“Look out!” Twilight screamed as Sunset leaned hard to the right and narrowly dodged a tree they barreled past as they sled down the hill on top of Sunset’s shield. This would have been easier if they were not laid prone on the shield and Twilight were more compliant in steering with her.
“Brilliant idea!” Twilight shouted to be heard over the rushing wind. “Instead of dying from being mauled by an Ursa, we’re going to die because we ran into a freaking tree while- while- shield surfing!” She spat the last words in disbelief.
“Hey!” Sunset shouted back, also primarily to be heard over the wind. “You said we couldn’t outrun them! So, I gave us a faster route!”
“Who said I wanted a faster route!?”
“The fact that I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be mauled by an Ursa?”
Twilight went silent for a moment as the wind whistled loudly in their ears. “Touché.”
The two of them screamed again as yet another tree threatened their lives as they moved through the fast lane.
--Meanwhile, a few minutes ago--
“Wahoo!” yelled Natsu as he flew through the air. He threw a shadow punch toward the ground, and his gauntlets shot a burst of intense flame, which recoiled him higher into the air, prolonging his flight. “Now, this is the way to travel- ack!” His sentence to himself was interrupted when a bug flew into his mouth and almost down his throat.
“Hack! Klgh! Ugh!” he choked as his descent became more and more rapid, unable to take his mind off the bug in his throat to concentrate on slowing his fall. He couldn’t even think about steering, for that matter, as, when he fell into the forest canopy, he simply tore through some of the thicker branches with little sign of slowing down. Thankfully, an even bigger branch caught him, hitting him right in the gut, expelling much of the air in his lungs and the bug with it.
Natsu hung onto the tree limply like a sad cat as he recuperated from the whole ordeal. However, he did not get much time as the branch cracked angrily at the sudden and violent intrusion on its peaceful existence. Natsu froze as he looked to where the limb connected to the tree and could see it splintering and looked down and saw a running river directly beneath him. He silently prayed that the branch would not break anytime soon.
That prayer was loudly denied, and he fell into the river with the branch.
Starlight Glimmer had recently made her landing and was making her way through the Emerald Forest. Everything was peacefully quiet as she casually made her way through the monster-infested woods. That is until she heard a tree snap in half and a splash in a river nearby. She ran to investigate the noise and saw a pink-haired boy break the surface and grab hold of the log he fell into the river with. They made eye contact; he smiled and waved. Then his face turned green, and his cheeks puffed.
Natsu swallowed hard and managed a haggard shout. “A little help, please.”
Starlight sighed as she ran to the river and dove after him.
---
Once Natsu’s feet could touch solid ground, he immediately felt better. He dashed onto dry land, did some celebratory stretches before shaking himself like a dog. He then punched his fists together, and a burst of hot air waved off him, drying him off the rest of the way. He then turned to Starlight. “Hi, I’m Natsu,” he said as if nothing had happened, holding out his hand for a handshake. “What’s your name?”
Starlight glared at him as she wiped the river water off her face and slicked her wet hair back out of her face. “Starlight Glimmer.” she said, returning the handshake.
“Nice to meet you, Starlight,” he said with an oblivious wide grin. “Looks like we’re partners now, aren’t we?”
“Yes, yes we are.” she let go of the handshake and went to wring the water out of her hair.
--Back to Present--
Pleasantly, for Starlight, Natsu remained mostly silent as they walked through the Emerald Forest.
“Hold up,” Natsu said unexpectedly. “Do you hear that?”
Starlight stopped and listened carefully. “No?”
“It sounds like a bunch of girls screaming.”
Starlight strained her ears to catch what he was talking about, quite irked that a human could hear better than her faunus ears. Eventually, she did hear it. She turned her attention up a hill and narrowly avoided a speeding Sunset and Twilight barreling down the mountain at Mach speed. “Found them.”
“No,” Natsu said. “Not them. They’re not nearly as high pitched as what I’m hearing.”
Starlight stared at him, confused. Then she heard trees exploding down the hill and saw a Death Stalker with a boy in armor dangling from its tail, chasing a girl in red and bronze. Heading in the same direction as the shield-surfers.
“There she is!” Natsu exclaimed. “And hey! They’ve got a giant monster with them! Let’s go kill it.” and he bolts off, chasing the scorpion grimm.
