Hey guys, RoseSaiyan2 here again! Hopefully you guys enjoyed the last Chapter of this story! This chapter will start a little different as I've realized there are some loose ends I need to tie up. If you're expecting me to just jump straight into the action.. eh.. that'd be a little boring. So let's start off this chapter a little bit different.
I've been hinting at some bonding time for certain... pairings before. So I figured why not devote a little time towards those? While this won't be an entire chapter devoted towards couples, there's some things I need to clarify. One thing being: the relation ship between Baron and Flare. There's also what's going on with Pyrrha, among other things. Cardin and his team will impact the story in upcoming chapters, I know I said they would and haven't really delivered on that. For that, I apologize. That is a disservice towards anyone reading this story. Any suggestions on how CRDL could play into the story are welcomed. I do have a plan in mind for them, it's just getting them to that point is hard.
This chapter may shed some light on what's been going on with Cardin and his team though.
Anyways... enough with that. Onto the story!
P.s.: RoseSaiyan2 does not own DB Super/ Kai, Z , Black Clover, Rwby or any of the characters belonging to said series. He only owns the oc's (original characters) (aside from Daikon and Tarro... he's got permission to use those characters from a friend for his stories) that appear in this story. He also own the overall plot of this story.
Opening theme:

opening theme: Song 4 U [tales of xilia 2]
Visuals: replace the tales characters with the characters in this story. Villains being Cinder and Emerald. Mercury caught in the middle between the fighting sides unsure of which side to go with. Odyn and Ruby fighting against Cinder and Emerald respectively with the other characters fighting off the Grimm. When the song transitions to the chorus, Mercury is seen to be fighting alongside team Rwby, team JNPR, and the Elves as they fight off hordes of Grimm. The scene then transitions to a split screen with Odyn, Ruby, and Pyrrha fighting Cinder and Roy, Yang, and Blake fighting Adam Taurus. As the song is ending, Odyn suddenly is transformed into a different form as he charges towards Cinder with the Villainess charging towards him. Ruby is seen charging towards Emerald.
The song ends as Mercury walks towards Khanna with her hand stretched out to him with the members of RWBY, JNPR, OHRF, and KDBNB behind Khanna as she smiles at him. Mercury then walks towards the group as the camera fades up into the sky.
Chapter Twenty-One: The Fall — Cinder's Trap, Part Three
The last of the afternoon light came through Ozpin's window at the specific angle it had in late autumn — low, amber, giving everything it touched a quality of significance it may not have had at noon.
Ozpin let it sit for a moment before speaking.
"Your performance in that last match was exemplary, Miss Nikos," he said. "I expected nothing less, but the quality of it was — I suppose exceeds expectations is the appropriate notation."
Pyrrha smiled, and the smile had a quality that was slightly different from her public one — quieter, less performed.
"Thank you, Professor. Though I couldn't have done it without my teammates. Or—" She paused. "Or her."
"Her," Ozpin said.
"The other—" Pyrrha stopped. Appeared to choose her words. "There is someone else who contributes, when the moments require it."
Ozpin nodded, with the measured quality of someone who has been waiting for an entry point and has found it.
"Then I suppose I should also thank this other young lady," he said. "For looking after a student of mine."
In the interior register that had become familiar, Sarai's presence shifted — rose to the surface, as she did when she chose to speak rather than simply observe.
A change moved through Pyrrha's expression.
The flame-colored eyes were unmistakable to Sybyrh, who had been standing at the room's edge with the professional stillness of someone who has been trained to be present without intruding. She crossed to one knee.
"Your Highness," she said, quietly. "I apologize for not recognizing your vessel sooner."
"Be at ease, Sybyrh. I became conscious only recently." A pause, and the voice that used Pyrrha's throat had a different quality than Pyrrha's — older somehow, more certain. Not cold. But the specific warmth of someone who has lost things and decided to love what remains. "You have nothing to apologize for."
Qrow, leaning against the column at the back of the room with his arms crossed and his flask recently attended to, regarded this exchange with the expression he reserved for things he wasn't sure he had correctly understood.
"So there's actually," he said, "two of her."
"One vessel," Sarai said, turning the eyes toward him. "Two occupants. We've made arrangements."
