Named Inheritance (RWBY/Worm/APGtE/Multicross)

[breakingamber]

This is primarily a cross between A Practical Guide to Evil, Worm, and RWBY, though it also incorporates characters and things from several other forms of media. The basic premise is that, in a mostly-modern-day setting, several people have the willpower, determination, and the desire to see something through, and those qualities grant them things called Names, magical (or technological, depending on who you are) powers that give people the capability to do what needs doing. Heroes and Villains, specifically. However, Names are heavily based on and influenced by stories, and many Heroic and Urban Fantasy tropes are enforced by the laws of the universe.

This story follows Cherry Blossom and her team of heroic/antiheroic misfits as they go and fight the villainous Mad Prince, the fairly odd Lone Swordsman, and the ever-expanding Woe.

This was originally posted and will primarily be updating on Spacebattles at this link.


Yellow Trailer
"There will come a time when your heart will lay shattered and all that you are falls apart. Your darkest hour, if I may, though it won't necessarily last an hour. It could be days, weeks, months, even years. By the end of it, however, you will have an important choice to make: How will you put yourself back together? This choice will be the most important of your life, the one that determines who you are and who you want to be.

I pray that you'll make a good one."
- King Obi-Wan, the Wise addressing his squire, Lord Anakin the Butcher

It was a cold, cloudless night. The full moon shone brightly in the sky, its light unblocked by anything but the slightest wisps of strata. A nightclub on a street corner blared dance music into the otherwise silent night, and red light flashed out the windows to join the light of the moon.

In another world, the moon might have been shattered, and the roaring of a motorcycle might have been heard, followed by the screaming of dozens of patrons, and finally finishing with the sound of glass breaking. But that is another world, and this is this one.

It would've taken state-of-the-art security systems or an extraordinarily acute sense of hearing to notice the soft brush of feet on the ground as the person to whom they belonged ceased their flight and landed on the sidewalk.

She stomped towards the doors of the club. This too went largely unnoticed. The patrons of the club tended to party quite loudly, and it was nearly impossible to hear the girl's footsteps on the ground even though she put enough force into each step to crack the concrete.

When she got to the entrance of the club, she tested the metal doors. They were heavy, but still manageable for someone of normal strength. There were probably hydraulics making them easier to open, not that she needed them.

Grasping the handles, she flew upwards, hovering about a foot off the ground. Her golden-blonde hair suddenly flew backward, along with the rest of her. The doors screeched with the sound of tearing metal, and then they came right off. She let them go then, and they loudly clanged on the ground.

Everybody noticed that. The entire club went silent from shock, and even the loud dance music seemed to be in suspense.

The girl landed back on the ground, then spoke loudly and clearly. "Everybody out. I don't want to have to beat up more people than I have to."

A second passed, then, as one, the dancers and drinkers and all the other attendees rushed out the door, making sure to give the person standing in the middle of the doorway a wide berth. Even some of the staff ran out, cowed by the otherworldly show of strength.

Half a dozen people remained. Well-dressed men with red-tinted sunglasses and white suits wielding pistols and axes, glancing between themselves and the teenage girl standing in the doorway. Gangsters. The bright flashing lights inside the club had changed to fluorescent lights one might see in an office building, properly illuminating the foe that had just ripped the heavy steel doors off the building like they were paper.

Frankly, she didn't look like much. She wore a black leather jacket and a short green skirt. Her blonde hair was let down and it fell down to her waist. She looked like some random, if rather attractive, girl one might meet on the street, or run into at the mall.

Some of the thugs were emboldened by the relatively normal appearance of their aggressor and advanced on her. One even made a misogynistic comment. Most stayed back, however, not willing to get ripped in half or pounded into a fine paste by the young parahuman.

They were the smart ones.

The first guy to get near her was a tall fellow wielding an ax. He wasn't the most experienced fighter, but he was strong and figured he could overpower the pipsqueak of a girl in front of him. He raised his ax overhead and brought it down with a shout, and felt the blade slam into her shoulder… and bounce off. She didn't react, taking advantage of his stunned state by simply rearing back for a punch that slammed into the unfortunate fellow's chest, sending him flying into the back wall.

Another goon aimed and fired his pistol at the girl, but she was already moving, and she slammed into the man, only letting him get a single shot off and sending him sprawling to the ground. Another bone-shattering punch and he fell unconscious. She picked something up off the ground, throwing it at one of the nearby gangsters. He dropped his ax to catch it, then gulped when he realized that it was a flattened, still hot bullet. A bullet he could've sworn had just hit their foe.

The entire group suddenly felt much less willing to fight.

She spoke up again. "I'm pretty sure you know who I'm here for."

A couple of the goons shared glances, then one who was deemed to have been unlucky enough to be chosen to respond replied nervously, "Actually, um, no, we don't. Sorry; could you, er, elaborate for us… miss?", he corrected as one of his fellow goons elbowed him in the side.

