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Chapter Text

So a while back, I remembered duel monsters and though to myself: Huh, that was a lot of fun back in the day.

Things happened, stuff went down, and eventually I found myself thinking some more: What if I took two cool characters from the lore, through away the card game mechanics and tossed them into the multiverse for a fic (or some snippets, which this still is until further notice?)

Hence, Ta da!

Note: If you don't know any Yu Gi Oh Lore, this is going to be rough. If things are bad, I'll probably post a summary + Cliff notes version of the main points of the lore to help if this gets that far, but as an initial prologue (if even that) the only thing I did was link some images for added context.

That said, let's see if this is any fun.

Darkness speared through the Spirit World, blacker than night, faster than light, more pervasive than rot... and the realm ephemeral began to die.

It was not a quiet, gentle death.

Instead, the denizen creatures of beyond raised their voices as one - spirits of every concept and shape, otherwise eternal and immortal,

It was not enough.

There had been no warning. There was not enough time.

The Three Gods were missing. The Creator Of Light was likewise beyond reach.

And the power of the Great Evil God could be exceeded by no others.

Nonetheless, those beneath them were not quiet in the face of annihilation.

Wills were forged. Legions rose. Armies fought.

Wills crumbled. Legions scattered. Armies crumbled.

The forces arrayed against them were too vast, comprised of the collective evils spanning every possible spirit and creature from across the realm.

Human-like, animalistic, monstrous, and more besides. If it was vile and corrosive at all and to all, it was there to sow carnage and despair.

The Darkness continued to eat away at anything and everything, consuming all until scant but a few remained, candles flickering against the end.

One shone brighter than all the rest put together.

The Blue-Eyed White Dragon roared with the fury of a thousand supernovas as he warred against the encroaching doom, maw spilling brilliant, wrathful light as he scorched droves of enemies with every passing breath, his claws raking through approaching tides, his bulk crushing inumerable many like the insects they were before him.

He did not know how long he had fought for - he could scarcely pinpoint the moment in his memory when the Great Dark God's forces had struck, like venom lancing out at the serpent's strike. It could have been days or eons, yet he fought with the same intensity he always had all the same.

Sorcery and darker powers flew at him, blades and armaments found their mark, and hordes threw themselves forward with the reckless abandon of eternal slaves, and all of them broke against his white scales.

Even still, for all that his will remained fierce and tireless - as any proper dragon should be - his endurance was flagging, his strength fading.

Slowly, unerringly, he was losing.

The cold, inevitable realization fed into his rage as the corrupted wraiths washing over him parted as a greater beast emerged from their ranks - dragon-like, this time - four-winged and eight-eyed, scales violet-black and bleeding rot and sludge from their crevices, its maw a hideous, deformed thing that crackled with sparks of green flame.

It roared an off-pitched battle cry, a mockery of a true dragon's challenge, and clapped its wings as it erupted towards him.

Blue Eyes did not dignify the wretched thing with an answering roar, for to offer one was to imply challenge, and this would be no challenge.

They clashed within the flickering void with an impact like the collision of mountains, wings interlocking and snarls nothing short of rabid. The wretch attempted to go for his throat, waves of off-color flames igniting in the back of its throat amidst its linge, but Blue-eyes was having none of that.

His hindleg lashed out within their death lock, and his claws sheared through the wretch's underbelly with a shower of sparks and bursting gore. It wailed and bucked in his grip with agony as its insides began to spill out of the gaping chasm he had torn into it and down below, but he had neither the patience nor the mercy to tolerate its dying gasps.

With a furious buck of his wings, he tore out of its grip and let his maw fill with crackling thunder and blazing radiance once more. The wretch saw this and desperately shot forward with its own flame, but his breath lanced through the pitiful display and struck home all the same, carving through and disintegrating its upper torso in a flash that could have been seen for miles.

The rest of it dissolved into shadow as it fell away, though more of it's ilk were crawling over it's remains before even that, screeching with bloodlust and malice as they sought to drown him in numbers.

Mongrels. He was the greatest of the light dragons!

He would not fall here.

Before he could strike out himself, an odd, familiar energy swept across the field. Over his left shoulder, a familiar beam of crackling violet power not his own shot past and cleaved into the arrayed forces, gouging out a shuddering wave and halting the attack with a reverberating explosion of scorching flame.

Dangerous magic.

He knew who it was even before he turned around and barred his teeth aggressively.

"Magician!"