"Right," Qrow said. "Sure."
"You strike me," she said, "as someone who prefers the world to surprise him rarely. I'm sorry to disappoint."
He stared at her.
"Didn't expect that," he said.
"Yes. I gathered."
Pyrrha reasserted gently — a transition that had become smoother with practice, the handoff between two people who have learned to share a space with care.
"I apologize for Sarai. She can be rather— well, you've experienced it."
"Nothing to worry about," Qrow said, and he meant it in the way he meant things when they had actually surprised him rather than when he was managing the response. "She's just—"
"Direct," Pyrrha said.
"Direct," he agreed.
The question she had been carrying since the elevator arrived at this floor now surfaced: "Why am I here, Professor?"
Ozpin set down his mug.
"What is your favorite fairy tale?" he asked.
She told him.
She had been reading fairy tales since she could read — it was the specific preference of a child who had too much talent and too few equals and had found, in stories, the company that reality wasn't providing. She listed them carefully: The Two Brothers, The Shallow Sea, The Girl in the Tower.
"The Story of the Seasons?" Ozpin offered.
Her face changed.
"Oh, but of course. A callous old man, visited by four traveling sisters — the first offers him solitude to reflect, the second brings new growth, the third warms him into the world, the fourth teaches him gratitude. And in return for their kindness he gives them powers — Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, the four maidens — so that they can continue to help others until the end of days." She paused. "My mother loves that story."
"Would you believe," Ozpin said, "that it has been told since I was a boy?"
She smiled reflexively, because this was the kind of thing people said and she had learned, in seventeen years of being Pyrrha Nikos, to receive these small social exaggerations gracefully.
Don't dismiss it, Sarai said, in the interior register. This man is not what he appears to be on the surface. There is considerably more to him.
Pyrrha blinked.
"Would you believe me," Ozpin said, his voice dropping from light to precise, "if I told you it was true?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"What exactly are you telling me?" she asked.
"I am telling you," he said, "that the four maidens exist. That they have always existed. That the powers described in the story are real, that they pass from woman to woman across generations, and that one of those women — the current Fall Maiden — is in a room beneath this school."
The silence that followed had the specific quality of information landing in a place that has no prepared structure for it.
"He's telling the truth," Sarai said, in the interior. "I can feel it. And for what it's worth — what he's describing is consistent with things our people have known for a long time. Magic of this scale is not unprecedented. We simply didn't know humans had it."
The doors of the elevator opened.
Glynda Goodwitch emerged, adjusting her glasses. James Ironwood followed, straightening his uniform. Their appearance had the quality of a meeting that has been scheduled and is proceeding according to its schedule.
Pyrrha looked at Ozpin. At Glynda. At Ironwood. At Qrow in his corner. At Sybyrh at her post.
"What is this?" she asked.
"The same people you have known," Glynda said, coming forward with hands spread in the specific gesture of someone who is trying to be reassuring while carrying too much to fully manage it. "We're still your teachers."
"'Cept with a part-time job," Qrow said.
"We are the protectors of this world," Ironwood said, with the directness of someone who has decided that the simplest version of the truth is also the most useful one.
"And we need your help," Ozpin said. "Both of yours."
He looked at her steadily — at Pyrrha, and at the thing behind Pyrrha's eyes that was not Pyrrha but was Pyrrha's. Two people in one gaze.
"Can we count on you, Miss Nikos? Or are we speaking now to her Highness?"
The eyes that looked back at him were Pyrrha's own.
"Both," she said. "Always."
The vault
The elevator descended through the lit vertical tunnel with the patient efficiency of something that has been doing this for a long time. The beeping of each floor had the quality of a countdown that was not counting down to anything obvious.
Pyrrha stood in the elevator with the five adults and one elf, and she was aware — with the specific awareness of someone who has recently learned a great deal and is now experiencing the physical context of it — that whatever she was being led toward was not going to be small.
Are you frightened? Sarai asked.
"A little," Pyrrha said, quietly enough that only the interior space heard it.
Good, Sarai said. Fear means you understand the stakes. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to act in spite of it.
I'm frightened too, she added. That might be useful to know.
