for the rest of your exam."




"Oh..."




The brightness in Ruby's silver eyes dimmed instantly. Her shoulders slumped, and she shrank back half a step, her fingers fiddling awkwardly with the strap of Crescent Rose across her chest as she looked down at the dirt.




"...Right. Sorry for bothering you," Ruby mumbled quietly.




Out of the corner of his eye, Izuku saw her crestfallen expression.




Instantly, a sharp pang of guilt pierced straight through his chest.




'What am I doing?' Izuku mentally kicked himself. 'She knelt in the ash to comfort a complete stranger who was having a breakdown five minutes ago, and now I'm brushing her off like a jerk just because I'm scared of getting involved? A hero doesn't make people feel like a burden!'




Izuku slowed his pace a fraction to match hers, his stoic expression softening into a genuine, slightly sheepish smile.




"Ah—sorry, Rose. I didn't mean for that to sound dismissive," Izuku said gently, rubbing the back of his neck with his gloved hand. "I'm just... a little overwhelmed after landing in a completely unfamiliar place. Back at my school, people usually call me Midoriya or Izuku, or my hero—uh, my combat name, Deku. You can call me whatever you like."




Ruby's head snapped back up, her silver eyes lighting right back up like twin stars. "Really?! Okay, Izuku! Wait—so you do go to a combat school?! I knew it! Nobody fights Beowolves like that without super intense training!"




Behind them, Weiss let out a quiet, skeptical huff, though her blue eyes flicked toward the back of Izuku's head with renewed interest. "So you finally admit you aren't some alien from a mythical kingdom? Which academy trained you, then? Haven? Or one of the private martial arts enclaves in Mistral?"




"It's... a very isolated academy," Izuku said carefully, weaving his cover story without outright lying about U.A.'s nature. "We're cut off from the main Kingdoms, so our terminology and training methods are pretty different from yours. That's why I didn't recognize the name Remnant or Vale earlier."




"Huh, that actually makes way more sense than you hitting your head!" Ruby said, nodding sagely before her eyes locked onto his forearms with barely contained excitement. "Okay, so now that we're officially friends—what about these gauntlets and those awesome metal boots?! Earlier you said they were a long story, and we've totally got time while we walk! Did you forge them yourself?!"




Izuku looked down at his white-and-green Air Force Gauntlets and the heavy black steel plating of his Iron Soles.




A warm, nostalgic ache tugged at his heart as he thought of Hatsume's chaotic workshop and Melissa Shield's bright smile on I-Island.




"No, I didn't make them myself," Izuku admitted, a fond smile touching his lips as he held up his right forearm so Ruby could get a closer look. "I'm terrible at engineering. A really close friend of mine in my school's support department designed and built them for me."




"Ooooh!" Ruby practically vibrated in place, leaning in so close her nose nearly bumped his wrist guard as she inspected the reinforced vents and the double-band mechanism. "They're so sleek! Wait—there's really no trigger mechanism or barrel! How do they work?"




"They're designed to work in tandem with my physical strength," Izuku explained, demonstration-mode taking over as he curled his middle finger against his thumb.




"When I channel energy into my body and flick my fingers, the sudden kinetic snap creates a localized burst of high-pressure wind. Before I had these gauntlets, the wind pressure would scatter in a wide cone. These bracers use micro-vents and a double-band compression chamber to funnel and focus that displaced air into a concentrated, long-range projectile."




He tapped the heel of his right boot against a flat rock beside the trail. With a crisp mechanical clack, the double-layered spring assembly under the sole engaged.




"And these are my Iron Soles," Izuku continued, warming up to the topic as Ruby's eyes sparkled in pure, unadulterated weapon-nerd bliss. "They protect my feet and ankles when I use my kicking style, and the internal spring-and-piston mechanism absorbs the initial impact of my kick and releases a secondary kinetic blowback—effectively doubling the striking power."




"Double-layered kinetic blowback on a non-Dust mechanical boot?!" Ruby gasped, slapping both hands over her cheeks with stars in her eyes. "That is so cool! Your friend must be a total genius!"




"Excuse me," Weiss cut in, stepping up onto Izuku's left side with her arms crossed over her white bolero jacket, clearly unable to pretend she wasn't listening anymore. "I have studied Dust physics and weapon engineering under the finest tutors in Atlas. Are you seriously claiming that the air blast you used to pierce a Beowolf's skull back in that clearing was generated entirely by the physical snap of your own fingers, with zero Wind or Gravity Dust?"




'They keep mentioning Dust, especially element Dust though gravity isn't an element. I guess it's some sort of substance they use in their weapons. I did see Schnee slash out ice to freeze that burning, but I thought that was her quirk or semblance here. Can people here use Dust to have things you'd usually need a quirk to have or do?' Izuku pondered.




"Yes," Izuku answered, looking over at her. "There's no Dust in my equipment."




Weiss stared at his gauntlets, her pale blue eyes narrowing as she ran the math in her head. "That is physically absurd. Even with Aura reinforcement, generating enough atmospheric psi to shatter bone at twenty yards purely through muscular contraction would put catastrophic strain on the metacarpal bones and tendons of your hand!"




Izuku's right hand twitched slightly inside his glove, his fingers brushing over the jagged, permanent surgical scars hidden beneath the fabric.




"Yeah…," Izuku said quietly, his gaze dropping to his glove for a beat. "It used to…. Before I learned how to regulate my power properly and switched to kicking, I broke my fingers and arms more times than I care to count."




Both Ruby and Weiss blinked, caught off guard by the casual, matter-of-fact way he admitted to shattering his own bones.




Weiss's haughty posture softened just a fraction, her eyes lingering on his gloved right hand with a flicker of reassessment before she quickly cleared her throat and looked away.




Wanting to steer the conversation away from his war scars, Izuku looked over at the massive, folded red-and-black contraption latched onto Ruby's back.




"What about your weapon, Rose?" Izuku asked, genuine curiosity lighting up his green eyes. "Back in the clearing, I saw you transition it from a high-caliber sniper rifle into a full-sized war scythe mid-dash. A weapon of that mass should have a terrible center of gravity, yet you swung it around effortlessly and used the rifle's recoil to accelerate your own momentum. I've never seen anyone fight with a blade like that."




Ruby's chest puffed out with so much pride she looked ready to float off the ground.




"Hehehe! You noticed the recoil-boost!" Ruby giggled, reaching behind her back and unlatching the weapon. With a series of loud, satisfying mechanical clack-shhk-clacks, the frame unfolded and extended into the massive, seven-foot sniper-scythe.




She spun it once around her waist with practiced ease and struck a pose. "Meet Crescent Rose! She's a customizable, high-impact sniper-scythe!"




Izuku's eyes went wide as he examined the intricate interlocking gears, the telescopic sight, and the massive curved crescent blade. "The mechanical tolerances on those folding joints have to be down to the millimeter to withstand sniper-caliber recoil without jamming! Did a professional gunsmith in Vale build this for you?"




"Nope!" Ruby beamed, hugging the cold steel shaft of Crescent Rose against her cheek. "I forged her myself back at Signal Academy! All Huntsmen and Huntresses design and build their own weapons!"

Izuku stopped dead in his tracks for a split second.




"Wait—you built this yourself?!" Izuku stared at the fifteen-year-old girl in disbelief, then glanced over at Weiss's ornate silver rapier. "And... it's standard for almost all Huntsmen and Huntresses to forge their own combat gear?"




"Of course," Weiss said, lifting her chin with a touch of pride as she tapped the revolving cylinder of Myrtenaster. "A Huntsman's weapon is an extension of their soul and their Aura. At Signal and Sanctum, students spend years crafting a weapon tailored specifically to their combat style and Semblance."




'Huntsmen and Huntresses,' Izuku noted internally, his analytical mind filing away the crucial piece of worldbuilding. 'So that's what the people who train to fight the Grimm and protect civilians in this world are called. It's the exact equivalent of Pro Heroes back home—except instead of relying on support companies and government equipment agencies, almost every single student here is trained as both a frontline warrior and a master weaponsmith.'




"That's incredible, Rose," Izuku said earnestly, giving the younger girl a warm, impressed smile. "To not only design a dual-mode weapon this complex at your age, but to master its recoil physics so completely in combat... you really are amazing."




Ruby's entire face turned the color of her cloak. She ducked her head, giggling sheepishly as she collapsed Crescent Rose back into its compact form and latched it to her waist. "Aw, shucks, it's really nothing! Well, okay, it took a lot of work, and I accidentally blew up the forge once, and—"




"Ahem!"




Weiss stepped sharply between the two of them, her pale blue eyes flashing with irritation as she planted her hands on her hips.




"If you two are quite finished acting like a pair of buddy-buddy mechanics at a trade fair," Weiss snapped, glaring between Ruby's flustered grin and Izuku's polite expression, "need I remind you that we are in the middle of an official Beacon Academy initiation?! Every minute we spend dawdling and admiring each other's hardware is another minute deducted from our final standing!"




"Aw, come on, Weiss, we were walking the whole time!" Ruby pouted.




"We were strolling!" Weiss corrected haughtily. She spun on her heel, her white ponytail whipping through the air as she marched past Izuku to take the lead at the front of the group. "Honestly, if I leave the navigation to you two, we'll still be wandering these woods by nightfall. Follow me, and try to keep up!"




Ruby rolled her eyes and leaned toward Izuku, stage-whispering behind her hand, "She's just cranky because nobody complimented her fancy toothpick."




"I heard that, you dolt!" Weiss barked from ten paces ahead.




Izuku let out a quiet, amused breath through his nose—the first genuine laugh he had felt since falling through that purple void—and followed the two girls deeper into the forest.




—----------------------------------------------------------




Twenty minutes later, however, nobody was laughing.




Izuku paused beside a tall, moss-covered granite boulder marked with three distinct, diagonal Ursa claw gouges across its eastern face.




He looked at the rock, looked up at the position of the sun through the canopy, and then looked ahead at Weiss.




The Schnee heiress was marching briskly toward the right fork of a narrow game trail.




"It's definitely this way," Weiss declared with absolute, unwavering confidence.




She took five steps down the right fork, stopped dead, and stared at a solid wall of impassable thornbushes.




Without a word, she pivoted one hundred and eighty degrees and marched briskly toward the left fork.




"I mean... this way! It's definitely this way!"

She took four steps to the left, spotted the exact same claw-marked granite boulder Izuku was standing beside, and froze.




Her shoulders slowly sagged. She turned around to face Ruby and Izuku, her face a mask of pained dignity.




"Alright," Weiss said stiffly. "It's official. We've passed it."




Ruby threw her hands up into the air and groaned loudly. "Why can't you just admit you have no idea where we're going?!"

"Because I know exactly where we're going!" Weiss retorted, her cheeks flushing pink. "We're going to... to... the Forest Temple!"




"Oh, stop it! You don't know where we are either!" Ruby accused, before pitching her voice up into a squeaky, exaggeratedly snobbish impression of the heiress as she strutted in a circle with her nose in the air: "'Oh, just keep moving! Hurry up! Wah! Watch where you're going! Don't talk about weapons with Izuku!'"




Izuku quickly raised a gloved hand to his mouth, coughing politely to hide the twitch at the corner of his lips.




Weiss's eye twitched violently. "Why are you so childish?!"




"Why are you so bossy?!" Ruby shot back.




"I am not bossy!"




"Uh, Schnee," Izuku interjected gently, pointing a finger at the granite boulder beside him, "we've actually walked in a two-hundred-yard circle around this rock twice over the last fifteen minutes. The sun is slightly to the south-southeast right now, so when we turned at the ravine back there, we accidentally started heading west instead of north."




Weiss stared at the boulder, then at the sky, her face burning crimson with mortification at having her navigation corrected so calmly.




She crossed her arms tightly and looked away, muttering under her breath, "I'm not perfect... Not yet. Beginning navigation in an unmapped forest is notoriously imprecise."




Before Ruby could fire back another retort, the hairs on the back of Izuku's neck stood straight on end.




A sharp, stabbing jolt of Danger Sense lanced through the back of his skull—ten times stronger than anything he had felt all morning.




Izuku's playful demeanor vanished in an instant. His eyes narrowed to razor-sharp emerald slits.




"Quiet," Izuku commanded in a low, urgent tone, stepping forward and spreading his arms in front of both girls. "Both of you, weapons out. Now!"




Startled by the sudden shift in his voice, Ruby and Weiss immediately dropped their argument. Crescent Rose unfolded into Ruby's hands with a metallic clack, and Weiss drew Myrtenaster into a ready guard.




"What is it?" Weiss whispered tensely, scanning the silent brush. "Another pack of Beowolves?"




"Not just on the ground," Izuku said grimly, his gaze snapping upward toward the canopy. "Above us!"




SCREEEEEEECH!




A deafening, avian shriek tore the sky apart.




The sunlight vanished as a colossal shadow—a Giant Nevermore with a wingspan wider than a city bus and a jagged bone mask over its beak—dove straight down toward the rocky ridge!




With a violent beat of its massive black wings, the Nevermore unleashed a volley of dozens of four-foot-long, steel-hard feathers that whistled through the air like artillery spears.




"Scatter!" Izuku shouted.




Green lightning flared around his body—capped strictly at fifteen percent Full Cowling to avoid the chest seizure—as he lunged left, shoving Ruby clear of a three-feather cluster that slammed into the granite boulder and shattered the solid stone into shrapnel!




To his right, Weiss reacted fast, summoning a white Schnee Glyph in front of her like a shield to deflect two feathers, before leaping backward toward the edge of the ridge—only for the bushes behind her to explode outward as a pack of four massive Ursai charged onto the trail, drawn by the girls' earlier shouting!




"Weiss, behind you!" Ruby yelled, raising Crescent Rose in sniper mode and firing two high-caliber rounds that staggered the lead Ursa.




Izuku pivoted off a tree trunk, snapped his right wrist forward, and flicked two fingers in rapid succession.




THWIP-BANG! THWIP-BANG!




Twin Air Force shockwaves tore across the ridge, blasting two of the charging Ursai off their feet and sending them tumbling down the embankment.




He dashed in to intercept the third Ursa, driving a fifteen-percent St. Louis Smash roundhouse kick straight through its bone jaw.




Above them, the Giant Nevermore banked hard around the mountain ridge, its glowing red eyes locking onto the bright white dress of the girl standing near the cliff ledge.




"Schnee, get away from the edge! It's circling back!" Izuku roared, sprinting toward her across the shattered rock.




Weiss spun around as the wind from the Nevermore's wings buffeted the ridge. She pointed Myrtenaster upward, thumbing the revolver cylinder to blue Ice Dust to freeze the monster's wing—




A second volley of giant black feathers rained down around her feet, cracking the stone ledge she was standing on!