The Dark Magician - The arrogant mage almost a gnat when compared to his bulk- had the sheer gall to smile in greeting, in that same infuriating manner he'd always had, placid and self-assured as ever, though Blue Eyes would have had to be blind not to see the exhausted tilt to it within the fading light of this dying realm.

Spirits did not tire as mortals did, but the state of their trials reflected on them eventually, and his old rival's posture was telling.

"Dragon." Dark Magician's smile grew a fraction when he growled in return. "Still don't like me, do you?"

He did not dignify that with a response, either, but the magician found his own in his silence all the same.

"Hah." He shook his head softly, violet eyes glowing, hair shimmering beneath his hood. "A thousand mortal lifetimes can pass and yet you never change, old friend."

The resigned, tired way that he said that...

Blue Eyes stared incredulously, steam wafting from his nostrils, electricity crackling between his fangs.

"Did you come here to spout sentiment at me?"

Him and the mage had been rivals for ages long gone past, and would be rivals even now if not for the greater threat before them, but if he was going to be useless, Blue Eyes had few compunctions about eating him now and bieng done with it.

Thankfully - for him - the magician only snorted.

"Hardly. Merely contemplating some things here and there. The end of all does tend to make one think odd things, after all." He raised his staff and pointed off to the side without even a look to gouge his aim "Still, there is something to be said for-"

His staff crackled and lit up with violet light, a spell circle inlaid with Egyptian hieroglyphs forming with but a single thought, magic so thick Blue Eyes could near-taste it.

"-consistency."

The spell erupted out and off to the side like one of his own thunder-bolts, hurtling off into a mountain of wraiths so massive they just about blotted out the horizon.

It struck.

A moment later, said horizon itself disappeared in another flash of violet, the surrounding forces and the space itself folded away and shredded by the violent spatial distortion that took hold almost at once. Even Blue Eyes would have been sucked into it had he been weaker, despite the great gulf between them and it.

When it collapsed in on itself moments later, a path that stretched on for miles had been cleared for them.

The magician smiled again.

Blue Eyes growled.

The magician smiled wider.

Blue Eyes almost blasted him on principle alone.

It had been an impressive feat of strength, but that was only to be expected from the pest that had been maddening him for all these millennia - and even that was galling to admit.

Even still, he would not compliment him for it.

The magician sighed.

"Stubborn old lizard. Fine." He turned his back to him and angled his head towards the breach he'd just made. "Let's go."

"Go?"

He was fighting a war!

"Flee if you wish, magician, but do not dare presume I will do the same."

His expression soured even as his staff struck out again, lashing out at another wave of wraiths who'd thought to attack before Blue Eyes himself rounded on them.

"It's not a flight from battle - I have never been and will never be a coward." His frown was heavy, powerful. "But a tactical retreat is needed. You are losing power, dragon, and you will achieve nothing here but a quicker death. There are other survivors to reach."

Blue Eyes snarled again.

Erasing him was growing more tempting by the instant!

... and yet, he was not wrong.

He angled his head to stare at the oncoming hordes, still just as numerous, just as endless, and only him and the magician left to push them back on this front.

He did not fear his demise, he was beyond such base cowardice himself, but he had no desire to die uselessly.

He turned back to the magician, who nodded.

"There it is. Let's go." He smirked at last, as Blue Eyes knew he would, the expression ancient and familiar. "And try to keep up, yes?"

And then he soared up and shot off into the distance.

Infuriating fool!

He roared once more in fury and took off in pursuit with a single clap of his wings.

Time became immaterial as they flew, space irrelevant as both warped and twisted around them in unstable patterns -  a sign of the realm crumbling at its foundations.

They soared through shattered landscapes and roiling, fiery oceans stretching out both above and below, and patches of creation that were empty and devoid of anything but the utter pervasive rot that even then chased after them like a predator scenting prey.

On and on they went, straining against the powers working against them until even Blue-Eyes could admit to himself that he had not much left to give, anger alone no longer enough to lift him to the peak of his strength.

And then, at last, they arrived.

The domain of the Dark Magician was a painfully uncreative thing - an all-encompassing desert of endless golden sands made prominent only by the great pyramid growing forth from its heart, equally golden and large enough to scrape against the heavens themselves. A great millennium eye was imprinted on its front, its meaning obvious even to the witless.

Even here, the rot of the Great Dark God could be felt - the sky bled in shades of orange and violet, the air was filled with an undercurrent or repressed, looming malice, and the ground pulsed and trembled in unmistakable fear even with the return of it's master.

But none of that was what drew Blue Eyes's attention first.

Instead, it was the two figures who crested over the pyramid's apex that demanded reception as they flew over to them with haste.