Starlight stood there for a minute, processing everything that happened immediately around her. She sighed. “This is going to be one of those days, is it?” and she made her way to give chase against Natsu and his quarry.
--Later--
“Did- your sister just fall from the sky?” the girl in black, Blake, asked Yang after they acquired their chess piece relic.
“Uh.” Yang didn’t have any time to form a proper response before Nora and Ren barreled in with an Ursa.
“Was she just riding an Ursa?”
Again, Yang couldn’t respond before something else happened. This time, it was Sunset and Twilight. Their surfing shield caught on a rock, halting its momentum and sending its passengers flying forward, heels-over-head and rolling to Blake and Yang’s feet.
“Did they just come in surfing on a shield?”
Then the deathstalker came.
“Did she just run all this way with a deathstalker behind her and that other guy on its tail?”
Yang finally had it. “Would everyone just calm down for like three seconds before something crazy happens?!”
3...
2...
1...
Ding!
“Well, I feel better now,” Yang said as Phyrrah landed face-first at Yang’s feet, on top of Sunset and Twilight. “And great, the gang’s all here, now we can die together!”
“Why would you say that?” Sunset complained.
“Not if I can help it,” Ruby said as she dashed off to fight the deathstalker.
“Ruby, wait!” Yang and Sunset shouted.
“Come on, Sunrise,” Twilight whispered to Sunset as she dragged her to the ruined temple. “Let’s get our relic, and maybe we’ll have a good standing by the end of this.”
“What? No. Ruby might be in troub-”
Weiss charged forth and protected Ruby with a wall of ice, encasing the stalker’s stinger inside the barrier.
“See? She’s fine. Let’s go.” Twilight said as she got up and picked up a white bishop piece.
Sunset wrestled herself out of Twilight’s grasp. “No, Twilight, listen to me. Ruby is my friend, and she’s someone who is in tro- was in trouble. As a huntress, we’re supposed to help anyone in need. As a friend, I will not abandon a friend, even a new one, for some academic standing.”
Twilight turned and stared hard at Sunset. “If you want to become a huntress, you’re going to need to get into Beacon in the first place before you can help anyone. Second, friends? Friends are only going to slow you down from reaching the top, and they’ll wind up hurting you in the end anyway.”
Sunset’s breath hitched in her throat, her fingernails began to bite into her palm, and she bit back tears that were forming in her eyes. “That may be true,” she said hoarsely, her fists shaking. She sucked in a breath before continuing. “But that doesn’t devalue the memories you had with them.”
Twilight stood silent; her expression softened a bit.
“Besides,” Sunset said in a low tone. “What good is a huntress who can’t even protect her own friend on her first day of school?” and she wrestled the bishop piece out of Twilight’s hand with little resistance and put it in her own pocket.
“Um, guys?” Ren said. Everyone turned to him, and he pointed to the sky at a nevermore circling above them. “We better get out of here.”
“But I wanna kill the giant scorpion~!” Natsu complained as Starlight barely managed to keep him grappled and dragged him to the rest of the group.
“It’s no longer in our way.” Starlight griped. “It’s restrained now, and we can focus back on our assignment.”
“But it was never in our way.”
Starlight paused.
“It was our way.”
“That’s it, shut up, now. Your talking is starting to annoy me.”
“But we barely talked!”
“And I am thankful for that, now please, shut up again.”
---
The gang made their way to the rest of the temple ruins built in the middle of a large ravine. They hid behind some rubble as the nevermore circled in front of them, and the deathstalker began to catch up with them.
“We need a plan of attack,” said Blake.
“I have a plan,” Natsu replied, lightly butting his fists together. “Attack.”
“No~.” Starlight held him back. “Does anyone else, and I mean aen-nee-one else, have a better idea?”
“I think I do,” Ruby spoke up.
The plan was simple. First, everyone would dash in to see how far they could get before the nevermore would stop them. When that failed, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang, Sunset, and Twilight would focus on taking down the nevermore. Meanwhile, Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, Ren, Natsu, and Starlight would concentrate on the deathstalker.
The teams were quickly spread about the battlefield, mainly due to a lack of awareness of the others around them, but everyone held their ground. Yang managed to fire a few rounds down the nevermore’s gullet. Pyrrha severed the deathstalkers stinger from its tail, and Nora hammered it into its skull, killing it with its own poison.