As the rock beneath Weiss's boots gave way, the Giant Nevermore swooped low over the crumbling lip of the ridge.




Its massive, armored talons snapped shut around the back of Weiss's bolero jacket and pack—and with a powerful thrust of its wings, the colossal bird wrenched her clean off the cliffside and into the open sky!




"AAAAAHHHH!" Weiss shrieked as the forest floor dropped away beneath her heels.




"WEISS!" Ruby screamed.




Ruby didn't hesitate. She sprinted to the broken edge of the ridge, aimed Crescent Rose downward, and dissolved into a swirling vortex of crimson rose petals—blasting herself high into the air over the lower canopy in desperate pursuit of the rising bird.




Izuku skidded to a halt at the shattered cliff edge, watching the Giant Nevermore carry Weiss northward toward a set of ancient stone ruins visible in the distance, while Ruby rocketed across the treetops below it.




He clenched his gloved fists, green bio-electricity sparking fiercely around his legs.




'They're heading straight for the northern temple ruins—and the malice I'm sensing up ahead is even bigger than that bird!'




Without wasting a single second, Izuku dropped into a crouch, kicked off the cliff ledge with fifteen percent of One For All, and launched himself across the upper canopy of the Emerald Forest like a green thunderbolt.

 

[GhostJade45]

High above the Emerald Forest, the morning wind whipped across the sheer stone precipice of Beacon Cliff. Stray black crows circled lazily in the cold updrafts, their harsh caws echoing over the vast sea of green below.




Professor Ozpin stood motionless near the cliff's edge. His left hand rested lightly on the head of his slender black cane, while his right held a steaming white mug stamped with the Beacon Academy crest. Shaded spectacles shielded his eyes as he gazed quietly down into the endless canopy.




A few paces behind him, brisk footsteps clicked against the stone.




Glynda Goodwitch marched up beside the Headmaster, her emerald eyes fixed on the glowing screen of her Scroll tablet. Her thumb flicked with clinical precision across the topographical grid.




"Our last pair has officially formed, sir," Glynda reported, not looking up from the data. "Sector Three. Kaen Daija and Raymond Novalis."




The screen displayed a broad tactical map of the forest dotted with glowing tracking beacons, flanked by smaller, real-time video windows at the bottom. Glynda tapped a thumbnail showing Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie.




The feed expanded into the primary window, showing Ren brushing dust from his green coat while Nora hung upside down from an oak bough, cheerfully poking his nose.




Glynda's eyebrows pinched together in a look of mild despair. "Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie... Poor boy. I can't possibly imagine those two getting along."




She tapped another thumbnail, shifting the display to a camera feed overlooking the central woods.




Pyrrha Nikos stood in a sunlit glade with her hands clasped patiently in front of her waist, while Jaune Arc sat on a bed of pine needles, sheepishly wiping a line of blood from his scratched cheek.




"Still," Glynda murmured, her expression tightening slightly, "he is probably far better off than Miss Nikos."




Ozpin took a slow, unhurried sip from his mug. "Hmm."




He glanced sideways at his deputy, then turned his attention back to the emerald expanse below.




"I don't care what his transcripts say," Glynda continued sharply, tapping a circular icon that collapsed the video windows into a standby menu. "That Jaune fella is simply not prepared for this level of combat. His fundamentals are virtually nonexistent."




She let out an exasperated breath and turned to walk toward the command pavilion. "Though I suppose we will find out soon enough. At their current pace, the vanguard should reach the temple ruins within just a few minutes."




Five paces away, Glynda stopped. She looked back over her shoulder, her brow arching with sudden curiosity. "Speaking of which... what did you choose as relics this year?"




Ozpin did not answer immediately.

"Professor Ozpin?"




The silver-haired Headmaster remained still as a statue against the howling cliffside wind. A faint, inscrutable hum rumbled in his chest as his shaded eyes tracked a tiny, unauthorized blip on the lower sensors—a lone green signature tearing across the tree canopy at terrifying speed, relentlessly chasing the shadow of a giant raptor.




"Something simple, Glynda," Ozpin murmured softly into the steam of his mug. "A game of positioning."




—----------------------------------------------------------




Half a mile to the north, sunlight broke through the dense forest ceiling, spilling warm gold across an ancient, circular clearing.




Crumbling marble pillars, choked with thick creeping ivy and cracked by centuries of root growth, stood like silent sentinels around a wide stone courtyard.




In the center of the ring, raised on carved stone pedestals, rested two pristine rows of oversized, polished chess pieces. Half were carved from lustrous golden stone; the other half were sculpted from glossy obsidian.




At the edge of a rocky embankment overlooking the courtyard, the tall ferns parted.




Yang Xiao Long stepped into the clearing, the morning breeze catching her voluminous blonde hair and sending it dancing around her bare shoulders.




She planted both hands on her hips, her lilac eyes sparkling with satisfaction as she looked down at the ruins. "You think this is it?"




Beside her, Blake Belladonna offered only a flat, half-lidded glance—a look that practically screamed 'Really? What else could it possibly be?'—before stepping past her and heading down the incline.




Yang chuckled, falling into an easy, confident stride behind her partner.




They descended into the sunlit courtyard, their boots scuffing softly against moss-slicked flagstones.




Blake approached the row of dark relics, her amber eyes narrowing as she studied the carved statues. "Chess pieces?"




Yang stepped up to the opposite side, scanning the line of golden figures. Her eyes flicked toward a few empty plinths scattered across the dais. "Some of them are missing. Looks like we weren't the first ones here."




Blake crossed her arms over her black-and-white top, glancing across the clearing. "I guess we should pick one."




Yang leaned over the golden row, tapping her chin with a gloved finger before her grin widened. Her hand darted out, wrapping around a statue carved in the likeness of a rearing steed. "Hmmm... how about a cute little pony!"




She hoisted the heavy golden knight high into the air, turning to Blake with an expectant wink.




Blake gave a small, resigned shake of her head, a faint smirk touching her lips. "Sure."




Yang strolled over, tossing the stone horse an inch into the air and catching it cleanly in her palm. "See? That wasn't so hard."




"Well, it's not like this place was very difficult to find," Blake replied quietly.




She began drifting toward the eastern alcove, where a collapsed section of the ruin's outer wall had spilled heavy masonry across the flagstones. As her boot scuffed aside a cluster of dry briars, she stopped dead.




"Yang."




The sudden sharpness in Blake's tone put Yang's feet in motion before her brain even registered the change.




Crouched beside a shattered marble pedestal, half-buried under chunks of crushed mortar, was a bag.




It was made of a heavy, scuffed canvas dyed a faded olive-drab, fitted with reinforced straps and heavy-duty brass zippers that looked entirely foreign to Remnant's sleek, synthetic gear.




Across its top flap ran a wide, scorched black burn mark, as if it had been thrown directly through an explosion.




"What is that?" Yang asked, stepping up behind her and tilting her head. "Did some initiate drop their pack?"




"Hmm, maybe," Blake murmured, carefully hauling the bag free of the stone. "The fabric seems to be reinforced against high-yield heat."




Blake pulled the zipper back.




Inside, fitted snugly into custom-cut shock-absorbent foam, sat rows of thick, metallic-rimmed glass injectors.




Filled inside each cylinder was a thick, sluggish serum. Unlike Dust, which radiated bright, clear elemental light, this liquid was a dark, muddy amber-red that seemed to pulse with an unnatural, sickly viscosity when the morning light struck the glass.




Two of the vials near the bottom had cracked upon impact. A dark crimson fluid had soaked through the foam lining and was currently dribbling through a torn seam in the canvas, leaking slowly into the dirt below the flagstones in a patient, toxic trickle.




Blake picked up one of the intact vials, holding it up to her amber eyes. There was no brand name, no Atlas serial code, and no elemental color spectrum.




"This doesn't look like Dust," Blake stated, her voice dipping into a low, cautious register.




Yang crouched beside her, poking at the bag's strap with one finger. "Well, if it's not Dust, what is it? Some kind of medical stimulant?"




"I don't know," Blake admitted, her brow furrowing with deep unease.




She hesitated for a second, then slid the single intact vial into the deep inner pocket of her outfit before pushing the bag back into the hollow of the collapsed pillar. "We should probably leave the bag here. It's too risky to haul around during an exam, but we should report this to the staff once we reach the cliffs."




"Works for me," Yang said, dusting off her hands as she stood up. "Though if that stuff turns out to be explosive fertilizer, I'm blaming you."




"It's not fertilizer," Blake said softly, looking back at the dark, oily stain seeping into the earth.




Far below the stone tiles, deep within the fractured limestone caves running beneath the ruins, the sweet, acrid scent of the leaking serum drifted through the dark subterranean vents.




In the black hollows of the earth, something colossal stirred. Four glowing red eyes snapped open in the dark, sniffing the unnatural air with sudden, violent hunger.




—----------------------------------------------------------




Before Blake could stand all the way up, the crunch of dry pine needles on the southwestern ridge caught their attention.




Both girls spun around, hands dropping instinctively to their weapons.




Stepping through the perimeter brush with the slow, deliberate stride of a seasoned tracker was a tall boy in a long, dust-brown leather duster.




A weathered brown Stetson was pulled low over his straight brown hair, casting a sharp shadow across the bridge of his nose and partially obscuring two circular, faded bullet scars on his forehead.




In his hands, a heavy lever-action rifle rested loosely across his forearms.




Walking silently half a pace behind him was a girl clad in a cropped white-and-black hoodie.




Her hood was pulled securely forward over her head, casting deep shadows across her brow and hiding everything except a tumble of wild, vibrant magenta curls and a pair of sharp, brilliant magenta eyes.




At her waist rested a pair of curved short-swords linked by an intricate central hinge.




The boy in the duster halted ten paces away. His hazel eyes calmly swept the courtyard, taking in the marble pillars, the pedestals, and the two girls in a fraction of a second.




He raised two fingers to the brim of his hat in a laconic nod.




"Afternoon, ladies," he drawled in a low, gravelly voice. "Looks like we aren't the only ones who made good time."




Yang relaxed her guard, though her lilac eyes remained curious as she took in his cowboy attire. "Not at all cowboy. I'm Yang, and this is Blake."




"Tyler," the gunslinger replied simply. "Tyler Greystone. And the quiet one back there is Magenta."




Magenta stepped forward slightly, offering Yang a polite, reserved dip of her head.




Then, her gaze drifted past Yang and locked directly onto Blake.




Beneath the shadow of her hood, Magenta's eyes widened.




Her breath hitched in her throat, her gloved fingers freezing against the strap of her shortbow.




Blake stiffened, her hand twitching upward toward the large black bow pinned atop her dark hair before forcing her fingers back down to her side.




For two agonizing seconds, neither girl said a word.




Beneath her hood, a wave of profound relief washed through Magenta's chest, followed immediately by a sharp, bittersweet ache.




'She's alive,' Magenta thought, her jaw tightening with quiet emotion. 'She made it to Vale... and she already found a partner. It's unfortunate we couldn't be on the same team... but she looks safe. Even if I'm on another squad, I can still protect her from the shadows.'




Slowly, deliberately, Magenta gave the smallest nod of her head—a silent, private message that needed no words.




Blake swallowed hard, offering the faintest exhale of relief through her nose as she turned her eyes back to the pedestals.




Before Tyler could say anything more, the bamboo thicket on the eastern perimeter violently ruptured with the sound of snapping stalks, grinding gears, and frantic wheezing.




"I'm telling you, Kaen, my vestibular system hasn't recalibrated yet! Terminal atmospheric deceleration followed by a five-hundred-meter dead sprint is scientifically proven to induce severe projectile vomiting!"




"Oh, hush, Ray-Ray! You're fine! Look at your legs, they're moving great!"




Bursting into the ruins came a tall, lightly tanned girl with a snowy-white ponytail tied with crimson ribbons. She was practically dragging a short boy in a dark navy mechanic's jumpsuit behind her by the back harness of his oversized toolbelt.




The boy's steampunk goggles were knocked crooked over his left ear, and his face was green, while the girl looked as fresh and energetic as if she had just stepped out of a luxury spa.




With a bright laugh, she released her grip, letting the five-foot-four boy collapse flat onto a mossy stone bench with a pathetic, muffled groan.




"We made it!" she cheered, throwing her arms out to take in the ancient courtyard.




Her golden-yellow eyes sparkled with unrestrained excitement, and her tongue flicked out for a split second, tasting the lingering morning mist. "Ooooh! Look at these! Shiny little statues! Ray, look, it's like a giant game board!"




Raymond Novalis pressed a heavy leather work glove against his temple, groaning into the damp granite. "If I ever... build a teleportation drive... remind me... to program an inertial dampener..."




Tyler let out a quiet, amused huff from beneath his Stetson, walking over to the pedestals. He looked over the remaining pieces, reached out with a leather-gloved hand, and lifted a heavy Gold Bishop carved in the likeness of a ceremonial mitre.




Raymond, slowly dragging himself upright, pushed his goggles back onto his forehead with a shaky sigh.




He shuffled toward the opposite side of the dais, his blue eyes scanning the obsidian row until he spotted the corresponding figure.




Grunting under its weight, he lifted the matching Black Bishop.




Tyler twirled his golden piece once before sliding it into the deep interior pocket of his duster. "Guess that settles who's stuck with who for the next four years."




Kaen marched over and slapped Raymond on the shoulder with enough force to rattle every socket wrench on his belt. "Hell yeah! A four-person wrecking crew! Ray-Ray makes the gadgets, you shoot the kneecaps, and me and that hooded girl slice up whatever's left!"




Raymond scrambled to steady his belt, flushing pink. "P-Please do not call it 'kneecap shooting' within earshot of faculty..."




Yang crossed her arms, thoroughly entertained. "Well, you guys certainly know how to make an entrance. I'm Yang, this is Blake, and the cowboy over there is Tyler. Plus the girl in the hood is Magenta."




"Names Kaen!" Kaen declared proudly, resting a hand on the pommel of her Tachi. "Kaen Daija! And the dizzy little guy is Raymond!"




"Hey! I'm not little, I'm aerodynamically compact!" Raymond protested defensively.




—----------------------------------------------------------




Meanwhile, deep beneath the rocky limestone ridge half a mile to the south, Jaune Arc was having an entirely different experience.




The cave was pitch-black, save for the weak, flickering orange glow of a makeshift wooden torch Jaune held out in front of him with a violently trembling arm.




On the damp cavern walls, ancient, faded carvings depicted primitive warriors brandishing spears and bows against a colossal, multi-legged horror.