The first was the pest's pest. The apprentice Dark Magician Girl, an existence almost as irritating as her master.

The second, though...

Blue Eyes paused in consideration as the Red-Eyed Black Dragon approached, his mind uncertain as to the implication of their presence.

"Counterpart." The dragon greeted without inflection

"Counterpart." Blue-Eyes returned the courtesy.

Theirs was... a complicated existence. They stemmed from the same root, existing on opposite ends of the scale.

Light and Dark. Balance in Opposition.  Each antithetical to the other, yet lesser alone.

It was aggravating.

But there was no time for aggravation here.

"What are you plotting, Magician?"

His demand got him another smile - did he not know how to use that unsightly visage for anything else?

Yet even as that acidic thought came to him, Blue-Eyes instincts sharpened.

The magician was forlorn... and yet resigned.

Something was not right.

Before he could question it, before he could so much as attempt to, the true threat revealed itself at lest.

"We are out of time." It was Red Eyes who spoke, but it needn't have bothered.

In the distant horizon, all light died.

Blackness grew out to as far as the arrayed spirits could sense, and with in it a horrendous presence beyond all of them combined.

The air within the magician's realm howled and became a relentless hurricane, spraying sand and debris every which way. Black clouds overtook the sky, and began to pour out sizzling acid and the blood and essence of endlessly tortured victims.

The wails of the damned that had been faint from the beginning of this war became a crescendo that drowned out even his mighties roars, and there he was, nothing more than a silhouette deliberately revealed to provoke terror before dealing the final, crushing blow.

Zorc Necrophades had come at last.

"This is all that remains, then? Magicians. Dragons." The Great Dark God's cold, contemptuous proclamation shook the world - what little of it he had not already consumed. "Pitiful."

Damn him.

Damn him.

This was it, Blue Eyes knew.

The others did as well, even as they readied themselves - the Magicians holding out their staves, Red Eyes allowing red flames to spark within its throat, the heat rising to surround them all - they were no match for the necrophades.

And he knew it too, for he spared them no more than a few words more befor sentencing them to his eternal hell.

 He intoned. "Extinguish them!"

"I have waited long enough. Go."  He intoned."Extinguish them!" 

And out of his shadow came his army once more, only this time, there would be no fighting.

Millions. Billions. Even more.

They washed through the hurricane and over the desert inexorably, heralding their doom.

"I have already spirited away as many as I can." The magician revealed as they stood, side by side in the face of annihilation. There was an irony there worth noting. "Far from his reach. Some will survive."

It was a hope more than certainty, but Blue Eyes found that he could not fault him for it.

"Then you have done enough."

There.

The only acknowledgement he would offer him, the only one he could.

"Thank you."

"Do not thank me, pest." He snarled, the sound lost as the dark army approached, closer and closer now. "I have no need of it, only your strength. It is time for us to die in the only manner befitting us."

No matter what, he would make the Necrophades feel pain, one last time.

But the magician had other plans.

"Not quite, old friend."

What-?

Too late.

Blue Eyes did not see the spell until it had already snapped closed around him, chains of violet light wrapping around his struggling form and binding him in place.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" He roared, witnessing a similar display to the side as the apprentice pulled the same disgusting trick on Red Eyes.

"Every spirit that his taint consumes is a victory, and I swore," The cursed magician intoned solemnly, heedless of Blue-Eyes's roars. "That I would deny the Necrophades any victory I could. You are among the greatest beings of light that was and still remains, and the Red Eyes is a prize even if it is of the Dark, and I will not let him have either of you."

Blue Eyes attempted to respond to that by blasting him into dust, but the chains wrapped around his snout and sealed shut, and for all his struggles, he could not break them.

He had grown too weak.

The magician turned, eyes alight with power and urgency!

"Now, Mana!"

"Yes master!"

They raised their staffs as one, and behind them, what was left of reality behind them quivered and ruptured.

"What are you fools doing?" 

Blue Eyes knew, only because he'd long accustomed himself to expecting lunacy from the magician.

They had torn a way into the Infinite.

Colours that were not colours at all and shapes and infinite things beyond exploded out of the breach, and they began to take their toll at once.

"We will use the last of our power to send you beyond his reach forevermore." He promised, even as his form visibly began to wither and crumble, in a manner that Blue Eyes could not even take satisfaction from. "You'll lose most of the power you have left, but in time you'll regain it, of that I have little doubt. Most importantly, however, you will continue to exist. And that will be more than enough."