Weiss pinned the nevermore in place by freezing its tailfeathers to a stone terrace on the opposite side of the chasm. Meanwhile, Blake threw Yang her weapon, holding one end of the ribbon as both braced against a pillar. Ruby then made her way between them as Weiss used her semblance to pull her back, ready to slingshot Ruby toward the nevermore.
Ruby was launched, catching the nevermore by the throat in her scythe, and then ran up the cliff face with Weiss’s assistance, severing the head once she got to the top.
Sunset stood in awe as the rest of the gang grouped together around her. The nevermore disintegrated into rose petals.
“Is it over?” Jaune asked.
A monstrous roar answered his question as a ball of fire made its way to Ruby, who narrowly avoided the exploding projectile.
“Another grimm?” Nora asked.
“No,” Natsu replied. “A dreadking rathalos.”
The rathalos flapped its flame-blazoned wings as it hovered closer to Ruby and continued to shoot fireballs at her. She lost grip of her weapon in one of the ensuing explosions, and the rathalos was intent on not letting her get close to it.
“Twilight, Yang, give me a boost.” Sunset commanded cooly.
Twilight made a glimmering ball of purple with her telekinesis, and Yang slung as much of her explosive projectiles as she had into the sphere. As Twilight compressed the ball, Sunset took her place atop it, ready to be launched like a rocket.
Twilight growled. “This isn’t going to be enough. We need more.”
“That’s all I’ve got.” Yang said.
Nora readied her weapon, but Natsu stopped her. “I got this.” he told her as he stood behind the rocket and pulled out a palm-sized chunk of fire dust.
“That’ll do it.” Twilight said. “But you’re going to need something to activate-”
She stopped as Natsu put the crystal into his mouth and bit a large chunk out of it, and continued to chew it.
Everyone stood in stunned silence as Natsu continued to eat the crystal like it was a piece of candy.
Natsu then took a deep breath, put his hands in front of his face like he was holding a blowgun, and exhaled a massive gout of fire. “Fire Dragon Roar!”
Twilight almost lost cohesion of her telekinetic bubble at the sudden expansion but held it together. “Ready or not, here we go!” she sealed the sphere, compressed it even more, then opened a smaller hole.
The rocket engine propelled Sunset into the air and directly at the rathalos at high speed. However, she was slowing down, and quickly at that. She was not going to be able to pierce the Rathalos’ hide with her strength at this rate. She needed a boost.
‘It’s now or never.’ Sunset said to herself as she took in a deep breath and began channeling One-for-All into her legs and arms.
Her muscles tensed as red-orange lightning arced off her body. Her vision narrowed as she waited for the perfect time to unleash her strike. The rathalos fought in an almost fixed pattern. Its present tactics seem to be keeping its distance and occasionally performing hit-and-runs on the rose-colored initiate. One of its patterns was firing its breath attack 3 times in succession before maybe going in for a claw attack and flying back up to hover over the chasm. It telegraphed its attack by reeling its head back before launching the fireball. In the middle of one of these telegraphs was when Sunset decided she would strike.
The flying wyvern rolled its head back, and that’s when Sunset launched herself from her rocket. It fired once, a direct hit on Ruby. It fired a second time, Ruby’s aura broke. When it reeled itself for the third time, Sunset swung her scythe with all the might she could muster from One-for-All and decapitated the king of the skies.
The world slowed to a crawl as Sunset steadily came to realize her victory. ‘I did it.’ she thought. ‘I really did it. And I didn’t explode from using One-for-All.’ She was elated. She felt unstoppable. She felt hope that she was no longer going to be a nobody. She felt- incredible pain. She took stock of herself and noticed that one of her arms and both of her legs were broken. She had even lost grip of her weapon as she watched it fall further out of her reach and saw Ruby limping up to the edge of the cliff screaming Sunset’s name. She could barely hear her name over the ringing in her ears, it sounded muffled, and the wind was picking up. Ruby futilely stretched out an arm to Sunset as she dropped below her present altitude. Sunset’s vision grew darker and darker as the shadows of the ravine grew higher and higher, encompassing her like a hungry beast.