Jaune stared at the jagged pictograms, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his nose. "You... you think this is it?"




Behind him, Pyrrha Nikos walked with quiet, measured grace, her hand resting lightly on the hilt of Miló. "I'm not sure this is it, Jaune."




Jaune let out a long, shuddering sigh, turning slightly to look at her over his shoulder. "Pyrrha... I made the torch." He gestured awkwardly with the smoking branch. "Could you at least humor me for just five more feet?"




He took one bold, confident step forward.

His boot caught on a jagged outcrop of rock.




"Whoa—!"




Jaune went down hard, slamming flat onto his stomach with a heavy metallic clatter.




The crude torch flew from his grip, arcing through the air before splashing directly into a stagnant puddle of water.




It went out with a pathetic, mocking hiss.

Instant, absolute darkness swallowed the cave whole.




The only things visible were two pairs of wide, glowing eyes in the gloom.




Jaune groaned, spitting a mouthful of damp dirt onto the stone. "Ow..."




Pyrrha went completely still. "Jaune... do you feel that?"




Jaune pushed himself onto his elbows, his voice dripping with utter misery. "The soul-crushing regret?"




"No... it's... warm..."




Jaune blinked. He reached out blindly into the damp air, feeling an unnatural, humid heat radiating from the cavern depths ahead.




Suddenly, twenty feet in front of them, a soft, brilliant golden light ignited in the dark.




It swayed gently, suspended five feet above the ground like a glowing lantern.

Jaune scrambled to his feet, a triumphant grin breaking across his face. "That's it! That's the relic!"




He lunged forward, reaching out with both hands.




The light bobbed smoothly backward, sliding effortlessly out of his grasp.




"Heyyy! Bad relic!" Jaune grunted, lunging again.




The light swayed to the left, dodging him like a teasing pendulum.




"Hold still!" Jaune gathered his strength, vaulted off a boulder, and clamped both hands tightly around the glowing golden orb. "Gotcha!"




From the shadows behind him, Pyrrha's voice was suddenly dead, hollow, and laced with pure dread. "Jaune..."




"See? Told you my torch idea would work!" Jaune yelled back proudly.




Then, six pairs of burning crimson eyes ignited in the pitch-black cavern directly below him.




The golden orb wasn't a relic.




It was the venomous, glowing stinger of a colossal Deathstalker.




A deafening, ungodly screech ripped through the subterranean gloom, shaking loose stalactites from the ceiling.




Jaune looked down. His jaw slacked. The color drained from his face until his skin matched the white light of his freshly awakened Aura.




A high-pitched, piercing shriek—one that sounded unmistakably like a terrified schoolgirl—tore out of Jaune's throat and blasted out of the cave mouth, echoing all the way across the northern valley.




—----------------------------------------------------------




Back at the ruins, Yang's head snapped toward the southern treeline. "Some girl's in trouble!"




Blake tilted her head, listening intently as the high-pitched wail echoed across the canopy.




Tyler reached beneath his duster, his thumb resting smoothly over the hammer of Revenge. "That didn't sound like a girl."




"The acoustic frequency suggests a male adolescent experiencing catastrophic fight-or-flight panic," Raymond calculated quickly, tapping his goggles.




Before anyone could move, a deafening crash shook the southern ridge.




Pyrrha Nikos came bursting out of the forest canopy at a dead sprint, her red sash trailing behind her like a battle flag as she vaulted cleanly over a five-foot granite boulder.




Right behind her, tearing through ancient trees as if they were matchsticks, was a colossal Deathstalker.




Its obsidian-black carapace gleamed beneath the sunlight, its massive front claws snapping with the force of hydraulic guillotines.




And dangling from the very tip of its thrashing, glowing stinger was Jaune Arc, his legs kicking wildly in empty air.




"PYRRHA! THIS IS NOT THE RELIC! THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT THE RELIC!" Jaune screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking violently as the scorpion whipped its tail back and forth. "DO SOMETHING!"




Pyrrha skidded to a halt on the mossy flagstones, her boots kicking up dirt as she drew Miló and Akoúo̱, her green eyes wide with panic. "Jaune! Whatever you do, don't let go—!"




The Deathstalker coiled its massive tail backward like a siege catapult.




With a concussive SNAP, the tail whipped forward, launching Jaune Arc clean off its stinger like a medieval artillery shell.




"—go..." Pyrrha finished weakly, watching Jaune sail over the forest canopy toward the clouds.




The Deathstalker clicked its jagged mandibles, hissing aggressively as its six red eyes locked onto the lone Huntress standing in the ruins.




Pyrrha smiled nervously, taking half a step backward and rubbing the back of her neck with one bronze gauntlet.




Then, turning on her heel, she broke into a frantic sprint around the perimeter of the pillars, kicking up leaves as the monster charged after her.




"Blake! Did you hear that?" Yang shouted, turning toward her partner. "What should we—"




Blake didn't answer. Her eyes were fixed entirely on the open sky above the courtyard.




Slowly, her arm rose, pointing a single finger toward the clouds.




Yang turned, looking up.




—----------------------------------------------------------




High above the sea of green, the wind roared with deafening fury.




The Giant Nevermore banked hard across the sky, its massive black wings buffeting the clouds.




Clutched securely in its massive left talons was Weiss Schnee, her white dress fluttering wildly in the freezing gale.




Clinging desperately to the polished leather of Weiss's left boot was Ruby Rose.




After Weiss had been snatched from the ridge, Ruby had used Crescent Rose's recoil to rocket hundreds of feet into the air, barely managing to snag her partner's foot—only to realize that dragging a girl out of the grip of a three-ton raptor while falling was physically impossible.




"Ruby! Letting go of the cliff was a terrible idea!" Weiss shrieked over the howling gale, her fingers digging desperately into the bird's armored ankle scales.




"I was trying to help you! Stop kicking!" Ruby yelled back, her eyes watering from the wind as she tightened her two-handed grip on Weiss's heel.




"I am so far beyond kicking!"




"In a good way?!"




"In a bad way! In a very, very bad way!"




Ruby squinted through the rushing air, spotting the circular marble ruins expanding rapidly beneath them. "Well... why don't we just jump?!"




Weiss looked down at the tiny stone pillars thousands of feet below, her eyes bulging with absolute horror. "What?! Are you completely insane?!"




The Nevermore suddenly rolled its massive body, angling its wings into a steep, high-speed dive.




The sudden shift in momentum tore at Ruby's grip. Her leather gloves slipped against the smooth polished sole of Weiss's heeled boot.




"My hand slipped!" Ruby screamed, her fingers peeling away. "I'll catch you at the ruins! DON'T LET GO!"




Weiss gasped as Ruby was ripped away into the slipstream. "You insufferable, reckless little red—"




Down on the forest floor, a green blur was tearing across the high boughs of the redwood trees.




Izuku Midoriya vaulted from one massive branch to the next, green bio-electricity arcing around his legs as he maintained fifteen percent Full Cowling.




His sternum gave a sharp, dull throb with every impact, but his sharp emerald eyes never left the diving silhouette of the colossal avian Grimm.




He saw the red speck detach from the bird's talons.




'Rose let go!' Izuku analyzed in a split second, his mind calculating her terminal descent. 'She has Crescent Rose—she can use the rifle's recoil to bleed off momentum before impact. But Schnee is still pinned in those talons!'




Izuku's boots slammed into a sturdy redwood bough, bending the wood before launching him forward like an emerald rocket. 'I have to stay on that bird!'




High above the ruins, Ruby plummeted toward the earth, flailing her arms as her black-and-red cloak billowed behind her.




Cupping her hands around her mouth, she let out an ear-splitting yell that echoed down into the courtyard:

"HEEEEAAAADS UUUUUUUUP!"




At that exact moment, arcing across the sky on an intersecting trajectory from the southern cave, Jaune Arc came screaming down like a lead weight.




WHAM.




The two collided mid-air with the concussive crack of bowling pins.




Entangled in a chaotic knot of black cloaks, denim, and flying limbs, the pair crashed directly through the upper branches of a massive pine tree beside the ruins, snapping limbs before slamming into the dense underbrush with a muffled series of thuds.




Silence fell over the courtyard.




Blake turned her head slowly toward Yang. "Did your sister just fall from the sky?"




Yang blinked, her mouth half-open. "I... uh..."




CRACK-CRUNCH!




A row of three ancient birch trees snapped like dry twigs fifty yards to the west.

"YEEEEEE-HAW!"




Bursting into the glade atop a massive, snarling Ursa was Nora Valkyrie. She was riding the beast's neck like a champion bronco, her bright orange hair whipping in the wind as she raised Magnhild high and brought the massive hammer down squarely across the monster's skull.




The Ursa groaned, its legs buckling instantly as it plowed face-first into the dirt, carving a deep furrow through the soil.

Nora hopped off the fallen beast, tapping its snout playfully with the handle of her hammer. "Awww... it's broken."




From the foliage behind the dead Grimm, Lie Ren stumbled out into the light.




His green tunic was soaked with sweat, his long black ponytail completely unraveled, and his chest heaved as he leaned both hands against his knees, gasping for breath.




"Nora..." Ren wheezed, his voice trembling with pure, unadulterated exhaustion. "Please... don't... ever... do that again..."




Nora didn't hear a word. She had already vanished in a pink blur.




A second later, Nora was standing proudly atop one of the central pedestals, hugging a White Rook against her chest.




Triumphant, imaginary fanfare seemed to blare in the background as her eyes sparkled with sheer glee.




"I'm queen of the castle!" she sang out, balancing the heavy stone piece on the heel of her boot with one leg raised high. "I'm queen of the castle!"




"NORA!" Ren barked from the perimeter.

Nora snapped to attention, saluting briskly as the chess piece tumbled off her head and dropped neatly into her waiting hands. "Coming, Ren!"




Yang rubbed her temples with both hands, groaning softly. "Did that girl just come in riding on an Ursa?!"




Tyler adjusted his Stetson, watching Nora skip cheerfully across the courtyard. "She did. Girl's got a few loose screws. I respect that."




Kaen giggled, her golden eyes wide with delight. "I like her! She's got spunk!"




Beside them, the brush rustled.




Ruby sat up in the dirt, groaning as little cartoon Beowolves spun around her dizzy head. She rubbed the back of her neck, blinking through swirling eyes. "What was that...?"




From the branches five feet above her, Jaune Arc was dangling upside down by his pant cuffs, his arms hanging limply toward the grass.




He looked down at Ruby, offering an agonizingly weak, lopsided smile.

"Hey, Ruby..."




An ear-splitting, metallic screech ripped through the clouds above the ruins.

Every head in the courtyard snapped upward.




Circling three hundred feet over the crumbling pillars, the Giant Nevermore banked hard against an updraft.




Its massive black wings beat the air like thunderclaps, and clutched in its trailing talons, dangling by the shredded remains of one white sleeve, was Weiss Schnee.




"HOW COULD YOU LEAVE ME?!" Weiss screamed down at the courtyard, her long white ponytail whipping violently across her eyes.




On the ground beside the shattered pine, Ruby sat up, rubbing the back of her head as cartoon Beowolves spun through her dizzy vision. "I told you to jump!"




Blake crossed her arms, watching the bird's trajectory. "She's going to fall."




Ruby scrambled to her feet, shaking out her skirt. "She's fine!"




Ren leaned heavily against a stone column, his tone deadpan. "She's falling."




Above them, the fabric of Weiss's sleeve tore clean through with a loud, sickening riiiip.




"AAAAAHHHH!"




Weiss plummeted like a lead weight, the air shrieking past her ears.




From the pine branches five feet above Ruby, Jaune Arc scrambled to his feet. He wiped pine needles from his eyes, took a deep breath, and grinned with sudden, desperate heroics.




Jaune launched himself off the branch, arms outstretched like a clumsy catcher's mitt.




Miraculously, his arms locked around Weiss's waist in mid-air.




For one glorious, suspended half-second, Jaune grinned down at the heiress with all the charm he could muster.




Weiss stared back, her expression flat, icy, and completely unamused. "Jaune…."




"Weiss."




Then both of them looked down, abruptly remembering that neither of them possessed a flight Semblance.




They plummeted together.




Jaune slammed face-first into the dirt with a hollow, concussive thud, kicking up a thick plume of dust.




Weiss landed gracefully atop his spine, perfectly upright, smoothing down the pleats of her white dress before casually inspecting her manicured nails.




"My hero," Weiss said dryly into the open air.




From beneath her boots, Jaune's muffled voice groaned into the moss. "My... back..."




Before anyone could laugh, a deafening crash shook the southern archway.




Pyrrha Nikos came skidding across the flagstones, her bronze greaves carving twin sparks across the stone.




Right behind her, obliterating a ten-foot marble pillar into flying rubble, came the colossal Deathstalker. Its obsidian claws snapped like hydraulic shears, its six crimson eyes burning with murderous intent.




Yang threw her hands up, her lilac eyes flaring with crimson sparks. "Great! The gang's all here! Now we can all die together!"




"Not if I can help it!" Ruby cheered, snapping Crescent Rose open with a mechanical clack and charging the beast with a fierce battle cry.




"Ruby, wait!" Yang screamed.




Ruby fired a high-caliber round into the ground to propel herself forward, swinging her massive scythe in a wide, decapitating arc.




CLANG!




The Deathstalker's left pincer shot up, swatting the heavy war blade aside with effortless contempt.




The kinetic blowback knocked Ruby off her feet, sending her tumbling across the courtyard.




She scrambled to sit up, but the Nevermore dove low over the ruins, unleashing a volley of four-foot black feather spears.




Two of the steel-hard feathers pierced the earth on either side of Ruby, pinning the hem of her red cloak securely to the ground!




Ruby yanked frantically at the fabric. "No, no, no—!"




The Deathstalker loomed over her, clicking its mandibles hungrily. Its massive, segmented tail arched high into the air, the venomous golden stinger poised to drive straight down through her chest.




"RUBY!" Yang roared, lunging forward with Ember Celica blazing.




Tyler drew Payback, his hazel eyes narrowing as his Aura flared to slow his perception.




Magenta nocked an arrow, her fingers tightening on the bowstring.




Before anyone could release their strike, a streak of white and pale-blue light tore across the courtyard.




Weiss Schnee lunged directly between Ruby and the descending stinger, driving the rapier tip of Myrtenaster deep into the seam between the stone tiles.




A massive, glowing white glyph flared beneath her feet.




"Freeze!" Weiss shouted.




She spun the revolver cylinder above her hilt, locking a vial of Ice Dust into the ignition chamber.




A torrent of sub-zero frost erupted upward in a spiraling vortex. Within a fraction of a second, a colossal, jagged glacier of solid ice surged along the scorpion's tail, creeping down its carapace and locking its rear legs and stinger in a thick, translucent cage of frost!