"I know you will likely despise me all the more when this is done, But for what it's worth, this was not done out of malice. " He finished, and there was a finality there that was sickening. He even wore another damned smile. "Far from it. Goodbye, old friend."

No!

The Great Dark God was of a mind with him.

"Stop Them!"

But, once more, it was too late.

With a final roar of his own, the magicians slammed his palms forward, and Blue Eyes and Red Eyes both were sent hurtling into the unknown, power sundering in the face of it, agony excruciating and indignity overwhelming, with nothing but the enraged howl of Zorc and the sight of the two magicians finally crumbling to nothingness to send them off into oblivion.

And then-

Blue-Eyes groaned as he awoke, bathed in moonlight, in the middle of a grove of trees he did not find familiar in the least.

The mortal world, he recognized that much at once, rousing from what felt like an age-long slumber.

The magician had sent them to the mortal world.

The arrogance. The impudence.

His rage burned so hot it hurt, more than anything he had ever felt throughout the entirety of his very existence.

Blue Eyes would return to the spirit world if it meant a fate worse than death - and it did - and he would find what was left of him and-

He froze

Something felt wrong.

It did not come to him until he turned around, and saw the figure laying motionless on the dirt a short distance away from him.

The form was pitiful - a mortal human, small and unassuming, but the power it - she - radiated, the presence, even as a pale ghost of what it should be...

No.

Surely not...

But...

...

"Red Eyes?"

There was no point in asking, truly.

His instincts never mislead him.

True dread coursed through him as he raised hands - human, almost-infantile hands, and found himself pressing them not against brilliant scales, but against soft, malleable flesh.

the limbs that were not his but were  continued to roam, and the discrepancies grew with his every denial until he could make no more.

Blue eyes summarily collapsed to his knees - knees! - hands still caught on pure white hair.

It was not enough that he had banished them away with the taint of cowardice. It was not enough that he had, in some way, won in the end. It was not even enough that he had taken their magnificent forms away and turned them into humans.

No.

The Magician had turned them into human children.

Blue-eyes breathed in disbelief, the sensation in itself alien to him as his new heart thundered in his too-little chest.

Once. Twice. Three times.

And then he tipped back his head and screamed loud enough to rouse every predator for miles and send them scampering off in terror.

In the throes of his rage, he did not even think to look up to the heavens above.

If he had, he would have found the shattered moon hovering over this foreign world, and known even then that things would be getting very complicated, very soon.

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

Chapter Text

Just a little small beginning to set the dynamic between the main characters.

An Image of what I imagine Kid!Blue Eyes looks like:

This, but more angry

https://imgur.com/7crgcR7[/URL][/SPOILER]

[SPOILER="An Image of what I imagine Kid!Red Eyes looks like"]

Something close to this, Dragons in human form and all that

https://imgur.com/o2BbrGG

Hours after it - she - had first awoken, Red Eyes found herself standing motionless on the edge of the river bank, staring down at the reflection.

This was...

She would call it a disaster, but the word alone wouldn't even come close to describing aptly the fate that had befallen them.

The disaster - no, the calamity - had already come and rent asunder the order of things as she comprehended it in its entirety.

What was left now was nothing short of an absurdity.

A small, child-like form, likely barely past its tenth year - if even that. Pale and fragile skin, black hair near as dark as her former scales ever were falling to her shoulders, and pupil-less eyes that glinted a familiar shade of crimson against the light of the rising sun, the first rays peeking over the nearby treeline and doing very little to make the present reality more bearable.

This is what she had been reduced to.

It was... distressing. So much so that even the sight of the shattered moon above became a secondary concern.

She continued to gaze down blankly, observing the dull reflection a few moments longer, before the futility of the action became too obvious for comfort and she turned her heart around and away to glance over her shoulder.

Blue Eyes stood a distance away, back turned towards her, the only form of motion from his figure visible in the shifting of his white hair against the early morning breeze, and the rippling of the strange garb he'd woken up in - the colors white and blue, an unimaginative mirror of her own.

At least they had woken up with something - these forms were that of fragile and unarmoured beings, with no scales or bone plate to protect them from the physical realm's elements.

However, the silver lining was not likely to be appreciated - she barely saw it as one, and her counterpart certainly didn't.

After all, by the time she had stirred she had already fallen into rage, and he had remained in the throes of an uncharacteristically cold, simmering fury for hours since while she had taken the measure of their states.

"What is this?"

As if - no, likely sensing her gaze on him, her counterpart finally decides to speak.

The voice - mortal, reduced, foreign and yet familiar at once - is an experience in and of itself.

"I do not understand the question."