Glynda fell into step beside Pyrrha as the doors opened into the long hallway.
"You must have questions," she said.
"Some," Pyrrha said. "I understand the basics now — the Maidens, the powers, the inheritance. What I don't understand is why me. And why now."
"Because we're running out of time," Qrow said, from ahead of her. "And because we don't get to choose our candidates the way we'd like."
"What chooses them, then?"
"The power does. Partially." Glynda's voice was careful, measured, the voice of someone choosing precision over simplicity. "When a Maiden dies, her power seeks a new host. The first candidate is always the person in her final thoughts. If that person is unsuitable — wrong sex, wrong age, wrong alignment of character — the power finds someone entirely random. Which, historically, has been..." she searched for the word.
"Problematic," Ironwood said.
"A diplomatic understatement," Sarai said, in Pyrrha's head.
"The last woman to hold it," Pyrrha said. "The current Fall Maiden. What happened to her?"
No one answered immediately.
Then the hallway ended, and the vault opened, and the answer was visible.
The machine had the quality of technology that had been asked to do something it wasn't designed for — capable, precise, and clearly at the limit of its specific capability. The pod at its center was upright, and through the glass, Pyrrha saw—
She stopped.
She felt it before she could name it — the specific surge of emotion that was not entirely her own. Something warm and anguished and ancient and sudden, rising from the interior space where Sarai lived.
Amber, Sarai said.
Pyrrha looked at the woman in the pod.
The scar ran from one side of her face to the other. The burn had taken something from the left side, and what was left was not her complete face. She was young — younger than she looked — with the specific stillness of someone being kept alive rather than living, the stillness that machines produce and people cannot quite match.
She was my friend, Sarai said. She used to bring me flowers. She was the first human who was kind to me without being told to be. We were children together, and she was — she was so—
The sentence didn't complete itself.
Pyrrha felt the tears arrive before she decided about them.
They came down her face with the unceremonious quality of things that don't ask permission.
I'm sorry, Pyrrha said, in the interior.
Don't be sorry, Sarai said, and her voice had the specific quality of someone managing something very large in a very small space. Just help me. Help her.
"Miss Nikos?" Glynda asked, and her voice was careful in the way voices become careful when they have encountered someone's grief and are trying to be present to it.
"Sarai knows her," Pyrrha said. "Amber. They were friends." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "She's — she's very angry. And very sad."
The professors exchanged looks — the specific look of people who have just learned something that changes the picture they had.
"She knows who did this," Pyrrha said. "She said she recognized the attack. The person responsible."
"And I will not say her name here," Sarai said, through Pyrrha's mouth, "because that name is mine to speak to the person who deserves to hear it face to face. This is not the place for it."
Ozpin nodded. "Understood."
"She's still alive," Sarai said, looking through Pyrrha's eyes at the pod. The flame-orange was in Pyrrha's eyes again. "I can feel her. Whatever you're doing to keep her stable — keep doing it."
"For now," Ironwood said, gently. "But the stability is —"
"Temporary," Ozpin said. "Yes."
He looked at Pyrrha — at both of them.
"When she passes," he said, "her power will seek a host. Given that her last thoughts were of her attacker, the power may follow the wrong path. Which is why—"
"You want to transfer it directly," Pyrrha said.
"To you. Before the natural process can take it somewhere we cannot retrieve it."
The machine hummed.
Amber breathed.
"If it's being held by someone who would use it the wrong way—" Pyrrha started.
"Then we lose a significant piece of what we've been protecting for a very long time," Qrow said, "and a significant piece of what's standing between the world and something considerably worse than what it's already dealing with."
Pyrrha looked at the pod. She looked at Amber's face — the scarred, sleeping face of a young woman who had been kind to a child from a hidden people, and had paid for it, and was now being kept alive by a machine in a basement while the world held its breath.
She would want this, Sarai said. If she knew it was you. She would want it to be someone who would care for it properly.
Are you certain? Pyrrha asked.
She valued kindness above everything else, Sarai said. I know you. You qualify.
"I'll do it," Pyrrha said.
The room went quiet.