The blonde blinked once or twice, then grimaced. "Ah, sorry. I'm looking for your boss. Xander Waxon, Jack Candlestick, Will Naxle. Any of those ring a bell?" She looked almost embarrassed. It would've been funny, had the gangsters not been so scared.

"Uh, yeah, that second one does," a different goon spoke up. "He's not here now, actually. He doesn't come 'round here often. Sorry?" A couple of his companions looked at him oddly.

She sighed exasperatedly. Before she could respond, the loud screech of tires on asphalt came from outside. She turned around, and some of the gangsters contemplated shooting her in the back while she was distracted, but quickly decided otherwise. What if it ticked her off? She seemed pretty calm and composed for someone who could probably slaughter the lot of them without breaking a sweat, but who knew? Maybe she was concealing a roiling inferno beneath that calm exterior just waiting for an excuse to let loose, like an attempted murder attempt.

Also, it would have been mildly unsporting.

The car that had just pulled up outside was a fancy black Mercedes, and the blonde could just make out the number on the vanity plate: GAM8LR. The passenger side door opened up, and another teenage girl popped out and skated over to the discarded doors. On roller blades, no less.

Both girls looked about the same age and both girls wore a skirt, but that's where the similarities ended. While one girl was conservatively dressed, the other was dressed colorfully, skimpily, even outlandishly in pink, red, and blue. The first girl's hair was long and blonde, while the other girl's hair was short, a shocking pink, and tied up in two almost-adorable pigtails. Her skin was an almost comically pale white. Her face was just as pale as the rest of her, save for her eyes, which shone like the rainbow, her nose, which was bright red and round, and her mouth, which seemed to be filled with razor-sharp shark teeth, grinning widely. She looked like a sexy creepy clown, and wasn't that a sentence nobody ever wanted to think?

The clown finished her inspection of the jagged steel and turned to face the girl who was tensing her shoulders and preparing for a fight, then let out a disarmingly loud cackle, causing the other girl to fly up in shock. "Ha! Gotcha! Anyway, d'you mind me asking why ya trashed Mista J's club? It's gonna be pretty expensive to replace those doors!"

The other girl's face had a hint of red in the cheeks as she replied, "Well… I wanted to get all the civilians out and I was expecting a fight. Thought that making them panic and run would work best."

The clown girl chuckled and twirled around, eventually falling to the ground as her chuckles grew into a full belly-laugh. "Ha! 'Preciate it, but really, you can kill the poor innocent civvies all you like, darling. No one cares about them! 'Cept their families, their friends, and prolly loads of other people, but otherwise, no one cares!"

She shot to her feet and sped over to where the blonde was uncomfortably hovering over the ground. "You got yourself a Name, sweetheart?". She grinned.

"Uh, it's Tori Co- "

She somehow leaped up ten feet in the air and booped the blonde on the nose with her finger, and Tori recoiled back. "No no no, silly! Not yer real name, yer Name! I don't got one, but you can call me Harlequin anyway!" Her grin grew slightly less wide. "Actually, ya know what. You seem the heroic sort. Dang. Prolly shoulda guessed, really."

Harlequin skated aimlessly in circles on the ground, conversation seemingly forgotten. Tori waited for her to continue, and visibly grew more and more irritated when she didn't. "Look, I'm looking for Jack Candlestick, and you aren't him, so - "

The clown girl stopped skating and screamed, "WOOHOO!", startling Tori yet again and causing her to float even higher in the air. "Just realized something! Let's fight! Right here right now! I finally get a good fight, and you get to test yer hero skills! Win-win! Let's go!" She paused for a second, then, in a voice almost a whisper, continued, "You don't mind, do you?"

The floating blonde's face flipped between shock, confusion, and anger before finally settling back on irritation. "You're joking," she tried.

Harlequin replied. "Nope!" She smiled conspiratorially. "That's the other Mista J's job, and he's better at it! Let's get on with this, and then maybe I'll take ya to see the man yer looking for, mkay?" Then, she reached her arm behind her back and grabbed her weapon, which turned out to be a giant silver-colored hammer that couldn't have possibly fit behind her - just the head was wider than the clown was tall, yet she somehow pulled the whole thing out from behind her anyway.

She twirled it with one hand like a cheerleader's baton then slammed the thing onto the ground, and the impact cracked the concrete.

Tori's eyes widened, but she readied for a fight regardless, shoulders tensing and hands clenched. "Look, I'm really not looking for a fight, can we just talk -"

The answer seemed to be a very large and vehement "NO" as Harlequin, cackling loudly, leaped straight at the blonde flier almost faster than the eye could see, swinging her hammer wildly. Tori barely had time to dodge out of the way of the gargantuan weapon, and it slammed into the club behind her. The whole building shook from the impact, and the men remaining inside the club decided that, no, they were not getting paid enough to deal with superpowered teenagers, and made their rapid exit through the back door.