He turned towards her at last, face blank but eyes seething.

"What is this?" He raised a hand and gestured across his form angrily, lips pulling back to bare teeth. "This mockery that we have been reduced to. What part did you play in this?"

She frowned.

"What is it you are accusing me of? I had no part in any of this."

And she hesitated to think she have gone along with it if she had.

It would be a foolish lie to claim that she would prefer non-existence or whatever fate the Necrophades would have condemned her to had she fallen into his grasp, but survival in so pathetic a state was nothing to celebrate.

Dragons had pride - and what had been done to them went so far past trampling it that it exceeded the outrageous and looped back into the ridiculous.

"Then why were you with them?"

The accusation in his hiss was furious, but unwarranted.

"The Dark Magician-" She ignored the sound he made at the mention of his hated rival - though how he made it with a human's throat and vocal capacity was a mystery in its own right "-and his apprentice opened their realm to me."

"And you accepted it?" He snorted contemptuously, fists clenched at his sides. "I fought for subjective eons, and you fled and hid beneath the magician's banner."

Her eyes narrowed, flashing a deeper shade of crimson.

"Careful."

There was an edge of real menace put into the words, and well-deserved at that - she would not be insulted by any, even her counterpart.

Especially not her counterpart.

Their shared history was insult enough.

"The Magicians dabbled in Chaos magic and drew my attention while I battled his forces. The apprentice found me after I'd broken another line, and begged for my strength in defending their realm until they had some means to fight back against the Necrophades."

"And you agreed?"

"It is no weakness to acknowledge a failing strategy." She ignored his scoff as well. "I could have fought until I was unmade, but that would not have pushed back the Darkness."

"Neither did this!"  He snarled, and she tilted her head silently.

"No - and I had no knowledge of this, either. They hid it from me."

Though why, Red Eyes only half understood.

Saving them ultimately served little purpose, given that neither dragon possessed the Dark Magician's most vexing prowess for plotting and had little knowledge of whatever it is he may have intended.

Not to an extent that any of this would make sense.

Ensuring their survival at the cost of their own was for, on their end, nothing.

She felt a burst of an emotion not quite unlike melancholy at the thought of the Dark Magician Girl's demise.

The little witchling had been half-what tolerable, in as much as any spirit tended to be, yet Red Eyes had still been made to watch as she crumbled to dust under the weight of her own spell.

For as much as she was angry beyond words at this indignity... that had not been pleasant.

"Ignorance is no excuse!" Blue-Eyes yelled, oblivious to her thoughts, and her own temper began to fray.

"Do you ever stop braying?" A spark of her woefully diminished spirit flared, and her skin shimmered with another hue of red for just an instant before the strand of power fizzled out. "I do not know why this was done to us. I do not understand what purpose it serves, and I am no more pleased - no less furious - than you are. I have no need to excuse myself to you!"

"Braying?" He did not appear to be listening, tone incredulous, brows twitching wildly. "Braying!?"

"That is the kindest word I have for the useless sounds that have yet to stop spilling from your maw!" She snapped, at last, hackles no longer restrained. There was only so much of him she could take. "If you choose to flail like an impotent hatchling, then at least have the courtesy to do so in silence!"

"How dare you?!"

Power flared between them at the same time, instantly, the threat of fire and shadow crackling against the potential of lightning and radiance, and the air swelled with pressure as they glared at one another near-on murderously.

But their coming to blows was not to be.

A howl cut through the air around them, startling them both a split second before they would have gone for one another's throats on principle alone.

A second quickly joined it, and then a third was added to its chorus, and soon half a dozen more.

Red Eyes turned as the first of them emerged, slipping past bark and leaves and sprawling forwards - a comparatively enormous wolf-like hybrid all but built of rippled muscle and unnaturally black fur, snout hidden beneath a mask of stark-white bone alight with red patterns running across its length, armored bone-like spikes protruding from its arms, back, and knees.

Its brethren slinked behind in its shadow, their paws and feet bristling with sharp white claws, and every one of them adorned with rabid eyes locked onto the pair of them.

Red Eyes found the shade offensive.

Blue Eyes clicked his tongue as they began to stalk forward with all the lethality of would-be predators about to pounce.

"What are these beasts?" He frowned heavily, features scrunched in distaste even as his shoulders squared once more. "Spirit beings-? But no, too shallow. And not of the Necrophades either-"

She almost called out his stupidity - that went without saying - but she didn't get the chance.