"Are you certain?" Glynda asked. "There are risks — the procedure is unprecedented, and you already carry—"
"I know what I carry," Pyrrha said. "We've discussed it, Sarai and I. We're in agreement." She looked at Ozpin. "The question of whether it works, and what it does to me — I understand those are unknown. I'm choosing to proceed anyway."
"The procedure will require some preparation," Ironwood said. "And time we may not have. The attacker has already made their first move. We don't know when the next one comes."
"Then we should be ready when it does," Pyrrha said.
She turned away from the pod.
She turned back one more time.
She placed her hand on the glass, and in the reflection of the smooth cold surface, she saw herself: red hair, green eyes, the particular expression of someone who has arrived at a decision and is standing inside it.
Sarai's warmth was present in the interior, quiet and steady.
Thank you, Amber seemed to say, in the space between the glass and Pyrrha's hand, though Amber was not conscious and could not speak.
We'll try, Pyrrha said, to the reflection, and turned away for the last time.
The next morning — the Amity Colosseum
The singles round.
The roulette was not a bracket — it was a draw, conducted immediately before each match, giving the combatants approximately the time it takes to walk from the line-up to the center of the stage to consider what they were about to do.
Ruby, from the stands, catalogued the people standing on the stage: Sun with his easy posture; Penny with her hands clasped and her smile present; Mercury with the specific expression he wore when he was calculating rather than feeling; Pyrrha at the end of the line, looking at a point slightly past the middle distance. Odyn and Khanna were there too, their eyes occasionally finding each other with the specific quality of two people who share information that most of the room does not have.
"Yang Xiao Long and Mercury Black," Port announced.
What the crowd saw:
A fight that had the quality of genuine effort by both parties. Yang's power blazing, her combative instincts precise, her temper held in check with the specific discipline of someone who has been reminded recently what it costs to lose it. Mercury moving with the elegant efficiency that had defined his style since the first time Odyn watched him and noted that this boy was performing below his actual ceiling for reasons of his own.
They were both doing something here.
Yang was fighting with the fullness of what she had — no more, no less.
Mercury was fighting with the fullness of what he needed to appear to have.
It's a good performance, Odyn thought, watching from the line-up area, arms crossed. He's making it look like she earned it.
She had earned it, in the genuine sense — Yang's right cross at the end was the result of eight months of actual development. But Mercury had choreographed his own defeat with the specific care of someone who knows exactly when to be exactly wrong.
The buzzer sounded.
Yang stood over him.
"Better luck next time," she said.
He said something back that the crowd heard but that carried a different meaning than it appeared to.
Counting on you, Mercury, Odyn thought.
Sorry, Yang, Roy thought, from his adjacent position.
Mercury rose.
His expression shifted — the controlled shift of someone performing the specific quality of anger that results from a bruised ego rather than genuine threat, the anger that makes foolish decisions and acts against its own interests.
He kicked.
The sound that followed was the sound of something breaking — a clean, sharp sound — and he went down.
In the stands:
Baron had positioned himself three seats from Emerald six minutes before the match began, which was enough time to assess her position, confirm her sight lines, and identify the moment at which she would need to act.
He had dropped his drink before that moment arrived.
"I'm so sorry," he said, with the specific apology of someone who is genuinely sorry about the drink and not at all sorry about anything else.
"Don't worry about it," Emerald said.
"Let me clean it up—"
"Really, it's—"
He was already leaning across. His elbow came to rest in what appeared to be a very natural position while cleaning the spill. The specific pressure point on the human body that produces sudden unconsciousness, when addressed correctly, requires approximately one second to produce the intended effect.
Emerald slumped.
Baron caught her.
"She's not feeling well," he told the person in the adjacent seat, who had turned to look. "I'll take her to the medical room."
He lifted her over his shoulder with the ease of someone for whom this is not a significant weight.
He walked toward the corridor.
Done, he said, through the telepathic link. Emerald is neutralized. She won't be casting anything for the next several hours.
Good work, Odyn said.
Mercury is on his own now, Roy said.
He knows, Khanna said. He was ready for this.
The stage:
The footage that the cameras caught — the footage that was being broadcast to kingdoms across Remnant, the footage that people in bars and homes and fairgrounds were watching with the specific attention of people witnessing something at odds with what they understood to be true — showed Yang standing over Mercury.