Harlequin spun around with her hammer, catching the blonde flier with her backswing and sending her soaring higher into the air. It didn't seem to affect her at all, but she was quite worried nonetheless, her brow furrowed and her frown deepened. She took a moment to straighten herself, then charged straight at her opponent, fist forward. Harlequin barely had time to swing her hammer in the way, and the whole street shook from the impact between the unstoppable force and the… hammer.

The clown remained largely unharmed, but the sheer force sent her tumbling head over heels backward. She somehow managed to turn it into a cartwheel and eventually ended up in a handstand, hammer vanished into the wherever it went when she wasn't using it.

She flipped into the air and landed back on her feet, a cocky grin still on her face. "Ohh, I like you! We're going to have so much fun together!" She reached behind her back again and pulled out a different weapon: a rainbow-colored assault rifle, this time of reasonable (if still impossible) proportions. Tori's eyes widened in panic, and she quickly flew down to street level behind a different building, out of sight.

Harlequin giggled loudly and then dropped her voice into a faux-whisper. "Come out, come out, wherever you are… I have cookies!" As she said this, she somehow pulled out a tray of chocolate chip cookies from behind her back.

They smelled delicious, but Tori didn't show herself. The clown waited a couple more moments, then sighed. The cookies vanished back into the ether, and a thought visibly went across her face, causing her to perk up again, smiling evilly. "Welp. If you don't wanna play with me, then I'm gonna go off and play with some civvies now, and you know how I feel 'bout those!"

She skated down the street, looking for targets, but she didn't get more than a couple of yards when the parahuman, previously hiding under a car, charged into her before she could react, sending Harlequin flying back into the club. Glass shattered as the clown girl smashed through the window, and the club rumbled again as she impacted the back wall.

Tori, hoping to incapacitate her foe at least temporarily, grabbed the discarded steel doors on the street and hurled them after her foe. She expected them to keep her down for a couple of seconds at most; she had clearly displayed superhuman strength in their fight, and that hammer was likely much heavier than a mere set of steel doors.

She did not expect the girl to scream loudly and painfully as soon as the steel impacted her body. Screaming and cursing rang through the night as the clown girl disappeared below the metal, and then the noise stopped abruptly. Tori winced, then flew into the club to throw the doors aside. Confusedly, she stared at the location where she had last seen Harlequin.

All she could see was a puddle of some kind of green slime.

Her face contorted with guilt, but the sound of a car door slamming outside drew Tori's attention. As she looked outside, she only felt a sense of exasperation at the sight greeting her. "You're kidding me. Did you just wait in the car that whole time?"

A young man in a white suit and black bowler hat stood next to the driver's side door of the car that had pulled up next to the club not long ago. A red ribbon wrapped around his bowler cap to match his obnoxious orange hair, of which a good bit fell down onto his face, covering one of his eyes. One of his black-gloved hands loosely held a still-smoking cigar and the other one held a fancy black iPhone, which his lone visible eye, a dark gray one with dark eyeliner beneath, looked down at amusedly.

He hmmed briefly, still looking at the phone, then shoved it into a pocket on his coat. He looked up at Tori, taking in her appearance and facial expressions, and hmmed again. She growled.

"Did you hear my question?" she bit out. Her emotions were wavering between exasperated and furious now, and the man noticed. He smirked condescendingly.

"Ah, yes. I was distracted. Apologies for not paying you the attention you clearly deserve." His voice was so saturated with sarcasm Tori thought it might drip out onto the street.

"I go by many names, but you probably already know that." He grabbed a cane leaning against the side of the black car and started trekking forward, expertly twirling it in his free hand. "I suppose you could call me Jack. Jack Candlestick. Professional thief, crime lord, and ladies' man." He took an elaborate and theatrical bow, sweeping his bowler hat to the side.

"Now, I'm going to ask you a question, and I expect you to answer it honestly." His voice grew menacing and cold as he re-doffed his hat and resumed walking. He gave off the vibe that he would shoot you dead without hesitation if he didn't like your answer.

"Why did you wreck my club?" He positioned himself in the entranceway of the club, where the blonde had been floating less than a minute earlier. He leaned on his cane casually with one hand and took a deep drag of his cigar with his other. Exhaling smoke, he locked his one eye with Tori's two and stared.

She took a deep breath and attempted to appear confident, though internally she was starting to wonder if pissing off the second or third biggest stick in Chicago was the great idea she'd previously thought it was. "Well, considering it's a front for your criminal activity, I didn't think anyone but you and a couple other people would miss it. Also, I really wanted to talk to you. I want your help in finding my sister."