The first of the beasts abruptly stood, rising on its hindlegs in a half-crouch, a sound that was a hateful, unholy amalgamation of a howl and a roar tearing its way from its depths before it erupted into motion. Soil and stone were sheared from the force of its leap as it threw itself forward, jaws unhinged in crazed bloodlust as it went for the kill-

"Filthy wretch"

-and promptly ceased to exist as an explosion of force and light that blew back the very air with a burst of distorted air like thunder.

Red Eyes stared boredly as Blue Eyes lowered his hand, a vaguely irritated look marring his features even as that particular limb continued to smoke and crackle with power.

"Of course.  A frail form, a foreign realm, and even the enemies we are stranded with are pathetic."

"Do you ever stop complaining?"

He glared at her again as she idly waved a hand towards the not-so-idle wolves that had leaped into a charge despite their predecessor's fate - a sign of either desperation or strange instincts that prioritized carnage over self-preservation.

It didn't matter regardless.

Red Eyes willed it, and the world itself ignited in crimson and fiery flames, a wall of dragon fire crashing down on them and reducing everything beneath it to cinders and acrid smoke scattering on the breeze.

Her counterpart crossed his arms and scowled.

"I was going to do that."

She stared back even as she snuffed out her flames.

"Are you serious?"

How petty-!?

"Don't interfere in my battles!"

"If you consider that a battle, then what power you claim to have is a joke!"

His eyes flashed.

"I'll show you power-!"

Abrutply, he froze.

Red Eyes paused, eyeing him uncertainly as his gaze flickered down to his hands, clenching and unclenching them and staring at them like they were denying him the secrets of creation.

"I..." His voice was different now - slow, cautious. "I felt that."

What?

"The power I used to destroy that mutt... I felt that. It should have been nothing... nothing at all... but I can sense the loss."

Ah.

She blinked, and took store of her own power.

And there it was... a noticeable, if not unreplenishable dip.

That... could be bad.

"We have both lost a significant share of our might."

"I have the might to shake worlds." There was an eerie, dangerous lilt to his tone that betrayed the blank, almost casual way he spoke. Like the calm before the storm. "And yet I have been reduced so greatly that a creature that should not even warrant the attention of spirits a thousand-fold my lessers required actual effort to eradicate?"

Scratch that, Red Eyes thought with growing trepidation as her counter part stilled dangerously.

This could be very bad.

As if to mock her very thoughts, fate chose then to intervene.

A new round of howls echoed in the distance, interspaced with deeper, more menacing cries.

More creatures to come - and possibly different foes amongst them.

"There are more of them." She declared, a bit redundantly, and immediately regretted it, for rather than rage and bluster, Blue Eyes let his lips curve back almost maniacally.

"Fine. Let them come."

He threw out his hands, alight with power, and let it pool into a howling, pulsing vortex of electricity growing denser and more powerful by the second.

And more powerful. And more powerful. And more powerful.

Red Eyes immediately broke into a wild panic as the world began to tint in shades of sparking off-white, the very ground rumbling beneath their feet in warning!

That was far beyond what was necessary!

"Wait, don't-!"

He turned his accumulated power towards the forest, snarled one last time, and let it all rip just as she moved to shield herself.

"You idiot-!"

Half the horizon lit up with in shades of brilliant white and thunder loud enough to raise the dead.

Miles and miles away, yet another pair of red eyes snapped to alertness.

The owner of this pair, however, was entirely human.

And mildly drunk.

Qrow Branwen angled his head to the side as something went off like the wrath of an angry god in the distance, and he sighed miserably.

"Oh come on. What the hell is it now?"

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

Chapter Text

Qrow tore through the forest ahead at a dead sprint that would make most professional huntsmen green with envy, shooting over uneven earth and slipping past trees and plant life with reflexes so on point you'd never be able to tell that he'd just come out of one hell of a drunken bender.

As per usual.

Out into the distance, a massive cloud of billowing smoke and ash rose up against the air, and the wind wasn't helping - he wasn't all that close yet and he could still pick up on the acrid scent of burned wood and earth so charred he'd have had to fight to keep the grimace of his face.

And no, that wasn't just the raging hangover and the headache pounding away at the inside of his skull.

Whatever was coming next, it was going to suck, he could tell, and he hadn't had that good of a time to begin with.

Not after spending the better part of a month desperately combing through every other kind of haystack from Vale to northern Mistral trying to track down the bastards that had ambushed Amber and somehow - somehow - managed to gouge a piece of the fall maiden's power straight out of her.

He hadn't even known that was a freaking thing - and neither had Ozpin - but it was always the shit you didn't see coming that ruined your day but good, and now here they were.

