Hey guys! Back here with another update! So since last chapter left off on a cliffhanger, I'll continue from where we left off last chapter. Though, Nova and Turuk's parents were revealed, there's one more secret that only 2 people know right now. You guys should know as it involves Scarlett and Aiko's relationship with Nova and Turuk. Anywho, I'll keep quiet for now.
I don't own Dbz/kai/dbs or Rwby and their characters. Those belong to Akira Toriyama/Toei Animation and Rooster Teeth/Monty Oum respectively. I only own the OC's. Aside from Tarro and Daikon, those belong to ComparedDreadx.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: The Tenkawa Crisis: Lost Heritage, Part I
Part I — The Morning After Everything
Location: Team RWBY's Dormitory | The Following Morning
Ruby Rose had not slept.
This was not, strictly speaking, accurate — she had slept in the technical sense of having been horizontal with her eyes closed for several hours. What she had not done was rest, which was a different thing entirely, because resting required the brain's cooperation and her brain had other ideas.
The other ideas were, in descending order of frequency:
Nova.
The revelation about Sala and Rhubar.
Nova.
Blake keeping a secret for weeks.
Nova again.
The date he had asked her on.
His tail wrapping around her arm as though it had a separate and specific opinion about where she should be.
Nova.
She stared at the ceiling.
"You're awake," Yang said, from the top bunk.
"I'm always awake."
"You've been awake in a different way than usual for about three hours."
Ruby pulled her hood over her face.
"That's a very specific observation," she said.
"I'm a very observant older sister." Yang's voice had the warmth of someone who finds this endearing rather than annoying. "You're thinking about him."
"I'm thinking about many things."
"He asked you out on a date."
"Yang."
"Your boyfriend asked you on a date."
"I'm aware, thank you."
"How does that feel?"
Ruby was quiet for a moment. Her face, under the hood, was doing something that she was not going to describe to Yang because she had some level of dignity left and she was keeping it.
"Good," she said.
"Good." Yang let the word sit. "Just good?"
"Very good," Ruby amended.
"There you go."
The room settled back into its pre-dawn quiet. Weiss was still asleep — or performing sleep with the specific efficiency of someone who had made a decision. Blake was a still shape in her bunk with the particular quality she had when she was thinking rather than resting.
"Blake," Yang said.
"Yes," Blake said.
"How long have you known? About Sala and Rhubar?"
A pause. "Several weeks."
"And you never said anything."
"They asked me not to. I thought they were right." Another pause. "I'm sorry."
Ruby pushed the hood down and looked at the ceiling. "We understand, Blake. Really."
"You looked hurt when you found out."
"For about thirty seconds. Then I understood why." Ruby turned her head. "You were protecting them. And us. You always do."
The room was quiet again.
"Also," Weiss said, apparently not asleep at all, "we should discuss the Reinhardt sisters."
"In the morning," Yang said.
"It is the morning."
"In the actual morning. When the sun is up."
"The sun is—"
"Weiss."
A pause. "Fine," Weiss said. "But we are discussing this."
They discussed it in approximately ninety minutes when the sun was up.
Part II — The Discussion
The conclusion they arrived at, by way of Blake presenting the observations she had been carrying for several weeks and Yang adding the detail of having watched Scarlett and Aiko's reactions to Sala and Rhubar's revelation, was this:
The Reinhardt sisters had known.
They had known in a way that was not surprise and not confusion but the specific controlled composure of people who had been sitting on information and had decided not to be seen sitting on it.
"They knew Sala and Rhubar," Blake said. "Not as professors. As people. The way you know someone you've met before, not someone you've only seen at a faculty meeting."
"And they weren't surprised," Weiss said. "When Sala announced — when she embraced them and called them her sons — the Reinhardt sisters were composed. Not the way you're composed when you're processing something unexpected. The way you're composed when you already know."
"Which means," Yang said, leaning forward, "that they have some kind of connection to Sala and Rhubar that goes beyond being students at the same academy."
"And to Nova and Turuk," Blake said. "Specifically to Nova and Turuk, in a way that those two don't know about yet."
The room considered this.
"We should ask them," Ruby said.
"We should give them the opportunity to tell us," Blake corrected gently. "There's a difference."
Ruby thought about this. "Okay. We tell them we've noticed. We tell them we trust them. And we let them decide what to say."
"And if they keep it from us?"
"Then we wait longer," Ruby said. "The same way we waited for you."
Blake looked at her.
Ruby looked back.
"Same as you," she said again, quietly.
Part III — Before the Elevator
Location: Beacon Academy | That Morning
The walk to Ozpin's office had the quality of a walk that contained several different conversations depending on which part of the group you observed.