The crime lord appeared to take in her answer for a couple of moments, enough to make the other girl slightly uncomfortable, then smirked. "Okay. Sure. What's her name? And yours, ideally."

She started to answer, then paused, taken aback. "Wait, seriously? You're just going to help me, just like that? After I wrecked your club and did… something… to your… henchwoman? Who was she, anyway?"

Jack chuckled. "Yeah, I'm going to help you. I'm pretty sure I know both who you and your sister are, and I'm inclined to help given how she's been screwing with my people. Also, don't worry about Harlequin. She'll probably hate you forever now, but she's fine." Seeing Tori's befuddled expression, he continued. "She's one of the Fair Folk. Mercenary, specifically. She, in particular, is easy to hire, fairly professional, and has a cripplingly painful weakness to cold iron. She's fine though, just sent back to the NeverNever. I'm surprised you don't know who she is; didn't you hear about the WayneTech train heist a couple of weeks ago?"

Tori's face entered one of concentration, then realization. "With the Joker, right?"

The other man flashed a grin. "That's the ticket. Figured a smart girl like you would pick that up."

Tori scowled, then sighed in resignation.

Jack tossed his cigar in a nearby undamaged trash can and pulled his phone out of his pocket. "Let's see… Name, please? Again, I'm pretty sure - you're a blonde bombshell with flying brick powers, pretty hard to miss - but I'd like to make sure."

"My name is Tori College."

He hmmed again. "Alright, here's what I got. Tori College, twin sister of Maya College. Raised in a good Christian household, age 17, sister went missing about two weeks ago. Sound right?"

Tori nodded.

Jack continued, "Good news for you. I know exactly where she is. You won't like it though. She's running with the Mad Prin - I mean, the Joker's gang of bozos. You got an email address, Goldie?"

She rattled off a list of characters and after a couple of seconds of him putting in keystrokes, he nodded and put his phone back in his pocket. "You'll find her in the general area of that address I sent you, give or take a couple blocks."

Tori flashed a real, genuine smile at the other man. It was an attractive smile, she clearly took good care of her pearly whites. "Thank you so much! When I catch up with my sister, I'm going to give her a piece of my mind…" she trailed off as Jack held his hand up, palm facing her.

"I'm sure you will, but I wouldn't thank me yet if I were you." He took several steps further into the club, and his face darkened. "I'm going to tell you a story, Goldie." His deftly twirling cane suddenly seemed a lot less playful and a lot more menacing.

"Once, there were these kids. Smart fellows, worked hard, maybe weren't the most talented, but they were loyal to their employer and more than made up for their flaws with their effort." He glanced at the two unconscious bodies still lying around, almost forgotten.

"Then, some random person with superpowers busts in and threatens them, they defend themselves and end up beaten black and blue for their trouble, unlike the rest of the guys who fled as soon as things started looking bad." He raised his voice during that last part, and Tori flinched, realizing where this was going.

"Now, I honestly had nothing against the poor guy. Actually sympathized with him, if you can believe it. But. When it comes to this kind of thing, it's not about whether you sympathize with or dislike someone. If someone comes in and beats up your guys simply because they were there, just to send a message…" he locked eyes with the blonde, "...it stops being a trivial thing you can just ignore and move on from, and it starts being a matter of a little thing called disrespect. Frankly, I liked the guy. But he disrespected me by beating up my men, so I returned the favor. Put him six feet under."

"I know these fellows you got laid out on the floor here." He pointed at the ax-wielding one with his cane. "That's Terry. Single father with two kids to look after. Planned to run the Chicago Marathon in a month or two. Looks like you broke his ribs and gave him a concussion." He pointed towards the other one. "Manny. He's kind of a jerk, but his girlfriend likes him and vice versa. You broke his arm, probably more ribs and another concussion."

Jack smirked lazily. "I sympathize with you, I really do. But. You still crushed my men like tin foil. To me, this is a matter of... Well. You're a smart girl. You've probably figured it out."

Tori nodded warily, looking closely at the crime lord for any signs of rapid movement, waiting for him to make the first move. He didn't miss her attempts at analysis, and he smirked.

"Brave of you to try and fight, but you're a little out of your league here, Goldie."

And as he pronounced the final syllable, he moved, leaping backward towards the exit. Tori, caught off guard, put her hands up in front of her face to defend against a vicious attack from his cane, seemingly his only weapon. When it didn't come, she peeked out between her fingers, just in time to see a flaming red flare explode in her face.

She was knocked back into the wall, and smoke obscured everything in the club. It didn't stop Jack from immediately leaping forwards into the smoke and landing a lightning-fast blow on Tori's outstretched arm. Instead of bouncing off like all the other attacks on the girl, a meaty thud rang out, and she cried out in pain.

