章 1971: 201
"RUBY! TAKE THE FIGHT TO HER, WE'LL HOLD THEM OFF!" Jaune shouted, swinging his sword in a massive, glowing arc that split the sky with a blazing, golden slash- the sheer strength behind the blow causing a crescent of yellow wind to blast across the fields of Solitas and annihilate a swathe of grimm down to the last speck of dust. The scent of springtime filled the air- unlike anything that Ruby had smelled before. Not the fresh, verdant springtime that Penny brought, but the smell of new beginnings. Of rain and growth, of rebirth and sunlight.
Team JNPR was back and stronger than ever- more powerful, older, but still recognizably them.
Ruby had no idea how it happened, but…
They were back, fighting instantly as they brought forth firepower like divine retribution onto the field with grace, speed, precision, and-
KRA-THOOM!
Firepower so strong it made even Ruby's massive anti-titan bullets look tame.
That was Nora.
That was Nora!
Nora, Pyrrha, Jaune, Ren!
She stopped and stared, gasping from multiple perspectives as each of them flew from an individual portal from around the city and started fighting without hesitation- Pyrrha lashing out with devastating sweeps of her spear accompanied by whirlwinds of flame and light, shield glowing and exploding thunderously as it struck grimm after grimm and reduced them all to smoke in the wind. Nora's hammer smashed craters in the ground, blasting out electric shockwaves that crackled through the air and fried an entire wave of encroaching Beowolves to nothing more than a smear of black against stone, her grenades turning night into day while pink lightning blasted from her body with every step she took.
Ruby almost thought that Nora might be almost as fast as her now, such was the sheer speed she showed with every step.
Ren, meanwhile, simply vanished- though every time he did so, it seemed as though an ephemeral bamboo forest sprung up and filled with pink and green slashes of wind and death- all the grimm caught within dying in an instant when he reappeared and did so again.
And then… Jaune.
Jaune, who she'd once called a bit wimpy and weak at the start of their first year. He was tall now, strong, broad, and wearing a set of beautifully accented armor- gold and white and marked with swirls of rusty brown that added to his overall look instead of taking it away. Every single swing of his sword struck down grimm after grimm with almost contemptuous ease, wide sweeping arcs of light striking down the hateful things en masse with such speed and power that even Ruby was impressed.
"Well, you heard the man!" Yang shouted as she roared past, Blake riding side saddle on the back of her bike as she gunned the engine and raced across the now slowly clearing plains, firing Ember Celica with one hand as she spun out to a halt in front of Ruby. "C'mon! We gotta get to that whale! It's what's making all the grimm!"
"R-right! Where's Weiss and Penny!?" Ruby asked, immediately starting to run alongside Bumblebee as Yang gunned it again, the three of them blasting off at high speed and leaving snow and flame in their wake- black rose petals filling the air as Ruby threw her Rosebuds into an endless loop of creating more and more of themselves from the grimm they tore to shreds, clearing aside a path where she hadn't had enough time or an opening to do so.
"They're coming too! Up there!" Blake answered, pointing up at the stormy sky above where Penny and Weiss appeared in a flash- a streak of green marking Penny's trail from the other side of Atlas and making a parabolic arc down towards their position, while Weiss zoomed out of the sky astride a summoned Queen Lancer. "Hey!"
"Hey yourself!" Weiss grinned, all five of them traveling in an utterly lethal pack as they began to approach the whale above- it looked like a modified Kujira, a mythical grimm that came from ages past. Where Kujira were mostly shaped like blue whales, this one was an even more enormous than usual sperm whale shape, covered in bones and glowing from within and with massive crystals of Gravity Dust embedded in its hide. The source of the odd migration patterns some while ago, Ruby assumed. "I think this is our endgame. There's nothing left to do but this."
"Take down Salem. Save the day, kill the grimm," Yang agreed, revving Bumblebee's engine as flames poured from the tailpipes. "We can do that, right?"