The Deathstalker screeched in baffled rage, thrashing against the ice, but the sub-zero frost held firm.




Weiss exhaled a ragged breath, pulling Myrtenaster from the earth and spinning around to face Ruby, her fists planted firmly on her hips.




"You are so childish!" Weiss scolded, her voice trembling with adrenaline. "And dimwitted! And hyperactive! And don't even get me started on your fighting style! You don't have a plan; you have impulses, and one day those impulses are going to get you killed!"




Ruby shrunk back slightly against the dirt, her silver eyes looking down. "I... I wasn't trying to show off. I just wanted you to know I can do this."




Weiss stopped. Her haughty glare softened, the color draining from her cheeks as she sighed and smoothed a stray lock of white hair behind her ear.




"...I suppose," Weiss murmured reluctantly, looking away, "I can be a bit... difficult. But if we are going to do this, we have to do it together. So if you stop trying to prove yourself every five seconds... I will try to be... nicer."




Ruby blinked up at her, a wide, radiant smile breaking across her face. "Really?"




"You're fine," Weiss said softly, extending a hand and pulling Ruby up by her wrist. "Now, stand up. Normal knees."




Ruby whispered happily to herself, "Normal knees..."




Yang charged in, scooping Ruby up into a crushing bear hug that lifted the smaller girl off the ground. "Ruby! I'm so glad you're okay!"




—----------------------------------------------------------




CRACK-BOOM!




The air above the courtyard abruptly inverted with the concussive crack of displaced atmosphere.




A dark-green blur dropped out of the sky like an artillery shell, slamming into the flagstones directly between the students and the frozen Deathstalker.




Izuku Midoriya rose from his three-point landing, emerald bio-electricity crackling fiercely across his scarred Air Force gauntlets and heavy Iron Soles.




His fists were raised in a disciplined, balanced boxer's guard, his sharp emerald eyes scanning the clearing for immediate threats.




His muscles were wound tight, prepared to deliver a concussive Shoot Style roundhouse—only for his gaze to land on the Deathstalker locked inside a ten-foot glacier of sparkling ice.




Izuku blinked. The green sparks flickering along his forearms sputtered and died.




'She froze it,' Izuku thought, letting out a slow, controlled breath as he lowered his hands. 'She analyzed the beast's attack arc, utilized the elemental properties of that rapier, and neutralized the stinger without causing structural collapse. She had it completely under control.'




A sharp pang of nostalgia hit his chest. 'Just like Todoroki's ice walls...'




Ruby wriggled out of Yang's hug, pointing proudly at the newcomer. "Izuku! You made it!"




Yang released her sister, her lilac eyes widening as she took in the broad-shouldered boy standing in the center of the ruins.




She looked him up and down—taking in the scarred fabric of his dark-green costume, the intricate pneumatic pistons on his boots, his tousled green curls, and the youthful freckles dusting his soot-streaked cheeks.




A slow, appreciative grin spread across Yang's face. She strolled forward, resting one hand casually on her hip. "Well, well... aren't you a sight for sore eyes. I'm Yang Xiao Long. Who's the hero in the green suit?"




Ruby puffed out her chest, beaming with uncontained pride. "Everyone, this is Izuku! He dropped out of nowhere back in the forest, saved me and Weiss from a whole pack of Beowolves with his bare hands, and blew out a giant forest fire with a single kick of air pressure!"




Silence fell over the courtyard.




Jaune pushed himself up from the dirt, his eyes wide. "Wait... the boom? That seismic shockwave that nearly knocked me out of a tree an hour ago... that was you?!"




Izuku's face instantly flushed bright crimson.




His disciplined, battle-hardened posture completely dissolved into frantic, stammering panic as he waved his gloved hands back and forth. "A-A-Ah! N-No, it wasn't anything that dramatic, Miss Xiao Long—I mean, Yang! It was just basic emergency response protocol! The fire was about to crown the canopy, so I had to starve the blaze of oxygen, that's all!"




Yang's eyebrows wiggled with pure delight. She leaned an inch closer, tilting her head. "Cute and humble. Where'd you find this one, Rubes? I like him already."




"Yang, stop it!" Ruby pouted, swatting at her sister's arm. "You're embarrassing him!"




"Never," Yang laughed.




—----------------------------------------------------------




With the Deathstalker securely trapped in Weiss's ice and the Nevermore circling high above like a patient vulture, the tension in the courtyard broke into a rare, fragile pocket of calm.




Near the eastern archway, Lie Ren stood resting against a cracked pillar, wiping sweat from his brow.




His twin StormFlower machine-pistols were safely tucked into his sleeves, his magenta eyes observing the group.




A low, measured crunch of gravel sounded beside him.




Tyler Greystone stepped up, leaning his shoulder against the marble with his thumbs hooked into his gunbelt.




Beneath the brim of his Stetson, his sharp hazel eyes drifted toward Nora, who was currently doing cartwheels across the mossy grass with boundless energy.




Tyler pulled a piece of straw from his pocket, nodding toward the orange-haired girl. "Your partner?"




Ren let out a quiet, exhausted breath through his nose, adjusting his cuffs. "Yes. Nora Valkyrie. We've known each other since we were children."




Tyler offered a dry, gravelly chuckle, gesturing with his chin toward Kaen, who was currently attempting to challenge an ancient marble statue to an arm-wrestling contest. "Tyler Greystone. Mine latched onto my duster about a while ago and hasn't stopped shouting since. Does the volume ever dial down?"




Ren looked over at Tyler, the faintest, pained half-smile touching the corner of his lips. "No. But you learn to read the wind before the hammer swings."




Tyler huffed an amused breath, tipping his hat. "Fair enough. Keep your head on a swivel, Ren."




A few paces away on the dais steps, Nora bounded straight up to Kaen, her eyes practically sparkling with kinetic static. "Did you see me riding that Ursa?! It was like WOOSH, and then KABOOM! Smashed it right through the trees!"




Kaen's golden-yellow eyes lit up with matching ferocity.




Her lips pulled back into a wide, fanged grin, completely unbothered by Nora's manic energy. "I saw the dust clouds from three ridges over! That was incredible! My clan tutors in Mistral always said riding Grimm was 'uncivilized,' but I've always wanted to lasso a King Taijitu! Do you think we could saddle the giant scorpion once that ice thaws?!"




Nora gasped dramatically, slamming her fists together with stars in her eyes. "A SCORPION RODEO?! Ren, did you hear that?! We're doing a scorpion rodeo!"




From across the courtyard, Ren and Tyler closed their eyes in silent, collective agony.




Meanwhile, in the center of the flagstones, Raymond Novalis was practically vibrating.




His steampunk goggles had snapped down over his eyes, and he was crouched three inches from Crescent Rose as Ruby proudly held the massive weapon horizontally.




"Wait... you forged this receiver yourself?!" Raymond gasped, his gloved fingers tracing the mechanical joints. "The shearing stress on a folding scythe frame during fifty-caliber gas blowback should warp the hinge pins within twenty rounds!"




"I know, right?!" Ruby practically squealed, thrilled to find someone who spoke her language. "I had to heat-treat the locking pins three times in the Signal forge and use an offset counter-mass in the stock! How does your wrench cycle plasma bolts without a cooling shroud?!"




Raymond tapped the azure conduits along Novasurge. "Micro-vents running through the jaws! It siphons the thermal excess directly into a pneumatic blowback chamber!"




Izuku stood nearby, watching the two of them chatter at two hundred words per minute.




A warm, nostalgic ache tugged at his chest, his lips curling into a soft, fond smile. 'They'd get along so well with Hatsume...'




At the edge of the pedestals, Weiss Schnee approached Kaen, her blue eyes narrowing as she studied the ornate black-and-gold lacquer scabbard at Kaen's hip.




"That craftsmanship," Weiss said, her tone carrying the crisp, analytical poise of an Atlas heiress. "The eight-serpent motif on your hilt... that is the crest of the Daija clan. You're from the ancient martial nobility in Mistral."




Kaen rolled her eyes, groaning loudly as she threw her head back. "Ugh, please don't remind me! Twelve years of tutors trying to teach me how to sit with my ankles crossed and sip tea with my pinky out so I look 'delicate.' Complete waste of time! Give me street noodles and a good brawl any day."




Weiss's left eye twitched violently. 'She comes from one of the oldest, wealthiest martial bloodlines on Remnant... and she speaks like a common dock worker!'




Pyrrha Nikos stepped over to Izuku, her posture tall, serene, and deeply respectful. "I saw the way you landed earlier, Izuku. You shifted your center of gravity through your knees to absorb the kinetic shock instead of letting the ground jar your spine. That takes years of dedicated physical conditioning."




Izuku, still 17 and entirely unaccustomed to being praised by someone with the presence of a champion, rubbed the back of his neck with an embarrassed smile. "Ah, thank you, Miss Nikos. I... had very strict mentors. If I didn't learn how to absorb the recoil properly, my bones took the damage."




Pyrrha's bright green eyes softened with quiet understanding, noticing the jagged surgical scars running along his wrists. "Please, just Pyrrha. A fighter who respects their physical limits is rare at our age."




Yang nudged Izuku with her elbow, offering a sly wink. "Hear that, freckles? You're champion-approved."




Izuku's face burned again, looking down at his boots.




While the noise and laughter filled the center of the courtyard, two figures slipped quietly into the deep shadow of a cracked archway.




Magenta Khan stood with her back against the weathered marble. Her hood was pulled securely forward over her brow, casting deep shadows that hid everything except her wild magenta curls and intense, watchful eyes.




Her gaze remained locked onto Blake, her heart aching with a mixture of profound relief and quiet sorrow.




'She's alive,' Magenta thought, her hands resting motionless on the hilts of Sunder and Spark. 'She made it all the way to Vale... and she already found a partner. It hurts that I can't be by her side on the same squad... but she looks safe. I'll watch over her from the outside.'




Blake stepped into the shadow of the archway, her amber eyes scanning the courtyard to make sure no one was watching before turning to Magenta.




"Magenta…," Blake whispered, her voice tight with suppressed emotion. "You shouldn't be here."




"Neither should you," Magenta replied softly, her voice steady and controlled. "You left without saying goodbye to Aunt Kali. She sat on the porch for three days waiting for you to come home."




Blake looked down at the stone floor, guilt tightening her throat like a vice. "If I stayed, Adam would have brought the fire to Menagerie. Sienna was already authorizing cross-border raids... Magenta, you don't understand what the Fang is becoming."




"I understand enough," Magenta said quietly. "Adam slaughtered Tyler's entire family in Sunset Hills. I've seen what his hatred leaves behind."




Magenta took half a step closer, her bright eyes burning with quiet resolve. "You're my sister, Blake. Kali and Ghira took me in when my own mother was too lost in the cause to care. You don't get to run into the dark alone. I have a team here now—Tyler and the others are good people. I won't tell anyone about your past. But I'm not leaving you behind."




Blake's throat worked, a heavy weight lifting from her shoulders. "...Thank you, Magenta."




—----------------------------------------------------------




"Hold on a second."




Jaune Arc's voice cut through the courtyard. He was standing near the center pedestals, wiping grime from his chest plate as he pointed a finger around the clearing.




"Wait... count the people," Jaune said, frowning.




Yang turned, resting a hand on her hip.




"What are you on about, vomit boy?"




"No, seriously, look at the relics!" Jaune counted aloud. "Ruby, Weiss, Yang, and Blake have the golden and white Knights. That's four. Me, Pyrrha, Nora, and Ren have the Rooks. That's eight. Tyler, Kaen, Raymond, and Magenta have the Bishops. That's twelve!"




Jaune turned, pointing his finger straight at Izuku.




"There's thirteen of us! All the matching pieces on the pedestals are gone! Where's your relic, Izuku? Where's your team?!"




A sudden, curious silence swept across the ruins.




Ren, Tyler, Kaen, Raymond, Nora, Pyrrha, Yang, and Blake all turned their attention to the green-clad boy standing quietly beside the dais.




Izuku's shoulders tensed. He kept his hands resting naturally at his sides, his green eyes calm as he looked around at the circle of questioning faces.




'I can't tell them I'm from Earth,' Izuku reminded himself firmly, his jaw setting.

'Telling twelve teenagers that I was thrown across dimensions from another world will only make them think I'm insane or treat me like a threat. Until I can speak to this Headmaster Ozpin privately, I have to stick to the cover story.'




Izuku took a slow, measured breath.

"I don't have a relic," Izuku said calmly, his English clear and steady. "And I don't have a team. I'm not an initiate taking this exam."




Nora tilted her head, her hammer resting lazily across her shoulders. "Huh? But you're in the forest! Everyone in the forest is taking the test! Did you fail to find a partner and team?!"




"I wasn't launched from the cliff," Izuku explained, keeping his tone polite and grounded. "I come from a very small, isolated martial arts academy located far outside the Four Kingdoms. Our curriculum and training methods are completely separate from Beacon's. I was involved in an off-grid operation that went wrong, and I ended up separated from my supervisors and dropped into this forest by accident."




Tyler's hazel eyes narrowed slightly from beneath his Stetson. He studied the boy's calm demeanor, noticing the way Izuku's weight remained perfectly centered between his feet, but remained silent.




"I ran into Miss Rose and Miss Schnee when they were ambushed by Beowolves," Izuku continued, gesturing toward the two girls. "I agreed to act as their temporary escort to these ruins so that we could find the supervising staff. My objective is simply to meet with Headmaster Ozpin and figure out my situation. I'm not part of your school."




Weiss crossed her arms tightly, letting out a sharp, skeptical huff. "Which is a polite way of saying he took a severe blow to the head during his landing and spent ten minutes muttering nonsense about a mythical country called 'Japan' and people having 'Quirks' instead of Semblances. But his physical conditioning and combat instincts are undeniable."




Izuku offered a small, sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck with a gloved hand. 'Thank goodness she thinks it was a concussion...'




Tyler adjusted his hat, his gravelly voice cutting through the quiet. "Isolated academy, huh? Explains your level of skill and power. Well, stranger, as long as you can pull your weight, I don't care where you trained."




Ruby stepped forward, puffing out her chest defensively. "He pulled way more than his weight! He saved us twice!"




CRRRRR-ACK!




A sharp, violent fracture echoed through the ruins.




Every head snapped toward the center of the courtyard.




The massive glacier of ice holding the Deathstalker had split wide open. Jagged white fissures spiderwebbed across the frozen shell, and a sickening, golden luminescence began pulsing furiously from the monster's trapped stinger.




HSSSSSS-ROAAAR!