When the smoke cleared, Jack was standing back in the middle of the club, leaning forward with both hands on his cane. Tori was near the wall, pain etched across her features as she caressed her left arm.

Taking advantage of the brief pause in the action, she bit out, "How… how did you -," hoping to draw her opponent into a monologue. He did not disappoint.

"Well, it's fairly obvious, honestly. You can take one big hit, then you're vulnerable until your invincibility comes back up. I was watching your fight with Harlequin, and I noticed you tried to pause after every time she hit you with that oversized hammer of hers. If you were truly invincible, you would've just bull-rushed her and taken her out instantly; she's not that tough. You also -"

She interrupted him as she accelerated a fist towards him at a furious pace, but his reflexes were good enough to deflect her punch with his cane. Tori sent a flurry of punches and kicks propelled by supernatural strength towards the crime lord, but he dodged, deflected, or blocked each one with seemingly contemptuous ease.

It was almost as if he was toying with her.

Eventually, he jumped back and fired another flare at her, but she was ready for it this time and managed to dodge. It exploded as it impacted one of the three still-standing pillars of the club, and the pillar crumbled.

Tori saw this, and then looked at the other two pillars, the only things holding up the ceiling, out of the corner of her eye, and quickly formulated a plan while the smoke cleared again. Fortunately, Candlestick either hadn't noticed the club's lack of structural integrity or didn't care and continued blasting away at her with his cane.

The blonde estimated Jack's current position and lined herself up with one of the remaining pillars accordingly. Sure enough, another flare blasted out of the smoke. She dodged it fairly easily, and it impacted the other pillar, destroying it as well.

The crime lord leaped out of the smoke while Tori was watching the pillar and silently rejoicing and struck her with a series of lightning-quick blows. The first couple did nothing, but eventually, her invincibility went down and she started feeling the hits. And wow did Jack Candlestick hit hard. A series of jabs hit her in the stomach, leaving bruises that she was sure would last for days before an arcing swing slammed her to the side, and she felt a rib crack.

She flew up unsteadily and watched Jack slowly approach her, cane tapping on the ground. Tori glanced to her left, and saw the last pillar standing right there, chipped and slightly damaged from the night's… festivities, but unbroken. She considered just smashing it as soon as her invincibility came back, but decided against the idea - that would alert her foe as to what her plan was, and give him plenty of time to simply dash outside, something his tremendous speed would easily allow him to do.

She'd have to be subtle about this.

She looked Jack in the eye and tried to speak confidently, even as the pain in her… almost everything, really lanced up and down her skin like a million bee stings.

"Aren't you a little young to be beating a girl like you are now? For that matter, aren't you a bit young to be running a criminal empire? Did your parents raise you right?" she asked, with what she hoped was a cocky, annoying tone of voice.

Candlestick frowned, as one of the insults apparently struck home. He slammed his cane into Tori again, knocking her into the last pillar. She slumped down, pretending exhaustion. Her invincibility went down from the massive impact, and her opponent spoke.

"End of the line, Goldie. It was nice meeting you."

He raised his cane and pointed it directly at her forehead, allowing her to get a closer look. It shared many similarities with a rifle, with a long barrel and a red pop-up scope centered directly on her. She watched his finger pull the trigger.

Just before the flare hit her, she frantically pulled away towards the exit to the club, and yet she still felt the powerful explosion of the flare as it struck the pillar, scorching her backside and her hair. Like a sunburn, but a thousand times worse. Fortunately, the force of the detonation launched her closer to the exit, and as she reached the threshold, she couldn't help but make one last quip.

Turning back to the figure of Jack Candlestick standing back in the middle of the club in the smoke, she retorted, "Sure about that? Seems like it's more of the end of the line for you, Jack."

A word, spoken with nearly otherworldly power. "Wreck."

Jack confusedly protested, "What?" before he heard cracking sounds from directly above him. He looked up and saw the spider web of cracks slowly spreading across the ceiling. A piece of plaster fell right in front of him, and then he understood. "Oh," was all he could say.

Then he was bolting for the entrance as the ceiling collapsed on top of him. It almost seemed like he would make it out before the metal and wood and plaster and stone would crush him - the club was large, but his speed was that great - and he just managed to make it to the threshold before his eyes widened and he managed, in disbelief, to spit out three final words.

"Son of a -"

His sleek black Mercedes slammed into him, front impacting his middle, and he was hurled back into the collapsing building. Rubble fell from above, burying him, the car, and just about everything else, forming a tomb for Jack Candlestick like the graves of the emperors of old.

Tori watched the rubble and dust settle, watching and listening for any signs of the infamous crime lord. After a couple of minutes had passed and she'd decided he wasn't coming back, she sat down on the street and sighed, wincing in pain from the injuries he'd inflicted on her as well as the strain on her muscles caused by lifting and throwing the Mercedes - cars were heavy! A couple more minutes later, she heard sirens, and, not wanting to get involved with the police, flew off to recover some more.