It showed Mercury getting up.
It showed the kick.
It showed the breaking sound.
It did not show what the cameras in the restricted area — the cameras that only specific people had access to — showed, which was the specific telemetry of Mercury's prosthetic leg registering an impact at a level that did not correspond to Yang's actual strike, and the specific wince of a young man doing something he found morally difficult but had decided was necessary.
The Elven Vanguard members who had positioned themselves at three points around the stadium during the match saw Yang being surrounded.
They moved forward.
The elf who approached Yang had the specific quality of someone performing a role — the green armor was right, the address was correct, the command to stand down was delivered with appropriate authority.
Yang, who did not know what was happening, complied with the confusion of someone who does not have enough information yet and has the discipline to wait for it rather than act into the gap.
Khanna approached Mercury.
She knelt beside him.
"You did well," she said, quietly enough that only he could hear. "It's over. The setup is done."
His response was the response of someone in genuine pain who is managing it: "Remind me to negotiate better compensation for this kind of work."
"I'll make it up to you," she said. "I promise."
She gave him the look she kept for him specifically — the one that was, underneath everything else, the oldest kind of caring, the kind that doesn't ask permission and doesn't require acknowledgment.
He met her eyes.
Something in his face did the specific thing it had been doing more frequently since his memories had started coming back — the reaching quality, the almost-there quality of a person approaching something they have been looking for and are not yet certain they have found.
"Khanna," he said. Not as an address. As an identification. Like someone placing a name on something that had been present without a name for longer than they realized.
"Not now," she said, gently. "Later." A pause. "But yes."
Outside the arena — simultaneously
Berethon had positioned himself at the corridor intersection that provided a clear view of both Ironwood's approach and the stadium floor.
The footage was still running.
The hack that was keeping it running — preventing the feeds from being cut, ensuring that every kingdom watching the tournament was seeing the same image of Yang Xiao Long standing over a boy whose leg had just made a sound that implied it was broken — had been traced to the same origin as several other pieces of intelligence that Valvedern and Zero had assembled over the past week.
It was evidence.
Not circumstantial. Direct.
"James," Berethon said, as Ironwood arrived at the intersection with his guard.
Ironwood stopped.
Hyatan was beside her husband, and the specific quality of their combined presence was the quality that had always reorganized spaces around them — not through performance but through the simple fact of being who they were for as long as they had been it.
"Your Majesties," Ironwood said. "There's a situation on the floor—"
"We know," Berethon said. "And we know why it looks the way it looks. Which is also why you're not going down there yet."
"A girl on my watch just broke—"
"Nothing is broken that wasn't supposed to be," Berethon said. He said it with the specific quality of patience — not the patience of someone suppressing frustration, but the patience of someone who has been patient for a very long time and has it in full supply. "James. Stop. Listen."
Hyatan put her hand briefly on Ironwood's arm.
"What you're seeing on those screens," she said, "is the conclusion of a plan that my sons constructed. What looks like an attack is a trap. What looks like evidence of misconduct is evidence of a very different kind." She looked at him steadily. "But the trap only works if the person who set it is allowed to spring it without interference from Atlas military personnel arriving on the floor."
"I can't allow a student to be held under guard based on false—"
"She is not being held under guard," Berethon said. "She is being kept from acting until the picture is complete. There is a difference." He looked at Ironwood with the specific expression of someone who has considered asking politely and has decided to be direct instead. "Trust us, James. Or stand down. Both outcomes are acceptable. The one that is not acceptable is you charging onto that floor and giving the person responsible for this enough warning to disappear."
Ironwood looked at the footage.
He looked at Berethon.
He looked at Hyatan.
He made the calculation of someone who has been told something by someone he has reason to trust and is deciding whether to act on trust or procedure, which is always a genuine calculation and never a simple one.
"How long?" he asked.
"Not long," Hyatan said.
Ironwood stepped back.
"Tell me what you need from me," he said. "Afterward."
"We will need you to be very specifically yourself," Berethon said. "And very specifically on the right side of what comes next."
"I'm always on the right side," Ironwood said.
"We know," Berethon said. "That is why we're telling you rather than working around you."