Above them, the Giant Nevermore swooped low across the canopy, its massive black wings whipping up a gale that rattled the marble pillars.




It let out an ear-splitting shriek, banking in a tight circle directly over the ruins.




"The ice is breaking!" Yang yelled, her gauntlets cocking with a heavy mechanical click.




Tyler smoothly drew Revenge and Redemption, thumbing back both hammers. "And the bird brought his appetite back."




Jaune gripped his shield with shaking hands, his voice squeaking. "S-So... what's the plan?! Do we fight them both?!"




"No!" Izuku shouted, his voice cutting through the panic with the sharp authority of a field commander. "The objective of your initiation is to retrieve the relics and return to Beacon Cliff! Engaging two high-tier threats in an open courtyard with zero cover is tactical suicide! You have your pieces. We move north—now!"




Ruby pumped Crescent Rose into the air, a fierce grin returning to her face. "He's right! Everyone, to the cliffs!"




As the group turned to bolt, Ruby's hand darted down to the pedestal. She grabbed a spare stone pawn that had been left behind and shoved it forcefully into Izuku's chest.




"Here!" Ruby yelled over the roar of the wind. "Just take it in case you get a team, dummy!"




Izuku blinked in surprise, catching the heavy stone piece reflexively and pocketing it inside his belt pouch. "Wait, Rose—!"




"Move!"




With the glacier violently shattering behind them into a shower of razor-sharp ice shards, thirteen figures turned as one and bolted toward the northern forest, sprinting across the rocky terrain as the shadows of the two colossal monsters closed in fast behind them.




And behind them, in the dark limestone caves deep beneath the temple ruins—where the cracked vial of Trigger had soaked into the damp soil—a low, unnatural sound rumbled through the bedrock.




It was a guttural, layered roar.




A sound that echoed from two distinct, mutated throats sharing a single, monstrous chest.

 

[GhostJade45]

Note: Yo guys. Sorry I took so long again. Having multiple fics is actually slowing me down more to finishing other fics that could be more important in retrospective.

I'm considering s schedule but I'm not sure I'll follow it since my moods are inconsistent and I usually just make myself do a chapter sometimes when I'm not in the mood, which does make me wanna get if done. But I'm interrupted irl too much so I always lose motivation and go back to doing nothing.

Not really sure if this upper chapter works. I worry I either couldn't manage all the characters or forgot some or forgot stuff that should have happened during this. I did consider adding more stuff but the chapter would run too long.

This was supposed to be the Nevermore and Death Stalker stuff, but I was like nah, original fight is probably better cause people don't want word for word canon events all the time.

I'd appreciate feedback and if the owner of the Oc's see this, tell me if I used them properly.

I'll see you guys for now next chapter.

---

The ancient redwoods blurred into streaks of dark bark and dappled gold as thirteen sets of boots tore through the underbrush.




Behind them, the forest still echoed with the violent screech of splintering ice, but nobody looked back.




Ruby Rose led the vanguard, her crimson cloak streaming straight out behind her like a trailing comet, Crescent Rose held low in her hands as she vaulted fallen birch trunks with practiced, effortless agility.




Directly behind her, Yang and Blake kept pace, while Jaune stumbled along beside Pyrrha, clutching his shield to his chest and wheezing with every stride.




Ren and Nora flanked their right, Nora practically skipping over the roots despite the dead sprint.




Bringing up the rear was Tyler Greystone, his duster whipping in the wind, and Kaen Daija, who kept glancing back with her hand resting on the pommel of her Tachi, her golden eyes glittering with lingering battle-lust.




Beside them, Magenta Khan moved like a silent shadow through the ferns, her hood pulled securely over her brow.




And running alongside them, pacing his stride with quiet, disciplined economy, was Izuku Midoriya.




Emerald sparks crackled faintly across the soles of his boots. He kept his output locked strictly at ten percent, but even then, a dull, nagging warmth throbbed beneath his sternum—a quiet reminder that his inner embers were thinning every time he pushed his body.




'Stay focused,' Izuku told himself, his sharp green eyes sweeping the canopy above. 'Keep the perimeter secure. Make sure all of them reach the cliffs in one piece.'




A loud, metallic clatter broke his train of thought.




Five paces to his left, Raymond Novalis was having the most miserable cardiovascular experience of his young life.




His oversized toolbelt was banging against his thighs, his steampunk goggles were bouncing wildly against his forehead, and clutched tightly over his shoulder—alongside the heavy mechanical frame of Novasurge—was a scuffed, faded olive-drab canvas duffel bag.




Tyler glanced sideways at the mechanic, his straight brown hair tossing in the wind beneath the brim of his Stetson. His hazel eyes narrowed in disbelief.




"Novalis," Tyler drawled over the roar of rushing wind, his voice dry and completely deadpan. "Mind explaining why the hell you're hauling extra luggage in the middle of a life-or-death retreat?"




Raymond wheezed, adjusting the strap with a gloved hand as his face turned a delicate shade of purple. "It's... gasp... it's not luggage! Look at the lateral seams! Grade-four titanium-weave canvas! And the pneumatic release valves on those glass cylinders... that's non-standard machining! It was lying half-buried near the pedestals, and I couldn't just leave military-grade salvage to rot in the mud!"




Ruby's head whipped around mid-stride, her silver eyes lighting up with sudden, dangerous enthusiasm. "Wait, really?! Non-standard machining?! Can I see after we get to the cliffs?!"




"Both of you, shut up and run!" Weiss barked from the center of the formation, clutching Myrtenaster to her chest as her white heels dug into the loamy soil. "We are being pursued by a Giant Nevermore and a prehistoric arachnid, and you two are discussing the tensile strength of an abandoned gym bag?!"




"It's not a gym bag, it's field research!" Raymond protested, nearly tripping over a mossy root before catching his balance.




Izuku glanced over at the bag in Raymond's grip. For a fleeting second, his brow furrowed.




The coarse, military-grade canvas... the distinct brass zippers... the heavy reinforced strap.




'Wait...' A flicker of confusion sparked in the back of Izuku's mind. 'That looks almost like the bag the Tartarus escapee was carrying in the ravine. But that's impossible. Why would a support pack from home be—'




A sudden, bone-deep vibration cut through his thoughts.




The earth beneath their boots groaned.




It wasn't an earthquake, and it wasn't the heavy thud of the Deathstalker. It was a subterranean pressure wave—a low, rhythmic pulse that resonated through the bedrock like the heartbeat of something ancient, colossal, and deeply, unnaturally wrong.




Ahead of them, the canopy abruptly thinned. The dense redwood forest opened up onto the lip of a vast, fog-draped canyon.




Spanning the misty gorge were the towering ruins of an ancient stone aqueduct, its crumbling arches leading toward a massive, multi-tiered stone bridge that stretched across the abyss toward the northern cliffs.




"There!" Jaune yelled, pointing a trembling finger toward the bridge. "The ruins! We made it!"




"Don't slow down!" Pyrrha warned, her green eyes scanning the open sky. "The Nevermore still has the altitude advantage!"




High above the gorge, the Giant Nevermore swooped low through the cloud cover. Its massive black wings beat the air, its bone beak parted to unleash an ear-splitting, avian battle-cry—

SCREEEEE—




The cry abruptly broke.




Mid-dive, the colossal raptor violently flared its wings, arresting its downward momentum with such frantic force that several black feathers sheared free in the gale.




Its glowing red eyes dilated, locking onto the dark mouth of the cavern vents running beneath the northern bridge.




At the exact same moment, the heavy crashing in the woods behind them stopped dead.




The Deathstalker, which had been leveling oak trees in its relentless pursuit, skidded to a violent halt at the treeline. Its massive obsidian claws dug deep into the turf, its segmented tail trembling.




Slowly, deliberately, the giant scorpion began backing into the shadows of the brush, clicking its mandibles in a frantic, agitated rhythm.




Above them, the Nevermore let out a sharp, distressed screech—a sound completely devoid of predatory hunger, carrying only raw, animal panic—before wheeling sharply toward the western mountain ridges, beating its wings furiously to put as much distance between itself and the gorge as physically possible.




The thirteen initiates skidded to a halt on the rocky approach to the bridge, their boots scraping against the flagstones.




Silence fell over the canyon. A thick, suffocating stillness that smothered the wind.




Jaune lowered his shield, blinking in utter bewilderment. "Wait... did... did that giant bird just run away?"




"Grimm don't normally just run away," Blake murmured softly, her amber eyes wide beneath her black bow. Her hand tightened on the hilt of Gambol Shroud, her posture coiling tight. "They don't just retreat from prey…"




"Then why the hell did both of 'em just clear out like they saw a ghost?" Yang asked, her lilac eyes darting between the empty sky and the silent treeline.




Tyler slowly reached beneath his duster, his thumbs clicking the hammers of Revenge and Redemption back into place.




His gravelly voice dropped an octave, heavy with the instincts of a frontier hunter.

"Because they didn't run from us," Tyler said quietly, nodding toward the misty center of the bridge. "Something bigger just staked this ground."




At the base of Izuku's skull, the faint, residual echo of his soul-sense didn't just prickle.




It screamed.




A blinding, nauseating jolt of absolute malice lanced through his nervous system, so sharp and suffocating it forced a sharp gasp from his throat.




'This feeling...' Izuku thought, his pupils contracting into tiny emerald pins as cold sweat broke across his neck. 'This isn't an animal. It's not even like the Grimm we just fought. This intent... it feels even more…monstrous!'




From the dark, shadowed hollow beneath the central arch of the bridge, a sound rose through the stone.




It was a wet, rattling breath—drawn through two distinct, mutated windpipes that rattled against the bedrock like grinding iron.




The wet, rattling breath beneath the central arch grew louder, vibrating through the soles of their boots with the hollow resonance of an iron forge.




A heavy, pungent stench washed over the gorge on a draft of unnatural, blistering heat. It didn't smell like the forest, and it didn't smell like the cold, evaporating ash of a typical Grimm.




It smelled like burnt ozone, sulfur, and sickly sweet chemicals.




"What is that smell...?" Weiss whispered, raising a gloved hand to cover her nose, her pale blue eyes darting frantically across the mist-shrouded ruins. "It's suffocating."




Beside her, Kaen Daija's posture stiffened into an aggressive, predatory crouch. Her golden-yellow eyes compressed into vertical, razor-thin slits, and her slightly forked tongue flicked out once into the air, tasting the breeze.




Instantly, Kaen recoiled, baring her sharp fangs in a low, instinctive hiss. "It tastes like rotten copper and spoiled medicine... Whatever's down there, it's foul. It makes my skin crawl."




"Get back from the edge," Tyler commanded, his low drawl dropping all trace of casual frontier humor. He leveled Payback toward the center of the span, his thumb resting rigidly against the lever. "Something's coming up."




CRACK!




The ancient stonework along the rim of the canyon didn't merely break—it pulverized.




With a concussive roar that sounded like an artillery shell detonating at point-blank range, a colossal, midnight-black silhouette vaulted out of the misty chasm.




It soared fifty feet into the air, blotting out the morning sun, before slamming down squarely onto the center of the stone bridge with the catastrophic violence of a falling meteor.




BOOM!




The ancient bridge shuddered violently under the titanic kinetic impact. Fractures spiderwebbed across the flagstones, sending chunks of masonry tumbling thousands of feet into the gorge below.




A blinding shockwave of pulverized dust and white stone powder blasted outward, forcing the thirteen students to dig their heels in and shield their faces.




As the dense cloud of debris was torn away by the mountain gale, the creature rose to its full, terrifying height.




It was an ape—a Beringel.




Yet it bore almost no resemblance to the textbook illustrations taught in primary combat schools.




It stood easily eighteen feet tall, its broad, gorilla-like shoulders nearly spanning the width of the entire bridge. Its dark, leathery hide was swollen and engorged with corded muscle that rippled unnaturally beneath its fur.




Protruding from its back, shoulders, and knuckles were jagged, asymmetrical bone plates—not smooth and white like a normal Grimm's armor, but obsidian-black, jagged, and dripping with boiling black ichor.




Most terrifying of all was its chest.




Webbed across its pectoral plates and tracing thick networks down its massive forearms were glowing, translucent veins pulsing with a sickening, volatile mixture of dark amber and radiant violet light.




The light throbbed in time with its breathing, venting a faint, shimmering chemical vapor from the pores of its skin.




Where a normal Beringel possessed two hollow crimson eyes, this nightmare had four. Four burning, pupil-less orbs of raw, chaotic malice that burned like dying stars beneath a cracked bone brow.




Izuku Midoriya stared at the beast, his Air Force gauntlets raising in an involuntary guard as his breath hitched in his throat.




"What... what kind of Grimm is that?!" Izuku asked, his voice tight with pure, unvarnished shock.




Beside him, Raymond pushed his goggles back against his eyes, his hands trembling as he gripped his monkey wrench. "It's... it's a Beringel! An ape-type! But—"




"—it's not normal," Ren finished quietly, his StormFlower pistols already sliding into his hands with a cold, metallic click. His magenta eyes narrowed to sharp slits as he analyzed the beast's frame. "Beringels don't possess bone armor along their spinal column, and their mass rarely exceeds twelve feet. This one is nearly twice the size of any recorded specimen in the academy archives."




Jaune Arc swallowed hard. His knees knocked against his greaves, his sword rattling against the edge of his shield as he looked up, and up, and up at the obsidian mountain of muscle blocking their path.




"A-Are we gonna have to fight that thing?!" Jaune squeaked, his voice cracking violently. "Tell me we don't have to fight that thing!"




Pyrrha shifted her grip on Miló, planting her shield firmly in front of her chest as her crimson ponytail whipped in the rising heat. Her expression was deadly serious. "It's standing directly on the center archway, Jaune. It's blocking the only path across the gorge to Beacon Cliff. It won't let us pass."




Tyler spun Revenge around his index finger, the cylinder clicking with an authoritative, metallic snap as he brought both heavy revolvers level with the monster's chest.




"Well," Tyler muttered, his hazel eyes completely devoid of fear beneath the shadow of his Stetson. "No sense crying over bad terrain. Might as well put it down if we want to reach that cliff."




"Hell yeah!" Nora cheered, though her manic grin was tighter than usual as Magnhild shifted into its heavy hammer mode with a resounding hydraulic thud. "I'll break its kneecaps!"




Yang cracked her knuckles, the barrels of Ember Celica rotating into place around her wrists with twin clicks.




A fierce, predatory smile pulled at her lips, though a bead of sweat rolled down her temple. "Big, ugly, and standing right in our way. My favorite kind of punching bag."