"We're Team RWBYP. There's nothing we haven't been able to do before," Blake spoke, shifting from her sitting position to standing on the seat, completely at ease with the motion below her as her hair billowed dramatically in the wind. "Even if Salem is some kind of big bad immortal witch, there's no way that we won't win. Not with all of us fighting together."
"We will fight, Wishing Star, and we will win," Penny nodded, the roar of her jets almost a little too loud as she made pace with Ruby, both of them nodding together as their Auras began to synchronize- all five of them at once. Red, White, Black, Yellow, Green. Five colors mixed in a kaleidoscopic rainbow as they charged through the unending sea of grimm without pause, as though they were simply too strong to be stopped.
Maybe Salem was doing it deliberately. Maybe they were being led into a trap.
None of them cared.
This was their chance to finish it once and for all. To meet the boogeyman who had plagued the world from the shadows for uncountable centuries, spreading darkness and dealing death again and again for so long that not even Professor Ozpin knew how long it had been.
Ruby gritted her teeth as they continued on, spreading out her Aura as she flung them all upwards past the baying, howling sea of grimm seemingly endlessly fountaining from the depths of the monstrous whale grimm above them, leaping high into the sky and using her Semblance to carry her entire team into the beast's mouth.
"It's time to finish this!" she announced, grunting in effort as they landed within the massive maw of the horrifying, fleshy creature and charged in as one- all of them shouting out a battlecry as they put their weapons to good use and started causing havoc around them.
The grimm within the depths of the whale stood no chance- even as thickly as they were arrayed, even as freakishly strong and tough as they were compared to normal members of their kinds, they tore like tissue paper as Crescent Rose flashed like an arc of red vengeance and left nothing but glimmering rose petals in its wake.
She took the lead, as she always did. This was her element. This was where she excelled.
This was where Ruby Rose, the student, the sister, the child, the hero, all fell away in the face of what she truly was.
She was Ruby Rose. She was the slayer of monsters.
There were all too many monsters to slay.
And so, Crescent Rose flashed again and again, shrieking through the air and letting loose with cacophonous litanies of death and flame as she burned through more ammunition- every single kind of bullet she kept within her body, every single bit of Dust she had to offer. She flung herself forward into the depths, carving a bloody path without stopping into the halls and rooms of the horrific, disgusting whale. Her team followed along without a word, all of them working together silently without need of communication- all of them knew damn well what they were here for, and with how synchronized all of them were as a team now, there was nothing but the grim surety of endless death and violence as they destroyed every single black stain upon the world with vicious efficiency.
And then- they all slid to a halt in a burst of flame and smoke and rubble, smashing through a wall and into the innermost sanctum of the grimm whale known as Monstra , stopping before a twisted, spiraling throne that held the object of their ire.
Salem.
The Wicked Witch. The Eternal Queen. The Monster of the World. The Queen of the Grimm. A thousand other epithets could do no justice to the being before Ruby, as though she were a twisted mirror of Ruby's own form.
Grimm, and yet recognizably human. Evil beyond belief, sunken into the depths of her madness and hatred and seething with an overwhelming desire to end everything .
"Salem… this ends here and now!" Ruby shouted, pointing at Salem and allowing Augury to spear out of her body so she bore two scythes at the ready. "Your reign of terror ends today at our hands!"
It had often been joked to her, in the past. Silver for monsters, steel for humans, referring to the silver gleam of Crescent Rose's blade and the darker, plain steel construction of Augury.
As she stood before the monster that used to be a woman, she recalled her persistent, often repeated answer to that selfsame joke.
She held her scythes at the ready, the gleaming blades sharp and ready to rip and cut and shred the thing before her.
They were both for monsters.
And here was the biggest, baddest monster of them all.
"Oh?" Salem smiled, eyes shining with deadly promise. "Then by all means… come at me."
週次パワーステータス
-- 推薦
ランキング 
-- 推薦
チケット