The arena continued its noise above them.
The plan continued its motion below.
Ozpin's office — that evening
The light was gone from the window now. The city's lights had replaced it.
Ozpin sat behind his desk.
He was thinking about a young woman who had placed her hand on a glass pod and decided to carry something she didn't have to carry. Who had arrived at the decision without drama, without the performance of heroism, with the specific quality of someone who has looked at what is needed and has decided that they are the one to provide it.
He had known she would.
He had known since the day she arrived at Beacon — since the first time he watched her on the training floor, not the fighting (which was exceptional and did not surprise him) but the way she moved through the space between fights. The quality of her attention to people. The way she listened.
Two burdens now, he thought. And she accepted both.
Sybyrh had said, in the basement: Sarai Albanar chose well.
He believed this.
He also believed that the next few days were going to test whether the choosing had been enough.
His scroll showed a black queen chess piece.
He looked at it for a long moment.
"Not yet," he said, to himself, or to the room, or to whoever it was who received these kinds of statements.
"Not yet. But soon."
He put the scroll down.
Outside, the festival's lights painted the city in the colors of celebration. Somewhere in it, Cinder Fall was making her own calculations. Somewhere in it, Pyrrha Nikos was carrying two people's worth of decisions. Somewhere in it, Mercury Black was being tended to by someone who had waited years for the right moment to tell him who she was to him.
And somewhere in the corridor between the waiting rooms of the Amity Colosseum, Yang Xiao Long was being given an explanation by an Elven soldier who was about to tell her something that was going to make sense of the past hour in the specific way that true explanations make sense of things — not by making them smaller, but by making them exactly as large as they were, and therefore manageable.
The plan was working.
The fall was coming anyway.
End of Chapter Twenty-One
To be continued in Chapter Twenty-Two: The Beginning of the End
Sarai Albanar had been waiting for a very long time.
Not passively — she had been watching, learning, present in the way that people are present when they cannot yet act but intend to. She had watched Pyrrha fight and teach and carry things quietly. She had watched her choose correctly, over and over, in the specific unglamorous ways that character is actually demonstrated — by being honest when it was inconvenient, by caring for people who couldn't give anything in return, by making the small right choices that no one was watching.
She had formed her opinion.
And now, in the vault of a school built on a cliff above a city that did not know what was coming, she had watched Pyrrha put her hand on a glass pod and say: I'll carry this too.
Sarai had spent years learning the difference between courage that performs itself and courage that simply acts.
She knew which one this was.
Whatever came next, she thought, we face it together.
This is enough.
This has always been enough.
Ending theme: Kokai no Uta (My Hero Academia Season 4 ending 1)
Visuals: Ranges from the characters introduced so far before turning to a dark screen split between the heroes and villains. Mercury struggles to choose a side until hands from the lighter image reach out to him and shatter his dark background. It then shows stills of each character in range of importance in the story before ending with the forces of light behind Team Rwby and Odyn looking up to Cinder and the forces of darkness.
Sorry for the shorter chapter guys! But it sets up the next one. And notice how i went in a different sort of direction from the cannon version Yang's scene. In this version, with Emerald knocked out, Mercury can focus on tricking Cinder and Mercury to think he's on their side still while secretly helping the elves expose her. As you've figured out.. all of the elves are in on this elaborate ruse cooked up by Khanna, Odyn, and Roy. It would explain why none of them reacted.
I referred to the elf in the armor as just elf because... you guessed it, there's a twist with them that will be revealed in the next chapter. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the clarity of what was going on with Pyrrha at the beginning of the chapter. Next chapter, I am thinking will still be a flashback at the beginning but not like in the original. It may or may not delve into why the elves hate cinder so much and why they're out for blood..
Next chapter may cover 2 ish episodes of volume 3 we'll see.
Here's some character polls before we go:
Blake's pairing (best option)
A. Shallot
B. Sun
C. Oc
Hailfire's pairing (best option)
1. Sun
2. Neptune
3. Yatsuhashi
4. Oscar
5. Giblet
What should I do with Emerald?
1. Keep her evil
2. Turn her good, just... later.
3. Turn her good, but bow out of the story for awhile after volume 5
Anyways that's all for now!