Chapter Text
Ruby’s scythe was swaying, right and left, left and right.
In front of her was Pyrrha, who looked distinctly bored.
If anything, that was pissing Ruby off even more. Of course Pyrrha looked bored, she never took a fight seriously in her life and won them all anyway. It was just a training bout, but she still wouldn’t go all out.
Of course that meant that the day she fought someone on her level, she died. She went to fight Cinder Fall with all the arrogance of an invincible champion and died for nothing. Less than nothing, she made Cinder much more powerful.
Ruby had been angry to a lot of people since she reincarnated, but Pyrrha? Pyrrha pissed her off more than anything.
“You know, I always wondered,” she said, all smile. “Who picked the title ‘invincible girl’ for you?”
“Why do you ask?” Pyrrha was always so very polite. It was very, very annoying.
“Because it’s a stupid title? The day you’ll lose, you’ll be what, Pyrrha the not-so-invincible girl? The invincible-girl-except-for-that-one-time?”
Pyrrha’s smile looked a lot more strained suddenly. Good.
When the signal rang, Ruby didn’t so much sprint at her as she disappeared, her semblance boosting her speed. Original, fifteen-years-old Ruby would never have had enough control on her aura to do any of this, but Aura is the soul. And her soul? It made it back from the Ever After with her.
Her scythe was intercepted by a slightly surprised Pyrrha, who wasted no time with her own counterattack. Ruby went backward with another burst of her semblance and fired a few shots with Crescent Rose, all blocked by that annoying shield. Pyrrha evidently didn’t like her shield a lot since she threw it at Ruby a second later.
‘She wants me to dodge so she can bring it back from behind me.’ Instead of doing that, she hit the shield with her scythe so it went right back to Pyrrha’s waiting hand.
“Come on, tin can!” Ruby yelled above the sound of Pyrrha’s gun. “Is that all you got? Want to lose your title yet?!”
She took a bit of dust in her hand, used her semblance to get close and threw it a Pyrrha’s face. She just twisted around, letting the dust pass near her face without connecting, and delivered a vicious jab at Ruby’s stomach with her spear. Ruby took it gladly, her own weapon catching Pyrrha in the head.
The both flew at opposite sides of the arena. Catching her breath, Ruby could still feel her anger coursing through her, old, molten lava making trying to get out through her skin, her stomach, her mouth. “Hey, tin can, did you expect to die once you’ll lose your title? Is that why you picked it?!” She ran at Pyrrha, a tornado of steel and rose petals. “The invincible girl! Once she’ll lose, she’ll just die and vanish in the pages of history!” She caught Pyrrha’s shield with her blade and sent it flying. “The invincible girl, mankind’s champion!” She managed to hit her in the arm before a kick to the stomach sent her backward. Before she could find her footing again, Pyrrha was on her, her sword almost finding her throat before a burst of semblance allowed her to put some distance.
“The invincible girl, who can’t even be bothered to fight me!”
Pyrrha’s shoulders relaxed. “I didn’t take you for a trash talker, Ruby.”
‘And I didn’t take you for a martyr.’ Ruby almost fired back. Instead she just said “You’re annoying me.”
“Oh, but that’s not why you’re acting like that isn’t it?” Pyrrha’s smile took an edge, her eyes full of steel. “You’re angry at me, or angry at everyone and everything. But you don’t have a reason to be, so you’re looking for one. If you push us far enough, maybe we’ll snap at you and give you an excuse to lash out, but so far no one took the bait, did they?”
Ruby gritted her teeth. She opened her mouth to answer before she felt an impact at the back of her head. Her fucking shield! She twisted to the side to avoid Pyrrha’s next few bullets.
“I get it Ruby, I really do. It’s annoying when the world just doesn’t want to dance with you, isn’t it? So just this once, I’m going to indulge you.”
Pyrrha’s aura expanded.
No, it wasn’t so much that it was expanding, more like it was stretching after being cooped up too long. She was already imposing before, but her presence was dwarfing anyone else in the room at that moment. Her eyes shone, and her smile grew.
Ruby tried to swing crescent rose, but the blade stopped moving in mid-air. She was only distracted for a fraction of a second, but Pyrrha took advantage of it and fired a few shots at her knees, making them buckle. The moment she did, Pyrrha was in her face, sword in hand, slicing at her aura with much more strength than before.
Ruby took a few step back before the metal cross around her neck tightened, strangling her. She gripped at it, trying to get it off, but Pyrrha’s spear found her in the eye.
Or at least it would have, if Ruby didn’t disappear in a cloud of petals. When she got out, the cross wasn’t around her neck anymore. In fact, all the metal she had on her had fallen to the ground. A neat trick of Petal Burst.