When the police arrived, they managed to drag out two bodies, unidentified, one fancy car with an unregistered license plate, and one set of damaged steel doors.

***

Elsewhere, a young man sat at a table and brushed the dust off his white suit and black pants. He held his phone - slightly cracked - to his ear while he tried to light a cigar with the only hand he had available. Eventually giving up, he sighed and stood up, putting his cane aside as he waited for someone to pick up their damned cell phone.

Eventually, she did.

"Hello, Alex. How'd the fight go?"

He shrugged, not caring that the gesture wouldn't be picked up by the phone. "As well as can be expected. The club is wrecked, she revealed an Aspect, and I'm not dead. Nor did I reveal my Aspects. Pretty sure we've just set up a Pattern of Three, so we'll have a guaranteed win against Ms. College in the future."

"Ms. College?"

"Ah, she's the new Hero in town. Her Aspect is Wreck. Not sure if she had it before the fight or if she unlocked it during. Pretty sure it was her only Aspect though. Something to do with, well, wrecking things. More of a large-scale demolition aspect than, say, Shatter though. Also, I got a pretty good sense of what her Name is. Something like Golden Girl." He cut himself off when he realized he might have been rambling a bit.

There was a short pause. "Can I speak to Roman, please?"

The man sighed. "Sure." His eyes flashed green, and his demeanor changed slightly - not a lot, but a little. His smirk was slightly meaner, his eyes slightly colder.

"Hey, Cat. How's it going on your end? Anything to share?"

His voice was different too. More abrasive.

"Nothing much going on with me, but there's some bad news. I'm pretty sure the White Knight is coming to Chicago soon, but we don't need to worry about that right now. What I want to know is how powerful and skilled this new 'Golden Girl' is. Also, some measure of her emotional stuff and things. You know how this goes."

He grimaced when he heard the news about the White Knight. "Yeah, that murderous lady is going to be a problem. As for our less murderous lady, she's… unskilled, but strong. Leave her alone too long, and she'll be a major problem. Actually, come to think of it, that's true of basically all heroes, right?"

"Yeah."

The man continued. "As for her abilities, she's like one of those annoying video game bosses - seemingly invincible at first glance, but fairly easy to take out if you know what you're doing. Also, I don't think she knows anything about Namelore, as she didn't try to look for me after the club caved in. She's fairly clever and reserved, but also has a major emotional weak point in the form of her sister. If we can get our hands on her, we could probably make her dance to our tune."

"You know what I think about kidnapping, Roman."

"Yes, you and your morals. I get the point. Also, it'd probably be pretty hard, considering she's running with the Mad Prince."

"Can we get the Black Knight on him? We may not have the best relations, but… "

He paused, thinking heavily. "Maybe. I don't think we're up to it right now."

"Alright. I have a meeting with Janet soon, so I've got to hang up. See you later, Vandal."

"Goodbye, Black Queen."

 

[breakingamber]

Red Trailer
"Red like roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest."
- Excerpt from 'Red Like Roses Part I', a famous Remnan pop tune

A hill, covered in freshly fallen snow. The full moon in the sky was obscured by thick clouds, which, for a moment, had decided to cease releasing their frozen white burden. The branches on the trees, barren of leaves, rustled in the strong wind.

In another world, the hill might have had a gray headstone, devoted to the last Rose of Summer. There might've been a young girl, cloaked in red, mourning the loss of someone precious to her, followed by the howling of wolves at a shattered moon, and finally finishing with the sounds of gunfire and more howling, but in pain instead of… whatever it is that weird darkness wolves howl about. But that is another world, and this is this one.

The pure white snow was disturbed by a young girl and her mother, both with black hair and pale skin. The younger one skipped through the snow without a care in the world, smiling widely, cheeks red from the cold. The elder watched her, tread with a more reasonable pace, and had a smile just as wide as her daughter's, but powered by love instead of innocent joy.

The girl shouted something back, causing her mother to laugh loudly. She accelerated her pace to catch up to her daughter, who flopped back into the snow, waving her arms back and forth wildly. Her fluffy red coat and black snow pants protected her from the chill of the night pretty well, though not perfectly; a bit of snow snuck past her warm defenses through that tiny gap between her neck and her shirt.

She didn't notice it at all as her mother sat down beside her. The girl said something, and her mother responded, causing the daughter to pout, only to frown cutely once her mother broke out into giggles, indicating she was joking.

All in all, it was a beautiful night. A touching scene.

Naturally, it couldn't last. This is a story, after all, and where would we be without any delicious conflict?