"Yang, don't be reckless!" Weiss warned sharply, drawing Myrtenaster into a pristine fencing guard, her knuckles white against the grip. "Look at the density of that bone plating! A standard kinetic strike won't even scratch the surface!"




Ruby snapped Crescent Rose out into its full war-scythe configuration, the heavy crescent blade catching the pale daylight. She stepped up beside Izuku, her silver eyes blazing with stubborn resolve. "Then we hit it together! All of us!"




Izuku didn't answer right away.




His green eyes were locked entirely onto the pulsating amber and violet veins throbbing across the monster's chest.




His analytical mind, forged through a year of brutal warfare, was screaming at him in frantic, disjointed alarm.




'That glow...' Izuku thought, a sick, hollow dread dropping straight through his stomach. 'That sluggish, violent radiance under its skin... It looks just like the veins on that Tartarus escapee in the ravine! But that's impossible! This is a creature of shadow—it has no Quirk factor! Why is it radiating that exact same chemical frequency?!'




The Beringel did not give him time to solve the riddle.




The four burning crimson eyes snapped down, locking squarely onto the thirteen teenagers standing at the edge of the span.




Slowly, deliberately, the colossal beast rose onto its hind legs. It beat its massive, bone-spiked fists against its glowing chest—THUD-THUD-THUD—each impact sounding like an iron battering ram striking a castle gate.




Then, its jaw unhinged.




From deep within its warped throat, a roar tore free.




It wasn't a beast's howl. It was a deafening, layered acoustic nightmare—two distinct voices shrieking in unison from a single throat, tearing through the gorge with such catastrophic kinetic pressure that the clouds above the canyon parted, and the very air in their lungs turned to dust.




The acoustic shockwave of the Beringel's layered roar slammed into the thirteen students like a physical wall of compressed air.




Loose pebbles rattled across the flagstones, grit stung their eyes, and the sheer volume of the sound rattled their teeth inside their skulls.




Before anyone could recover their footing, the colossal beast shifted its weight. It reared back onto its massive hind legs, raising both of its tree-trunk-sized arms high above its head, the jagged obsidian spikes along its knuckles catching the harsh daylight.




At the base of Izuku's skull, the prickling sensation flared into a blinding, agonizing flash of heat.




It wasn't subtle. It was a scream.




'It's not aiming at one person—' Izuku's combat instincts flared, his pupils contracting as he recognized the wide, heavy telegraph. 'It's targeting the entire bridge!'




"MOVE!" Izuku roared, his voice cutting through the ringing in their ears with the desperate urgency of a siren. "GET OFF THE GROUND! NOW!"




The Beringel brought both fists down in a single, earth-shattering double-axe hammer.




BOOOOOOOM!




The impact did not simply crack the bridge—it detonated the foundation.




A rolling shockwave of pulverized stone and concussive kinetic energy surged through the bedrock like a subterranean torpedo.




The ancient flagstones buckled and heaved upward in a jagged, rolling wave of solid rock, tearing forward at terrifying speed straight toward the gathered initiates!




"Scatter!" Ruby yelled, her silver eyes wide.




She dissolved into a swirling vortex of crimson rose petals, rocketing twenty feet straight into the air.




Beside her, Weiss drove the heel of her boot down, conjuring a pale-blue Schnee glyph beneath her feet that propelled her diagonally upward.




Yang threw her fists downward, unleashing a double blast from Ember Celica that launched her over the rising wave of stone, while Raymond forced his Supernova-blue Aura into overdrive, vanishing with a sharp, frantic pop of displaced air.




The others—Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora, Ren, Tyler, Kaen, and Magenta—did not have mobility Semblances ready to fire.




"Up!" Pyrrha commanded, planting her boots and leaping with all the strength her Aura could muster.




Beside her, Tyler and Magenta vaulted off a shattered balustrade in synchronized agility, while Ren grabbed Jaune by the back of his hoodie, hauling the panicked blond upward just as the stone wave tore through the ground where they had stood a fraction of a second before.




Yet the sheer atmospheric displacement of the strike was monstrous.




Even twenty feet in the air, the expanding cone of kinetic air pressure caught them like a descending hammer.




"Whoa—!" Yang yelled as the air blast threw her off-axis.




The shockwave swatted the airborne initiates out of the sky like flies.




Ruby was knocked out of her petal form, tumbling across the rocky approach; Weiss's glyph shattered, sending her skidding onto her side with a pained gasp; Tyler and Magenta hit the ground in combat rolls, their boots gouging ruts through the turf as they fought for balance.




Fifty feet to the left, Raymond rematerialized twelve feet in the air—and came down hard.




"OOF!"




The five-foot-four mechanic slammed violently against the stone railing of a collapsed aqueduct arch. The air was driven completely from his lungs, his goggles snapping off his forehead and dangling by their strap.




The brutal momentum tore the heavy canvas strap of the olive-drab duffel bag right off his shoulder.




"Wait—no!" Raymond gasped, coughing through the dust as he reached out a desperate, leather-gloved hand. "My salvage!"




The heavy military bag bounced off the fractured stone balustrade, tumbling over the lip of the gorge.




It plummeted fifty feet into the misty canyon before catching violently against a narrow rock ledge protruding from the cliff face below, wedged precariously between two dead pine roots.




Raymond groaned, rubbing his bruised ribs as he pulled Novasurge to his chest. "Aw, come on! I didn't even get to catalog the valve threading...!"




Across the courtyard, the dust storm was torn apart by the sound of heavy boots hitting the stone.




Nora Valkyrie was the first to scramble to her feet.




Her orange hair was wild and full of dirt, her skirt torn at the hem, and her teal eyes were blazing with furious, manic indignation.




She hoisted Magnhild onto her shoulder, glaring down the ruined bridge at the towering obsidian gorilla.




"Hey!" Nora shouted at the top of her lungs, stamping her boot against a cracked flagstone. "That was completely uncalled for! Nobody throws rocks at my friends!"




With a vicious, mechanical clatter, Nora racked the receiver of Magnhild, shifting the massive war hammer into its semi-automatic grenade launcher configuration.




She braced her boots, leaned into the recoil, and squeezed the trigger four times in blinding succession.




THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!




Four high-explosive canisters, glowing with vibrant magenta energy and marked with bright heart insignias, streaked across the fifty-yard gap in a tight, arcing cluster.




Every single round struck the Beringel dead-center across its bone-plated chest.




KABOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!




A series of violent, rolling detonations engulfed the monster's upper torso in a blinding fireball of pink and orange flame.




The concussive blasts ripped through the morning air, showering the central archway in smoking shrapnel and billowing black smoke.




Jaune pushed himself up from the rubble, coughing through his sleeve, a hopeful grin twitching across his lips. "Did... did she get it?!"




The smoke began to clear.




Standing perfectly upright in the center of the smoldering crater, completely immovable, was the Beringel.




The fire simply drifted off its hide like harmless steam. The jagged obsidian bone plates covering its chest were untouched—not a crack, not a scorch mark, not a single scratch.




Beneath the jagged bone brow, the creature's four burning crimson eyes blinked slowly through the haze.




It tilted its massive head down at the tiny orange-haired girl holding the smoking grenade launcher, its expression carrying an aura of cold, contemptuous, and utterly unnatural intelligence.




Nora's grin vanished. Her eyebrows raised slightly as she lowered Magnhild by an inch.




"...Uh-oh," Nora muttered softly. "That usually works."




"If Nora's fireworks won't leave a mark, let's see how you like proper Mistralian steel!"




Before anyone could shout a warning, Kaen Daija surged past the firing line like a crimson comet.




She didn't hesitate. She didn't calculate.




Moving with the unyielding, aggressive momentum drilled into her since childhood, Kaen drove her boots into the cracked stone, her legs enveloped in a brilliant flare of Rose Gold Mobility Amplification.




CLACK-SHING!




The pressurized pneumatic chamber inside her lacquered scabbard fired with the sharp pop of a shotgun blast.




Kaen launched Shutshuen-Sha from its sheath in a blinding battōjutsu draw. Her Whetstone Semblance flared to life, pouring twenty-five percent of her Aura directly into the blade's edge until the single-edged Tachi erupted into a roaring, compressed inferno of Wind and Fire Dust.




"Die!" Kaen roared, her golden eyes narrowed into razor-thin serpentine slits.




She closed the forty-yard gap in the blink of an eye, ducking low beneath the beast's reach. With fluid, lethal precision, she unleashed a blinding three-strike combination—two cross-slashes across its lower ribs, followed by a rising, two-handed diagonal strike aimed straight for the creature's throat!




The superheated edge bit into the monster's hide.




SPARKS-KRRRKT!




The screech was agonizing—the sound of high-tensile steel grinding against hardened tungsten armor.




The flaming wind sheared through the black fur, but the moment the blade struck the dense, jagged obsidian bone plates covering its chest, the slash stalled completely. The bone plates barely smoked.




The Beringel's four crimson eyes slowly tilted downward, locking onto the girl standing inches from its chest.




It didn't roar. It didn't flinch.




It simply inhaled.




The pulsing amber and violet veins across its chest flared with sudden, blinding intensity.




With speed that completely defied its massive eighteen-foot frame, the monster's right arm whipped backward and snapped forward in a vicious, horizontal backhand.




The strike moved so fast it broke the sound barrier with a hollow, concussive CRACK.




Kaen's combat instincts flared. Knowing she couldn't dodge, she snapped Shutshuen-Sha and its reinforced scabbard upward into a tight, two-handed cross-block, channeling every remaining drop of her Rose Gold Aura to brace against the incoming impact.




CRACK-SHATTER!




The sound that followed was not the dull thud of Aura absorbing force.




It was the terrifying, brittle ring of a thick pane of glass being pulverized by a sledgehammer.




Kaen's Rose Gold Aura exploded into a cloud of glittering, evanescent shards.

The colossal fist blasted through her guard like an avalanche, snapping the flat of her blade into her chestplate and launching the five-foot-eight swordswoman backward across the bridge at terminal velocity!




"KAEN!" Raymond screamed, his voice cracking in sheer panic.




She was flying toward the jagged edge of a shattered marble pillar—an impact that, without an active Aura shield, would shatter her spine.




A green thunderbolt tore across the flagstones.




Izuku Midoriya didn't think. The calculations, the self-imposed limits, the fear of his fading embers—all of it vanished behind the instinct that had defined him since the day he took his first breath.




Green bio-electricity flared violently around his boots as he pushed Full Cowling to fifteen percent.




He vaulted off the stone, leaving a pair of cracked craters in the flagstones, and intersected her trajectory mid-air.




He caught her securely against his chest, tucking his head down to shield hers as they hit the ground.




SKRRRRRR-THUD!




The kinetic momentum drove Izuku's heavy Iron Soles six inches deep into the solid bedrock.




He skidded backward thirty feet, his boots carving two smoking furrows through the stone and dirt before he finally brought them to a dead halt against the base of a fallen archway.




Izuku dropped to one knee, breathing hard.




In his arms, Kaen was completely limp. Her long white ponytail was tangled with grit, her uniform torn at the shoulder, and a thin, crimson line of blood was trickling past her lips and down her lightly tanned chin.




Her breathing was shallow and ragged, her sharp fangs parted as she coughed weakly against his shoulder.




Her Aura was gone. Utterly depleted.




Izuku's heart gave a violent, sickening lurch against his ribs.




His scarred fingers trembled slightly as he checked her pulse, finding it rapid and strained.




Gently, carefully, he laid her down against the sheltered recess of the fallen stone pillar, positioning her behind the thickest section of cover.




'Her shield broke in a single hit,' Izuku thought, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth groaned under the pressure.




He slowly rose to his feet, turning his gaze back toward the center of the bridge.




His emerald eyes, usually bright and full of earnest curiosity, hardened into cold, razor-sharp emerald ice.




'The other Grimm in this forest... they were dangerous, but they were predictable. They had limits. A coordinated team of students could manage them.' Izuku stepped out from behind the pillar, his fists slowly balling at his sides. 'This thing is different. Its malice isn't hunger. It's violent, volatile, and erratic... It feels exactly like a villain who just dosed themselves with Trigger.'




He took a slow, deep breath, willing the cold fury in his chest to steady his trembling muscles.




"Stay down, Miss Kaen," Izuku murmured quietly, not looking back. "I'll try to deal with this thing."




—----------------------------------------------------------




High above the southern expanse, on the sheer stone lip of Beacon Cliff, a shrill, piercing klaxon suddenly shrieked from the command pavilion.




Glynda Goodwitch stopped dead mid-stride.




Her Scroll tablet, which had been resting passively against her forearm, began flashing with an aggressive, pulsing crimson border. A high-priority emergency diagnostic window forced its way to the top of the interface, accompanied by an urgent series of red system alerts.




[WARNING: CRITICAL auric DISSIPATION]

[SECTOR TWO — CENTRAL GORGE BRIDGE]

[INITIATE: KAEN DAIJA — AURA CAPACITY: 0.00%]

[STATUS: UNCONSCIOUS / SEVERE BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA]




Glynda's breath hitched in her throat. Her stern, professional composure shattered in a fraction of a second, her green eyes widening in pure horror.




"Headmaster!" Glynda gasped, spinning around and rushing toward the cliff's precipice. "Miss Daija's Aura has collapsed! It completely flatlined in a single kinetic spike!"




Professor Ozpin did not answer immediately.




He stood at the edge of the stone, looking down toward the northern gorge. But for the first time that morning, the unhurried, eccentric Headmaster was gone.




With a sharp, authoritative clack, Ozpin set his white coffee mug down on the stone parapet. He did not look at the tablet.




His eyes, dark and piercing behind his shaded round spectacles, were locked entirely onto the thick, unnatural column of black-and-purple vapor rising above the distant aqueduct.




"The seismic sensors in Sector Two just registered an unclassified atmospheric detonation," Glynda continued, her voice trembling with barely suppressed panic as her fingers flew across the emergency console. "The bio-signature is monstrous... It is an unregistered Alpha Grimm, Ozpin! And Miss Daija is the sole heir to the Raiju clan! If she is killed during an uncontained entrance exam—"




"—Mistral will consider it an act of gross negligence, if not political sabotage," Ozpin finished, his voice dropping into a low, grave register that carried the weight of centuries.




He gripped the head of his cane, his knuckles turning white against the polished metal.




"The initiation is suspended," Ozpin commanded, his voice cutting through the wind like a drawn blade. "Scramble the emergency Bullheads immediately, Glynda. We are intervening personally."




"Understood!" Glynda turned on her heel, sprinting toward the landing pads.




Ozpin remained at the edge for one more second, his gaze fixed on the northern gorge.




'A Grimm of that magnitude should have registered on our perimeter sweeps days ago,' Ozpin thought, his brow furrowing with deep, uneasy dread. 'Where did you come from...?'