Qrow hadn't stuck around to watch the fallout - he'd been about ready to spit fire by the time he'd delivered a comatose Amber over to Beacon and gotten the word that she wouldn't be waking up any time soon, if at all, and he'd barely set foot in Ozpin's office before he was literally throwing himself back out the man's window to follow the trail.

Only, there wasn't much of one.

As it turns out, two assholes and a bowman to make three with semblance-disguised features wasn't a lot to work with, even for his best and shadiest contacts. He managed to get a tip that led him on a merry-goose chase through half a dozen seedy towns and pitstops in the region, but by then even he could admit that he was beating a dead horse.

Trying to tell one group of mercenaries from another in Mistral was like trying to tell one Beowolf from another by the shape of their teeth - assuming you survived sticking your head where it didn't belong, your odds of coming out of it with anything worthwhile where about as solid as the chances of him swearing off drinking for a year.

Miracles would be declared for less.

And Qrow had still put his back into it and tried - For Amber's sake.

That girl was good - better than a lot of people he knew, even - and she didn't deserve any of this.

When it came to the flipside of Ozpin's war, nobody ever did.

So yeah. He'd been real pissed - still was.

Collosally.

And now this crap.

Dust armament gone out of control? A shipment of the stuff mishandled? Some idiots with a semblance or three between them messing around and having it all blow up in their faces?

Or something worse?

His grimace turned sharp as he picked up the sounds of distant, overlapping howls and snarls getting closer, and his shitty mood somehow dropped three rungs down the ladder.

Grimm.

Whatever it was he was closing in on, whatever had happened, it had the Grimm in the area going berserk - and whether that was because they'd picked up on some poor shmuck's negativity out into the wilds or because of the explosion drawing them in didn't matter, because Qrow was diving into the mess headfirst either way.

Fantastic.

Just his luck, really... and when he says something like that, nine times out of ten they're not just empty words.

Not with his semblance

"!"

Like the world was out to prove something to him, the Ursa Major's teeth clamped down on the space his head had been half a second before he'd ducked and lunged to his right.

The bear from hell snarled at its missed kill, before rising on its hind legs and belting out a menacing roar, frame rippling and bone plates bristling from the force of it.

Its eyes just about shone with pure, unbridled murder.

Qrow met its stare evenly, a bored, irritated sigh on his lips.

"Yeah, this tracks."

Seems like that kind of day.

It took a swipe at him, clawed and armored paw aiming to rip his face off, but he barely had to move to angle his way out of the reach and rolled his shoulders calmly.

The Ursa broke out into another heavy-footed lunge, but he had already unslung Harbinger and darted forward like he'd done a thousand times, kicking off the ground and over the clamping jaws aiming to intercept him and landing feet first just above its nape.

It didn't even have time to roar before he arced his greatsword just so and cleaved off its head with an easy, well-practiced swipe and a burst of shadow, its body folding over and crumbling down to the earth in short order.

"Well, that was easy."

The howls he got for that made him frown, and he angled his head to the side as a veritable pack of beowolves began to slink out from the shadows between the trees, intermixed with smaller ursa and the occasional runt of a deathstalker.

Grimm might have been looked like different animals, but they had no reservations about working together to earn a kill - kills, preferably.

Well, not so much work together as it is work and happen to do so together, but same difference.

Lots of Grimm. Lots of teeth. Very bad for one's long-term health.

He clicked his tongue and twirled his sword as they began to circle.

"So are we doing this, or-?"

When the first Beowolf charged, darting forward so savagely it ripped chunks of dirt out from underneath its paws, they all pounced, a great tide of black and white and red eyes all but collapsing over itself as they tried to close in around him.

Qrow just smiled and moved, the look still half-what lazy.

Swing. Slash. Deflect. Bisect.

And against, right from the top.

He went through them like a hot knife through Butter Harbinger lopping off limbs and scraping away clawed blows to their rabid fury, his aura catching the occasional glancing strike easily as he just about danced in between them with an easy grace that didn't so much as wind him.

The Beowolves howled, the Ursas roared, and the Deathstalkers tried to goar him.

Qrow mowed them down all the same.

He didn't even have to shift to his war scythe, it was that easy.

Quantity was a quality all of its own, but when that quality was shit all the way through... well.

By the time there were only a half dozen Beowolves left, he was already through feeling satisfied and looping back to being bored.

And then - right then, on the damn dot - things got complicated.

"YOU ARE THE MOST INFURIATING BEING I"VE EVER MET!"