Less than a mile away from where the two family members were playing, something pushed against the fabric of reality. Stretched it, pulled on it, distended it - the world typically didn't like it when things tried to enter from Outside and resisted any and all attempts for things to do so, but this particular intrusion was too far too strong to stop. and thus reality did the only thing it could do to avoid shattering altogether: it allowed the whatever was pushing in from the other side to poke a tiny, almost-insignificantly small hole in it.

This might not seem too bad. Only small things can fit through small holes, one might think, and if the hole is small enough nothing can get through at all. However, when the hole scales to the size of the entire world…

You get a perfectly round rift the size of a house, angled 45 degrees to the horizontal and seemingly filled with roiling dark liquid the texture and color of pitch.

The woman and her child both felt a sudden sense of unease as the dark portal opened, a sense of wrongness. The mother stood up, shaking off the snow, and the child frowned concernedly. Her brain hadn't really processed what the most recent surge of negative emotion meant, and she still wanted to play outside in the snow with her mother under the full moon.

The pair exchanged words, the mother suggesting they return to warm up and perhaps get some cocoa or warm themselves by the fire, while the child wanted to continue playing outside, maybe even build a snowman. The gentle talking grew into a small argument, eventually culminating in the child trying to storm off in a huff while the mother sighed exasperatedly.

Suddenly, the otherworldly sound of wolves howling shattered the peaceful night. The sound made the younger girl stop in her tracks and the older's blood run cold. Before the first terrible howl was over, a second one joined it, then a third, and then the howls of an entire pack of wolves filled the silence.

The woman ran fearfully, scooping up her daughter in her arms and heading frantically away from the direction of the ghastly yowling. The young girl didn't protest; she'd seen enough movies to know that you didn't just stand around when you heard the howling of wolves. She did curl up in her mother's arms, trusting her to take care of her.

As if on cue, the snow started falling, first just the occasional snowflake and a bit of powder, then a denser, fuller snowfall that tinted the background white, then finally an all-encompassing blank white blizzard that limited visibility and prevented the woman from seeing more than a couple yards in any direction.

She was exhausted at this point, still running from the wolves which bayed and shrieked after her. Still, she kept running. She had to protect her child, and, to a significantly lesser extent, herself.

She tried to ignore the fact that howling of the beasts was getting louder, which meant they were getting closer. Her daughter cried worriedly.

Suddenly, she noticed a tiny dark rectangular shape in the whiteness - a building. She recognized it as an old shed located on the edge of the family farm used for holding old tools and various maintenance equipment. She adjusted her course slightly for the only source of salvation in sight, and it almost seemed like she might make it before the wolves caught her, and they were even-more-frighteningly close now. The woman could almost feel their breath on her heels, and the noise of their snarling was almost deafening.

Then she tripped.

It was almost comical. Her face plowed forward into the snow, filling her mouth, nose, and eyes with the frozen substance. Her child flew out of her arms towards, and she could see her daughter's eyes widening in surprise, the tears streaming down her face, her mouth about to open - and then she hit the ground, tumbled several meters, then slowed to the stop, the impact cushioned by thick snow.

She frantically made to get up, but something leaped on her, pinning her face to the ground. She screamed and kicked at the black and furry thing on top of her and it earned her a little slack, but still continued pinning her to the ground. Still struggling, she craned her neck upward and screamed a command at her daughter, who lay there, unmoving, watching the beast currently slavering over her mother. She screamed it again, and the girl finally, though slowly, started for the shed.

Meanwhile, the woman had finally impacted the beast enough to make it roll off over her, and she stood shakily to her feet, glaring at the beast who dared threaten her child. It didn't really notice nor care, and then she took a mental step backward and tried to determine what she was dealing with.

It was a beast the height of a grown man, with black fur that almost seemed made of shadows. It resembled a wolf, but clearly was not; the creature had almost bipedal hind legs and a muscular upper body, not the quadrupedal body structure of a true wolf. White bone spikes extruded from its arms, legs, and spine, and a white mask with red markings on it covered its angular head, still leaving slits for its glowing yellow eyes. Its mouth, slightly ajar, was filled with sharp white teeth. It was most decidedly not natural, normal, or good, and its very presence seemed wrong, something that was but should not have, an aberration by any sense of the word.

The woman gulped, then gulped again as the rest of the pack of wolf-beasts became visible in the thick snow. She snuck a glance backward at her daughter and saw that she was hesitating in front of the shed's door.

She started speaking again, but the closest creature pounced on her, catching her by surprise. The child watched as her mother fought the wolf, and for a brief moment, it almost seemed she would win - adrenaline and motherly love fought the creature of darkness and evil and she managed to turn it around and get it into a headlock, the snapping jaws just barely held at bay - but then the rest of the wolf creatures pounced, and she was quickly overwhelmed. Blood splattered across the snow, and a young girl watched as her mother was torn to pieces in front of her very eyes.