—----------------------------------------------------------




Far across the churning seas, past the boundaries of the Four Kingdoms, lay the continent of the dark wastes—the Land of Darkness.




Beneath a perpetual twilight of fractured purple skies, jagged mountains of obsidian rock rose like shattered bones above vast, bubbling lakes of pitch-black tar.




Perched atop the highest crag stood the Castle of Evernight, an ancient fortress of dark stone and calcified bone that had stood since the dawn of humanity's second age.




Inside the grand, vaulted throne room, absolute silence reigned.




Sitting motionless upon a throne carved from the ribcage of an ancient Goliath was Salem.




Her porcelain-white skin, webbed with dark crimson veins that pulsed like cooled magma, was cast in the pale glow of the room's floating black crystals.




Her hair, woven into six elaborate, horn-like loops, framed a face of ageless, terrifying serenity.




Suddenly, her crimson-and-black eyes snapped open.




A sharp, violent tremor rippled through her consciousness—a jarring, discordant note that vibrated along the invisible threads connecting her soul to the Grimm pools.




For thousands of years, every beast that crawled from the tar obeyed the primal pulse of her will. She had shaped them. She had gifted Beringels with wings. She had sculpted the Hound from the essence of suffering.




Every monster on Remnant sang to the rhythm of her dark choir.




Except this one.




Somewhere in the southern forests of Sanus, a beast was screaming in a key that did not belong to her world.




It was brimming with a volatile, chaotic vitality—a chemical madness that was mutating its flesh, calcifying its armor, and warping its strength beyond the boundaries of Remnant's design.




Salem rose from her throne, her dark robes whispering against the polished black stone.




She walked slowly toward a pedestal where a Seer Grimm hovered silently. The jellyfish-like creature floated in the air, its translucent tentacles trailing black mist, its central crimson eye pulsing in the dark.




Salem raised a pale, clawed hand, resting her fingertips against the beast's damp dome.




"Show me," she whispered, her voice a chilling melody that carried no warmth.




The Seer's eye dilated. A beam of ethereal, pale-red light projected onto the floor of the throne room, displaying a shimmering, real-time scrying feed of the ancient aqueduct bridge thousands of miles away in the Emerald Forest.




Salem watched in cold, rapt fascination.

She saw the colossal, four-eyed Beringel roaring against the mountain wind.




She saw the volatile amber and violet light throbbing beneath its black hide. And she watched as thirteen desperate children scrambled across the shattered stone to survive its wrath.




A slow, terrifying smile curved Salem's pale lips.




"A beast singing outside my design..." she murmured, her red eyes gleaming with ancient curiosity. "How delightfully anomalous."




She leaned closer to the Seer, her voice projecting telepathically across the vast ocean, straight into the heart of the Kingdom of Vale.




"Cinder."




—----------------------------------------------------------




In the industrial lower alleys of the Vale commercial district, inside the rusted interior of a warehouse filled with stolen Dust crates, a woman paused.




Cinder Fall lowered her glass. Her dark crimson Dustweave dress shifted as she stood up from her chair, her golden eyes narrowing as the dark, ethereal voice resonated directly behind her skull.




"My lady," Cinder replied silently, bowing her head in the empty room.




"An abnormality has taken root along the southern perimeter of the Emerald Forest," Salem's voice echoed in her mind, cool and commanding. "A creature of the pools has been elevated by a foreign catalyst. Take your thief. Deploy an aircraft to the gorge ridgeline immediately."




Cinder tilted her head, intrigued. "Shall we exterminate it?"




"No," Salem commanded. "Observe how it performs against Beacon's finest... and retrieve whatever poison gave it that form. I wish to know what power dares to alter my children."




The telepathic link snapped shut.

Cinder straightened her back, a dangerous, calculating smirk spreading across her face.




She reached for a black silk half-mask and an ash-grey traveling cloak resting on the desk, slipping them over her features.




She turned toward the far end of the warehouse, where Roman Torchwick was leaning against a stack of fire-dust crates, flicking his lighter open and shut with an irritated sigh.




"Pack your toys, Roman," Cinder said smoothly, her voice muffled slightly behind the silk mask. "We're going on an errand."




Roman groaned loudly, snapping his lighter shut and sliding it into his red-lined white coat. He leaned his weight heavily against Melodic Cudgel, rolling his green eyes.




"An errand? Now?" Roman complained, adjusting the brim of his bowler hat. "Cinder, my dear, it's broad daylight! If I get one speck of forest mud on my Italian leather boots, I am charging the dry-cleaning bill to your mysterious shadow-boss."




"You will pilot the Bullhead," Cinder said coldly, stepping past him toward the loading bay. "And if you value your life, you will keep the engine muffled. We have a delivery to intercept."




------------------------------------------------------------




"I'm not letting anyone else get hurt on my watch!"




Ruby Rose didn't wait for a tactical retreat.




Her silver eyes blazed with fierce, stubborn adrenaline as she kicked off the flagstones, her black-and-red cloak snapping violently in the wind.




"Rose, wait!" Izuku shouted, but she was already moving.




"Ruby, no!" Yang roared, firing Ember Celica behind her to launch herself in hot pursuit.




Ruby sprinted in a low, predatory dash, thumbing Crescent Rose's receiver into high-velocity sniper mode.




She fired three deafening rounds directly into the beast's torso—BANG! BANG! BANG!—using the concussive recoil to double her forward velocity.




The bullets struck the jagged obsidian bone plates covering the monster's chest.




They didn't pierce. They didn't even dent.




The heavy brass rounds flattened upon impact like lead pellets against an anvil, ricocheting uselessly into the fog.




Closing the distance, Ruby spun her entire body into a centrifugal whirlwind, bringing the massive seven-foot crescent blade down in a brutal, two-handed cleave aimed straight at the Beringel's knee joint.




CLANG-SHHHHHK!




The impact sounded like a train colliding with a solid tungsten wall.




A violent shockwave rattled down the steel shaft of Crescent Rose, traveling straight through Ruby's wrists, elbows, and shoulders.




The sheer kinetic rebound was so intense her fingers nearly went numb, her teeth rattling inside her mouth.




"Gah!" Ruby gasped, stumbling backward on unsteady heels as her scythe bounced off the unyielding bone. "It's... it's like hitting a mountain of solid steel!"




The Beringel looked down, its four glowing crimson eyes narrowing with murderous focus.




Its colossal left fist wound backward, the amber and violet veins along its forearm pulsing with sickening, volatile heat as it aimed a crushing hammer-blow directly downward at the red-hooded girl.




"RUBY!"




Yang arrived in a golden flash. She threw all her weight sideways, slamming her shoulder into Ruby and tackling her sister out of the strike's descending path.




CRASH!




The monster's fist pulverized the stone flagstones where Ruby had stood half a second earlier, cratering the bridge and sending a spray of razor-sharp shrapnel tearing across the courtyard.




"Line up! Fire at its joints!" Tyler barked, his gravelly voice cutting through the ringing dust.




The remaining students formed an immediate, desperate firing perimeter.




Tyler's twin revolvers, Revenge and Redemption, barked in rhythmic, deafening thunder, planting heavy .44 Magnum rounds into the creature's elbow seams.




Beside him, Raymond fired twin bolts of superheated azure plasma from Novasurge, scorching the black fur around its neck, while Pyrrha shifted Miló into its rifle configuration, drilling bronze-tipped rounds into its shoulder plates.




Blake whipped Gambol Shroud through the air, firing pistol rounds from the ribbon's arc to distract its lower eyes, while Magenta drew her compound steel shortbow to full draw.




A faint ripple of Time Turner distortion shimmered around Magenta's yellow combat boots.




She released three time-accelerated arrows—two Ice Dust and one Lightning Dust—drilling them directly into the softer, pulsing tissue beneath its collarbone.




"Freeze it!" Weiss yelled, lunging forward with Myrtenaster.




She thrust her rapier forward, summoning a pale-blue Schnee glyph beneath the monster's massive feet. A jagged cage of sub-zero ice erupted around its ankles and calves, locking its lower limbs to the shattered bridge.




From the left flank, Nora vaulted thirty feet into the air, her face twisted in a ferocious grimace as she wound Magnhild back overhead: "TAKE THIS!"




She brought the heavy war hammer down with all her kinetic momentum, smashing the steel head directly against the monster's thick, armored ribs—BOOM!




The combined barrage was staggering.




Explosions of pink fire, lightning sparks, frost, and plasma smoke completely enveloped the creature's upper torso.




Yet beneath the smoke, the four crimson eyes didn't dim.




They burned brighter.




ROOOOOOOOAAAR!




The Beringel unleashed another concussive acoustic shockwave from its layered throats.




The sheer kinetic gale tore the smoke to shreds, violently shattering Weiss's ice cage into a million frozen splinters and sending Nora flying backward through the air, her boots scraping across the flagstones as Ren lunged to catch her.




The monster flexed its massive chest.




Its dark amber and violet veins flared with blistering, toxic radiance. It ignored the minor burns along its hide, its four eyes locking onto the firing squad—Tyler, Blake, Pyrrha, and Raymond.




It lunged.




Moving with explosive, unnatural acceleration that tore up the bridge flagstones behind it, the eighteen-foot ape closed forty yards in a single heartbeat.




It raised both colossal, spiked arms high above its head, bringing them down in a twin-fist execution strike that would crush all four students into paste!




None of them had the speed to clear the blast radius.




"Look out!" Jaune screamed, raising his shield in futile terror.




A sonic boom ripped through the courtyard.




Before the colossal fists could obliterate the firing line, an emerald streak of bio-electricity tore out of the shadows.




Izuku Midoriya dropped out of the sky, slamming his boots into the flagstones directly between the students and the descending nightmare.




He didn't dodge. He didn't flinch.




He threw both of his scarred Air Force gauntlets upward, his knees bending, his jaw setting with iron resolve—




WHAM-BOOOOOOM!




Izuku caught both of the Beringel's descending fists gloved barehanded.




The catastrophic kinetic impact detonated outward in a violent, expanding shockwave of compressed wind that blew away the surrounding fog and shattered every remaining stone balustrade within thirty yards.




The flagstones beneath Izuku's heavy Iron Soles buckled instantly, sinking three feet into the earth as a massive, circular crater cracked through the bridge's foundation.




Izuku's teeth clicked together, grinding against the crushing weight of several tons of raw, Trigger-boosted muscle.




"GAAAAAH!"




The veins along his neck and forearms bulged against his skin, green electricity arcing frantically across his dark fabric.




Beneath his sternum, the lingering embers of One For All flared hot and erratic, sending a searing, nauseating cramp through his chest—a violent reminder that his soul was burning up its own fuel.




The students stood frozen in absolute, paralyzed disbelief.




Raymond's goggles nearly fell off his face. "He... he caught it?! With his bare hands?!"




"Get out of here!" Izuku roared over his shoulder, his voice strained and ragged as spit flew past his clenched teeth. "This thing is too strong and too fast for you to fight! I'm not a student here—I'm not part of your exam! Leave this to me and run to the cliffs!"




"No way!" Ruby shouted back, taking a desperate step forward with Crescent Rose. "We are not leaving you behind to face this monster alone!"




"Yeah!" Jaune yelled, his voice cracking with terrified loyalty. "Are you crazy?! You're gonna get yourself killed!"




"There's no time to argue!" Izuku screamed, his green eyes blazing with desperate fury. "GO!"




Izuku planted his right heel into the crater, the mechanical blowback piston of his Iron Sole hissing under the strain.




He didn't just hold the weight—he forced it upward.




With an earth-shattering yell, Izuku channeled the embers into his shoulders, violently shoving the Beringel's massive arms up and off his guard, breaking the beast's center of gravity!




Before the monster could recover, Izuku flexed his knees and launched himself forty feet straight into the air.




Emerald lightning spiraled around his right leg, condensing into a blinding cone of compressed kinetic force.




'Shoot Style...!'




"ST. LOUIS SMASH!"




Izuku whipped his right leg around in a blistering, overhead roundhouse kick, slamming his heavy steel sole directly into the center of the Beringel's chest!




CRACK-BOOM!




The concussive shockwave pulverized the air, driving the eighteen-foot beast backward onto its heels.




Without pausing for a breath, Izuku used the recoil of the strike to twist his body mid-air, winding his left leg back and delivering a thunderous, spinning axe-kick squarely against the side of the monster's skull!




KABLAM!




The titanic double-impact broke the creature's balance completely.




With a deafening crash, the massive ape was sent hurtling thirty feet across the courtyard, smashing violently through two ancient marble archways before burying itself in an avalanche of shattered stone and billowing mortar!




The courtyard went dead silent.




Tyler lowered his revolvers by a fraction of an inch, his hazel eyes wide beneath the brim of his Stetson.




Pyrrha stared at the green-haired boy floating down from the apex of his jump, her shield lowering in stunned shock.




He hadn't just held the monster back.

He had beaten it back.




The avalanche of shattered masonry did not keep the monster down.




Before the dust could even settle, the mountain of rubble exploded outward with a furious, ungodly roar.




The Beringel lunged out of the ruins on all fours, its four crimson eyes burning with unbridled, humiliated fury.




The bone plating on the side of its head was cracked, dripping thick black ichor, but the jagged obsidian spikes along its spine were glowing hotter than ever, venting dark amber steam into the air.




With a guttural snarl, the beast drove both of its massive, shovel-like hands straight into the bridge's foundation.




With terrifying, monstrous strength, it tore massive slabs of solid granite—boulders the size of carriages and chunks of fractured pillar—straight out of the bedrock.




It reared back and hurled them in a relentless, rapid-fire artillery barrage across the courtyard!




"Scatter!" Pyrrha shouted, throwing her shield up.




Dozens of multi-ton boulders tore through the air, screaming like incoming mortar shells.




When the rocks struck the flagstones, they detonated into sprays of jagged, lethal shrapnel, creating a suffocating curtain of white dust and pulverized stone that completely blinded the clearing.




Izuku landed in the center of the chaos, his breath coming in ragged gasps as the cramp in his chest flared.




He didn't have time to recover. Boulders were hurtling toward the students scattered across the bridge.




Izuku snapped his right wrist forward, flicking his fingers in rapid, rhythmic succession.




THWIP-BANG! THWIP-BANG! THWIP-BANG!




Pinpoint Air Force shockwaves tore through the haze like high-caliber artillery rounds.




Each compressed air-bullet struck an incoming boulder dead-center, detonating the flying slabs into harmless clouds of fine gravel before they could reach Jaune, Nora, and Ren.




On the right flank, through the swirling curtain of white dust, Weiss Schnee was desperately trying to reposition.