"DON'T TAKE THAT TONE WITH ME, YOU SPINELESS MAGICIAN-FOLLOWING WYRM!"

"RAAAGH!"

Qrow blinked and felt jaw drop of his own accord as two blurs shot into the clearing between the tree, right smack dab in between him and five of the remaining wolves. He was so stunned he barely titled out of the way of the sixth's charge as it blurred past him, because-

Kids.

A white-haired runt of a boy with blue eyes and a girl with hair just as dark and eyes a shade of crimson darker than even Raven's eyes had ever, dressed in robes and screeching at each other without a care in the world, oblivious to the mess they were charging right in to.

In a clearing with Grimm.

What-?

Did someone spike his flask, or-

No. Wrong focus.

Kids. In a clearing with Grimm.

A bolt of genuine dread lanced through him, and his features hardened.

Okay, game face, right the hell now.

There was no more playing around as he took off, not an ounce of ease and not one movement wasted this time around as he charged into the few remaining Beowolves like a man with a grudge, Harbinger's blade flashing silver under the sunlight as he swung with all his might.

Aura erupted with the motion in a flash of light, a great, expanding arc that cleaved through the hoard in one burst and took out a row of trees behind them just as easily, toppling them into the dirt.

The last Beowolf wasn't even onto him - Instead, it went for the little girl in the black robes, crossing half the distance between them in a charge that would see her torn to pieces.

Qrow was faster.

One hand grabs onto the kid by the back of her robe and lifts her straight up and out of reach, and with the other, Qrow stabs forwards with Harbinger right as the Beowolf goes to bite down.

Instead of flesh, it gets a blade punched through the roof of its mouth, and its momentum carries it forward another three steps as Harbinger carves through its muzzle and into its skull.

It's weight slumped against him suddenly and nearly staggered him, but he managed to shift it off in time for it's nearly-shorn-on-half corpse to spill over his shoulder and begin evaporating like the nightmare it was in life.

A job well done, that.

"Where did you come from?"

Qrow blinks and turns around to stare at the kid still caught from his grip, feet dangling about a foot off the ground.

"Don't worry, kid." He gave his best attempt at a reassuring smile. "Everything's going to be okay now, yeah?"

Preferably after he finds out where the hell the ankle-biters came from and whether or not he has to stab and kick someone's ass for what was almost lethal neglect.

Strangely, she doesn't seem very reassured by his words.

"...What?"

Yeesh. Glynda's never managed to sound that flat on her worst day.

Abruptly, the white-haired kid began to roar with laughter.

The girl's face went near as red as her eyes, something desperately embarrassed in her gaze as it snapped towards him.

Qrow followed the emotion, confused.

"Stop that!"

He didn't.

"Stop it!"

Nada.

"Shut up!"

The boy just laughed harder, just about hysterical now. There were actual tears in his eyes as he collapsed to his knees and everything.

Qrow had the feeling he was missing something - And that uncertainty quickly shifted to just the teensiest inkling of panic when the girl turned back to him, a fearsome little glare on her face, and her eyes lit up like miniature dust crystals.

"Put me down, mortal."

A small, niggling part of his brain that was more magic crow than not began to blare like a demented saxophone.

And the other brat was still laughing

"Now."

"What the h-"

Light flared - And Qrow nearly got set halfway on fire.

Somehow, his day went downhill from there.

...

A few hours later:

Sequestered in his office during the late hours of the night, still planning out the logistics of Beacon's new year's initiation ceremony amidst other, graver matters, Ozpin found himself perking up when his scroll picked up an incoming call he'd been anticipating for quite some time.

"Ah, Qrow-"

And that was as far as he managed to get before-

"Booze."

-that

Ozpin blinked.

"Pardon?"

"Booze, Oz. I'm on my way back, and I want all the booze."

The Headmaster took a second to parse through the implications of that before he exhaled steadily and raised a hand to massage his forehead.

"Did something happen on your mission?" His brows furrowed, a heavy frown pulling at his lips. "Did you discover-?"

"No," Qrow said flatly. "This is a whole other thing - probably."

That's...

"Qrow, what exactly is going on?"

"Trust me, you'll wanna see it for yourself. Be there in a bit - don't forget my booze." Qrow hesitated. "By the way, can I ask you a...wizard question?"

What was this ominous feeling crawling down his spine now?

"...Yes?"

"Great. Looking out for a friend here.. dragons aren't real, are they?"

"... What?"

"And they don't turn into kids with shitty attitudes, right?"

"... Again, what?"

And to no one's surprise, things got messy from there.

Qrow, when asked to describe his thought process this entire chapter:

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