She watched, in horror, and then the grief hit her. She was young, for sure, but she still understood that she had loved her mother, that she was now gone, and she wished she had spent more time with her. She'd had her flaws (she was horrible at getting up in the mornings, and the girl occasionally had to literally pull her out of bed), but they were vastly outweighed by the good, happy memories they'd formed together.

At some point during the… slaughter seemed like an apt word, her body had worked on autopilot, entering the shed, closing and deadbolting the door behind her (she almost couldn't reach it, and had to stand up on her tippy toes), and curling up in a corner with several old-fashioned farming tools.

Howling came from outside that made the young girl want to bolt from her hiding spot, but her rational mind prevailed, reasoning that those horrible wolves would kill her easily if she left the shed. Then, the walls started shaking as the black beasts outside attacked the shed to bring it down, their new target chosen.

Thoughts flashed through the girl's mind; memories, plans for escape, self-pity and regrets. Her life flashed before her eyes, as cliche as the phrase may be, and she nearly gave up hope, but, suddenly, two promises shot through her head.

The first was powered by simple self-preservation.

I may fall, but not like this, and it won't be thanks to some stupid wolves!

The second, by her small and honest soul, by stories of heroes and monsters, by sheer selflessness. She was afraid for her life before, but now her eyes burned with fury, with intensity.

I don't want anyone else to have to go through this! If I can save anyone else from a fate like this, I will!

And with that, a Story was formed, and a Name was born.

Golden eyes turned silver, and those silver eyes flashed.

The young girl, who now moved with newfound confidence, searched the small shed for a weapon, and quickly found one in the form of an old farming scythe that had fallen to the floor. She picked it up with both hands, stared at the door, then unlatched the deadbolt.

She kicked the door open hard enough to send the wolf on the other side flying, then leaped outwards after it, burying the scythe into its chest and drawing it to the side, leaving the corpse of the black beast to dissolve, erasing all traces of it from the white snow.

She backflipped away from the rest of the wolves, still surrounding the shed, stuck the landing and planted her scythe in the ground. She roared out a challenge at them and they responded in kind with more of that horrible howling and charged.

And the fight was on. Twenty demon wolves, each the size of a large cow with mouths full of razor-sharp teeth versus one young girl with a glorified farming tool. The fight was as one-sided as it got.

They should've brought more wolves.

The area around the young girl became a whirling sphere of steel and death, her scythe moving faster than the eye could follow. Like lambs to the slaughter, the wolves charged at the young girl and were cut down like wheat. Severed black limbs and decapitated heads filled the air and fell to the ground, and the triumphant howling turned into a sound more akin to whimpering as each and every wolf that approached the young girl died.

After barely a minute had passed, the area was filled only with the smoking remains of two dozen wolves, and soon even those were gone.

The battle concluded, the girl's eyes flashed again, and she collapsed, scythe falling to the ground. She simply lay there, next to the remains of her mother, filled with grief, but also a steely resolve.

This will not happen again. I swear it.

She got up on her knees, hands shaking, and slowly, gently, removed her mother's cloak from her blood-spattered corpse. The formerly white cloth had been completely stained red with blood. It would stay that way.

She looked down at her mother's face, her golden eyes, and sighed. Cried, a bit. She pushed the eyelids down.

The young girl reentered the old shed and came back out with a shovel.

There was work to be done.

***

About a month had passed, but the scene remained much the same.

Picture a hill, covered in freshly fallen snow. The full moon in the sky is obscured by thick clouds, which, for a moment, decide to cease releasing their frozen white burden. The branches on the trees, barren of leaves, rustle in the strong wind.

The hill has a gray headstone, devoted to the Blossom of Spring. There is a young girl, cloaked in red, mourning the loss of someone precious.

The voice in her head, known only to her, speaks.

I'm sorry for your loss.

She is silent for several moments. Eventually, she replies aloud, "Thanks."

What will you do now? The voice belongs to someone exactly two years older than her, as it turns out.

The girl ponders this for a moment, then comes up with an answer. At the same time, she pivots her feet and moves down the hill, back towards civilization.

"Well, I'll try to collect information. See if I can help anyone. Honestly, there's not a lot of people out here, and I was thinking of going to, like, Chicago or something. It's only about an hour's drive away, I think. I'll probably need a weapon too; didn't you have this scythe or something, Ruby?"

Oooh, of course! I'm not sure how I'll do it without Dust, but I'm sure I can make something! Our baby will be beautiful and deadly and - wait a second, Crescent Rose isn't just a scythe! She's an awesome masterpiece of a weapon! She…

The voice rambles on for almost a minute, and the young girl cracks a smile at her antics. She looks to the moon. It is full again, shining pure white light down on the forest. Just like that other night.

Ruby's voice eventually trailed off. You gonna be okay, Cherry?

She thinks the question over for a second, then smiles.

"Yes, I think I will be."