She sprinted across the broken flagstones, her rapier raised as she prepared to summon a series of white haste glyphs to evacuate the wounded Kaen.




"Just need... three more steps..." Weiss muttered under her breath, her eyes narrowed against the grit.




She planted her foot to conjure a glyph—




A stray chunk of jagged granite, hurled through the dust at blinding speed, slammed directly into her left ankle.




"Ah!"




Weiss let out a sharp cry of pain. Her balance broke, her knee buckling beneath her as she tumbled hard onto the cold flagstones, Myrtenaster skidding five feet from her reach.




She tried to push herself up, hissing through her teeth as sharp pain lanced up her leg.




A low, whistling screech echoed from the dust cloud above her.




Weiss tilted her chin up.




Emerging from the haze, hurtling on a steep, downward arc directly toward her exposed position, was a cluster of three colossal boulders—each one heavy enough to crush an armored carriage flat.




Her glyphs were too slow to summon. Her weapon was out of reach.




Weiss's breath hitched in her throat, her pale blue eyes dilating in sheer, helpless horror as the shadows of the falling stones swallowed her whole.




"Look out!"




A green blur crossed the distance in a fraction of a heartbeat.




Izuku dropped out of the dust storm, his boots skidding across the flagstones as he threw himself over Weiss's trembling frame.




He didn't try to kick the stones away. He didn't have the angle, and the kinetic blowback would have showered Weiss in lethal shrapnel.




Instead, Izuku wrapped his broad arms around her shoulders, tucking her head firmly against his chest and curving his back upward like an iron shield.




CRASH! CRUNCH!




The first boulder slammed directly into his upper back with bone-jarring violence. The second clipped his left shoulder, while the third shattered against the stone an inch from his boots, showering his spine in heavy, jagged rock fragments.




"GUH...!"




Izuku let out a choked, agonized gasp.




The breath was hammered completely out of his lungs, his ribs groaning under the immense crushing weight.




He felt the fabric of his hero suit tear, the brutal impact bruising deep into his muscle tissue, but his scarred arms never loosened their protective hold around the girl beneath him.




Silence fell over their small corner of the ruins as the dust rained down like grey snow.




Slowly, agonizingly, Izuku pushed the broken chunks of stone off his back, his shoulders trembling as he dropped to one knee, coughing heavily into the dirt.




A thin line of crimson trickled down the side of his mouth, dripping onto his gauntlet.




Weiss opened her eyes.




She looked up, trembling, taking in the bruised boy kneeling over her. His green curls were caked in white mortar dust, his breathing was shallow and ragged, but his emerald eyes were clear, steady, and entirely focused on her.




"Are you... hurt, Miss Schnee?" Izuku wheezed, his voice strained through clenched teeth.




Weiss's haughty composure completely shattered. Her mouth fell open, her voice cracking with genuine, terrified bewilderment as she reached out with shaking hands to steady his trembling arm.




"I... I'm fine! But you—why did you do that?!" Weiss cried, her voice trembling as she looked at the shattered boulders surrounding them. "Why is this thing so strong?! I have studied the fauna of the Emerald Forest for years! Beacon's staff clears high-tier threats prior to every initiation! There shouldn't be anything in this valley capable of overpowering an entire class!"




Izuku took a slow, painful breath, pushing himself upright with the steady, stubborn resilience of a boy who had survived a war.




He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his glove, his gaze narrowing toward the roaring dust storm where the four crimson eyes burned through the haze.




"I don't think..." Izuku muttered quietly, his voice hard as iron, "...Beacon had anything to do with this thing."




His emerald gazed up in the beast. They widened upon seeing the other students charging towards it.




"Why are you all still fighting?!" Izuku shouted, his voice hoarse over the howling gale as he pushed himself up from the rubble. "You retrieved your relics! You're supposed to be retreating!"




"A Huntress and Huntsman don't easily surrender, even when faced with a tough challenge. They have to pircevier!" Blake said from within the dust around the Grimm.




Emerging from the swirling curtain of white dust behind the monster, two shadows moved in silent, synchronized rhythm.




Blake Belladonna darted along the left flank, Gambol Shroud's cleaver drawn in a reverse grip, while Magenta Khan dropped low on the right, Sunder and Spark held like twin fangs.




Both girls converged on the Beringel's rear, driving their blades with all their weight directly into the soft tendons behind the creature's knees!




SPARKS-CLANG!




The steel bounced off the dense, corded muscle as if striking cured rubber.




The Beringel didn't even turn around.




With contemptuous ease, the beast simply whipped its massive right arm backward in a casual, sweeping backhand.




It didn't even make contact. The sheer atmospheric displacement of the swing generated a localized gale of compressed wind that slammed into both girls like a physical wall, sending Blake and Magenta skidding thirty feet across the flagstones, their boots leaving smoking friction burns in the moss.




"Blake! Magenta!" Yang yelled, her lilac eyes flashing red as she bounded forward to intercept them.




"We're fine!" Blake coughed, catching her balance on one knee.




Before the beast could capitalize on their recoil, a ragged, furious roar tore through the clearing.




"I am NOT... letting an overgrown ape... disgrace the Daija clan!"




Staggering out from behind the fallen marble archway came Kaen. Blood dripped steadily from her split lip, her uniform was torn and gray with stone dust, and her Rose Gold Aura remained completely shattered, leaving her entirely unprotected.




Yet her golden eyes burned with pure, unyielding venom.




Her hand clamped hard around the hilt of Shutshuen-Sha, dragging the heavy steel from its scabbard with a sharp, scraping hiss.




"Ray! Ty!" Kaen shouted, her voice trembling with adrenaline and battered pride. "Cover my advance!"




Tyler Greystone didn't waste breath arguing. He stepped forward with cold, deliberate economy, his hazel eyes locking onto the pulsing amber veins along the monster's throat.




His Stone-Grey Aura flickered to life.

Deadeye.




To Tyler's perception, the chaotic world ground to a sluggish crawl. The flying grit hung suspended in the air; the Beringel's massive, swinging arms slowed to an agonizing drift.




Tyler worked the cylinders of Revenge and Redemption with machine-like speed.




BANG—BANG—BANG!




Three heavy .44 Magnum rounds tore through the stagnant air in less than a second.




Each bullet struck with surgical precision, drilling directly into the glowing, volatile seams where the Trigger serum throbbed beneath the beast's thick neck plates.




The creature's head jerked violently, black ichor spraying from the punctured veins!




At the exact same moment, Raymond forced his inner ear to stop spinning.




Supernova-blue Aura crackled across his jumpsuit. With a sharp pop of displaced air, Raymond vanished from the ground and rematerialized fifteen feet in the air atop the highest intact pillar.




"Eat superheated plasma, you oversized rug!" Raymond screamed.




He pulled the dual triggers of Novasurge. Twin azure plasma bolts erupted from the monkey wrench's jaws, lancing down through the dust and striking the Beringel directly across its upper eye cluster in an explosion of thermal sparks!




The beast roared, blinded and enraged. It scooped up another carriage-sized chunk of granite, preparing to hurl it upward at Raymond's perch—




"Not on my watch!"




Yang vaulted into the air, using the explosive recoil of Ember Celica to rocket horizontally through the dust. She drove a burning, fire-charged right hook directly into the side of the flying boulder, detonating the multi-ton rock into a cloud of harmless gravel!




"Pyrrha, now!" Jaune yelled, planting his shield to brace her footing.




Pyrrha sprinted across Jaune's shield, launching herself twenty feet into the air. She wound her right arm back and hurled Miló with all the force her Aura could muster.




The bronze spear broke the sound barrier—CRACK!—striking the beast's forehead dead-center.




Yet even with the force of an Olympic champion, the spear failed to pierce the dense obsidian skull-plate.




It sparked violently, deflecting into the sky before Pyrrha recalled it with a subtle hum of polarity.




"It's too dense!" Weiss cried, running forward despite her bruised ankle.




She thrust Myrtenaster forward, summoning a glowing white acceleration glyph directly in Kaen's path. "Kaen, use the glyph!"




Beside her, Ruby dissolved into crimson rose petals, swirling around the beast's ankles with Crescent Rose to slice at its heels, while Ren and Nora dove in from the opposite flank—Ren firing green tracer rounds from StormFlower into its ear canal, Nora leaping to slam Magnhild into its collarbone.




Kaen hit the acceleration glyph at a dead sprint.




The white Schnee glyph flared with brilliant light, violently multiplying her velocity.




Surrounded by a roaring, spiraling tornado of Wind and Fire Dust, Kaen launched herself into the air, her single-edged Tachi spinning like a blazing saw blade.




"Eight-Fold Serpent Cleave!" Kaen screamed, pouring every ounce of her physical strength into the strike.




The flaming blade descended in a blinding, concussive arc, striking the Beringel's neck with the full force of her clan's ancient technique.




BOOOOOOOM!




An explosion of roaring fire, pink lightning, and compressed air engulfed the monster's entire upper body, shaking the very foundations of the gorge.




The thirteen initiates held their breath, waiting for the massive silhouette to collapse.




The flames slowly drifted away.




The Beringel stood immovable.




Its skin was blackened, but the thick, mutated bone plates had absorbed the brunt of the assault.




The three bullet wounds Tyler had carved into its neck were already bubbling, dark ichor sealing the punctures shut as the Trigger forced its cells into hyper-regeneration.




Beneath its cracked brow, all four crimson eyes ignited with incandescent, apocalyptic fury.




It didn't just roar. It shook the heavens.




The air pressure across the gorge plummeted to zero.




The four glowing eyes of the Beringel burned with blinding, unadulterated violet light.




The pulsing veins across its arms flared so brightly that the dark fur along its shoulders began to singe and smoke from the volatile chemical heat.




It was done playing.




The colossal ape leaned backward, coiling its massive, eighteen-foot torso like a siege spring. Its right arm—thick as an ancient redwood trunk and bristling with jagged obsidian spikes—wound all the way back behind its shoulder.




It wasn't a standard swipe.




It was a wide, sweeping, horizontal haymaker meant to cleave Kaen, Nora, and Ren clean in half before obliterating the bridge behind them.




At the base of Izuku Midoriya's skull, the prickle of his emergent soul-sense shattered into a blinding, deafening siren.




'It's going to wipe them out!' Izuku didn't pause. He didn't breathe.




He ignored the tearing agony in his sternum. He ignored the burning nausea in his throat.




Green bio-electricity exploded outward in a violent, jagged sphere, tearing up the flagstones beneath him as he pushed Full Cowling to its absolute limit.




"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Izuku roared.




He tore across the courtyard like an emerald thunderbolt, closing the thirty-yard gap in a single, desperate heartbeat.




Izuku slammed his right Iron Sole violently into the flagstones directly in front of Kaen, Nora, and Ren.




CRASH!




The kinetic blowback piston in his heel fired with a deafening hydraulic bang.




The sheer downward force of his stomp shattered the bridge's foundation, heaving a massive, ten-foot slab of solid granite straight up out of the bedrock.




Izuku threw both of his scarred Air Force gauntlets forward, shoving the massive stone barrier with all his might, using the granite wall to physically sweep Kaen, Nora, and Ren twenty feet backward out of the strike's lethal path!




"Izuku, look out!" Ruby screamed from the flank.




Izuku spun around.




A massive, airborne chunk of shattered masonry—hurled by the beast's initial movement—was hurtling straight toward his face, blinding his line of sight.




Izuku didn't hesitate. He wound his right fist back and drove a concussive straight punch through the center of the flying boulder.




SHATTER!




The rock exploded into a cloud of fine grey dust and flying shrapnel.




Through the blossoming cloud of stone powder, Izuku's green eyes widened in sudden, absolute terror.




The rock had been a distraction.




Right behind the shattered debris, already moving at terminal velocity, was the Beringel's clenched, obsidian-plated fist.

It filled his entire field of vision.




Time stopped.




Izuku threw both of his scarred gauntlets up into a frantic, desperate guard—

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!




The impact did not sound like flesh hitting flesh.




It sounded like a high-yield artillery shell detonating against an armored bunker.




A catastrophic, spherical shockwave of compressed kinetic energy ruptured across the bridge, violently shattering the ancient aqueduct arches into gravel and blowing every single student flat onto their backs.




The air in Izuku's lungs was pulverized instantly. His ribs groaned and cracked beneath the monstrous kinetic transfer, the heavy fabric of his hero suit tearing away in scorched ribbons.




The sheer, terrifying momentum did not knock him back.




It launched him.




Izuku became an emerald blur, shooting horizontally across the gorge like a railgun projectile.




CRASH-BOOM!




His body slammed into the sheer, vertical granite cliff face spanning the northern side of the gorge.




The kinetic energy was so monstrous that his body punched straight through the solid granite cliff, tearing a smoking, five-foot tunnel through the rock, blasting out through the upper crest of the mountain, and crashing through dozens of ancient redwoods before tumbling into the deep, misty woods far above!




A shower of pulverized rock and falling trees echoed into the gorge.




Then, absolute, suffocating silence fell over the ruins.




The wind died. The dust slowly settled like grey snow over the cracked flagstones.




Ruby Rose sat frozen in the dirt, her hands trembling around the cold steel of Crescent Rose. Her silver eyes were wide as dinner plates, fixed entirely on the smoking, hollow crater carved into the solid cliff wall.




The color completely drained from her face.




"I... Izuku...?" Ruby whispered.




Her voice cracked.




"IZUKU!"




Yang, Weiss, and Pyrrha scrambled to their knees, their eyes locked onto the tunnel in the mountain with dinner-plate horror.




"He... he took that hit directly..." Weiss stammered, her voice shaking violently as bile rose in her throat. "I didn't see him use his Aura…"




"Considering what a previous direct hit did to Kaen… I'm not sure he could have survived that…," Tyler muttered, his gravelly drawl barely a breath as his hands tightened white-knuckled around his revolvers.




Deep in the center of the bridge, the silence was broken.




THUD. THUD.




The mutated Beringel turned slowly around.




Its black hide was smoking with foul, chemical heat. Its four burning crimson eyes ignited with cold, undisputed triumph as it looked down at the twelve bruised, bleeding, and utterly exhausted teenagers huddled across the ruins.




It had removed the only threat.




Now, only the prey remained.




Slowly, deliberately, the colossal eighteen-foot ape rose onto its hind legs. It raised both of its massive, bone-spiked arms high into the air, casting a shadow of absolute, inescapable death over the gathered students.




Jaune Arc dropped to his knees, his sword slipping from his numb, shaking fingers.




His voice was barely a whimper against the howling canyon wind.




"What... what the hell do we do now...?"




The massive fists began their descent.