She jumped at Pyrrha with a wordless roar, channeling her semblance. Pyrrha and her both disappeared in a cloud of petals, Pyrrha’s semblance tried to pull her away but Ruby didn’t give her the time before throwing her outside of the arena. A ring out was still a win.
Then Pyrrha stopped in mid air, held by her own armor. Without missing a bit, Ruby put Crescent Rose in a sniping form and fired at her, but Pyrrha’s hand rose and the bullets stopped mid air, as if impacting an invisible wall. She then moved her hand to the side, and Crescent Rose made a horrible jamming sound.
Ruby felt her gut clench as she looked at her baby, now useless. The internal mechanisms were all thrown out of order, and she could feel some of the gears falling inside the weapon.
Pyrrha once again took advantage of the distraction shooting her in the hand and eye, taking away chunks of her aura.
“What’s wrong, Ruby? Is there a problem with your weapon?”
Pyrrha had her eternal polite smile on her face.
Ruby didn’t bother answering. She had felt angry for a few weeks now, but it was simmering lava. Now, Pyrrha would die. It was simple, really. She broke Crescent Rose, so she would die. If Ruby didn’t kill her now, Cinder would later but really who had time to wait for that?
She’ll break her neck today.
Her hand shot up to her purse and she fished out some rock dust. Pyrrha kept shooting at her of course, but Ruby just dodged using her semblance and idly shaped the dust into a rocky spear.
Then she jumped at Pyrrha, her spear impacting her shield. It wasn’t strong enough to break it, far from it, but the impact was violent enough that Pyrrha fell back into the ring.
Ruby let go of her spear and punched Pyrrha in the face, using her semblance to enhance her speed. Pyrrha tried to buy herself some space with her sword and shield for a moment, but whenever she rose her shield Ruby just used her semblance to got to an undefended side and hit her again.
It took only a few seconds of that song and dance for Pyrrha to let go of her own weapons and intercept Ruby’s hands with her own, grabbing her arm and throwing her away. Ruby just used her semblance to cancel the momentum and go back at it.
Fifteen years old Ruby Rose would have lost against Pyrrha in a heartbeat. She did train with Yang and her dad, but she wasn’t strong enough to really use their fighting style. However, she wasn’t a fifteen years old anymore. She had trained with Ozpin for years to compensate for that weakness.
Pyrrha was good, of course she was. She was good at everything. But Ozpin had been alive for hundreds of years, and he trained her.
She was winning, simple as that. She was weaker, but faster, and her technique was so old that Pyrrha didn’t know how to react.
She used her semblance to get around Pyrrha once more but got pulled back, something was holding her arm. She looked at it, but there was absolutely nothing. For that distraction, she took a punch to the face. She tried to put some distance, but something was still holding her arm.
It took her a few seconds, during which her aura took dangerous amount of damages, before she figured it out. Pyrrha was expanding her aura to hold her arm in place.
Seeing the grimace on her face, she wasn’t that used to the technique, but it was still impressive. Even the Ace Ops had troubles with it.
The thing was, the problem with Pyrrha had never been that she wasn’t impressive. She was, she always had been, even in death. The problem was that she waited until that point to go all out when she could have used it to break free of Ruby’s semblance, she could have used it to throw her out of the arena, she could have used it as soon as Ruby was getting too close with hand to hand. She waited until she almost lost to go all out.
With a roar, Ruby wrenched her arm free of Pyrrha’s aura, making her stumble. She used that stumble to go behind her and grab her in a choke hold. Pyrrha had seen this coming and managed to use one of her arm to protect herself, so the position wasn’t perfect, but she was still chocking her. Pyrrha tried to move her other arm to use her semblance, but Ruby used her legs to hold it too. “No this time!” She was holding her full weight against Pyrrha’s back.
Pyrrha chose not to resist against her weight and fell backward, slamming Ruby against the ground. She then went back to a sitting position and slammed her again, and again, and again. Ruby was seeing stars, but nothing was more important than holding on. Pyrrha’s core strength was, as anything about her, impressive, which was pissing her off even more, so she tightened her hold.
Ruby lost track of time. All that mattered was holding on. At some point she begin to feel her aura splinter and crack under the strain, but she held on. At some point she began to feel something trying to separate Pyrrha and her, but she held on.
“Enough!”
Then she blinked, and she was mid-air, held in a purple glow. She could feel liquid - blood, her brain told her - sliding down her neck.
In front of her, also held by the purple glow, was Pyrrha. She looked a bit out of it, barely awake.
Ruby trashed against the her bonds. “I almost had her!”
“Miss Rose, you lost the fight a while ago.”
Ruby looked at the aura meter. Her aura… Was empty. Meanwhile, Pyrrha’s was still in the lower yellow.
“What you will do is go to the infirmary, then we’ll decide of a suitable punishment for fighting despite my signal.”