At the front: Weiss and Daikon, who were arguing about the definition of necessary precautions with the focused energy of people for whom arguing was still the most efficient form of communication they had developed.
In the middle: Yang, who had fallen into step beside Turuk in the specific way she had been doing for months now, and who was not talking but whose shoulder was approximately two inches from his shoulder, which was its own kind of conversation.
At the back: Ruby and Nova, who were moving at a pace that was slightly behind the group's and had been for about four minutes, and whose specific configuration — her hand wrapped around his arm, her head occasionally tilting toward his shoulder — communicated a number of things without requiring any of them to be said.
Nova looked at Ruby.
She had bags under her eyes that she had attempted to address with water and optimism, with mixed results.
"You didn't sleep," he said.
"I slept."
"You slept at the night," he said. "That's different."
She made a small sound that was too tired to be a laugh but was in the same family. "Yang kept asking me questions."
"About?"
"About you."
He was quiet for a moment. "What kind of questions?"
"The kind that make you blush in the dark where no one can see."
He looked at her.
She kept her gaze forward with the specific composure of someone who has just said a thing and is committed to the decision.
"Rubes," he said.
"Nova-san," she said.
He felt the warmth arrive in his chest with the specific reliability it had developed for Ruby-related causes. He reached over and pressed his hand briefly to the top of her head in the gesture that had become specifically his.
She puffed her cheeks at him.
He was already facing forward again.
She was already smiling.
The elevator descended to Ozpin's office floor and the group arranged itself into the specific configuration of people in a space that required some consideration about where to stand.
Jaune, who had not expected three teams to be present, looked at his immediate surroundings with the expression of someone doing a headcount.
"Is this everyone?" he asked.
"It is," Glynda said, from the front of the room.
Ozpin stood at his window with the composed patience of someone who has been standing at windows for long enough to have developed a relationship with the view.
"Thank you all for coming on short notice," he said, turning. "I'll be direct, because the situation warrants directness rather than preamble." He looked at the assembled students — three teams, sixteen people, several of whom were still processing the events of the previous day and all of whom were trying to look like they weren't. "We've received a report from the village of Tenkawa."
"Tenkawa," Pyrrha said. "That's in the eastern reach, isn't it? Near the mountain corridor."
"Correct. The report indicates significant casualties, the nature of which is unclear. The communication towers in the area have been offline for approximately seventy-two hours. The last signal we received described something that the reporting officer classified as—" Ozpin paused, selecting the word. "Unusual."
"Unusual how?" Turuk asked.
"That's what we need you to determine." He looked at them steadily. "We're not sending you to fight. We're sending you to look. Three teams, because we don't know what you'll find, and three teams is the appropriate level of redundancy for a situation we cannot currently characterize."
"If it's Grimm—" Nora began.
"Possibly. But the pattern of the report doesn't match typical Grimm activity, which is why we're not simply sending a standard patrol." He folded his hands. "If you encounter hostiles, you are not to engage unless engagement is unavoidable. You are to observe, document, and contact us immediately."
"And if the communication towers are down?" Blake asked.
"Then you contact us through whatever means are available." Ozpin's eyes moved briefly to Nova, then away.
Glynda stepped forward. "This is not a combat mission. It is an intelligence mission. The distinction matters. Do you all understand it?"
Sixteen students indicated that they understood it.
"Good." She adjusted her glasses. "You leave in three hours. Use the time to prepare."
After the others had filed out, Ozpin said: "Nova. A moment, please."
The room cleared. Ruby stopped at the elevator, turned, found Nova's eyes.
One minute, he said, with a look.
She nodded. "I'll wait."
Ozpin sat behind his desk with the specific quality of a man who has something to say that he has been deciding how to say for some time.
"You have questions about this mission," he said.
"Some," Nova said.
"More than the others."
"Different ones than the others." Nova sat in the chair across from him. "Three teams is unusual. Three teams for an observation mission suggests you're either genuinely uncertain about what's there, or you have an idea what's there and want the additional personnel without saying so."
"Which do you think it is?"
Nova looked at him. "I think you have a theory. I think the theory concerns something that's directly relevant to me and my teammates specifically. And I think the three-team configuration is partly about the mission and partly about making sure certain people are present when whatever is in Tenkawa is encountered."
Ozpin was quiet for a moment.
"You are," he said, "one of the more perceptive students I have had the privilege of educating."
"Am I right?"
"You are perceptive," Ozpin said again, which was neither a confirmation nor a denial and was doing significant work as both.
Nova held his gaze.
"Whatever is there," Ozpin said, "I would ask that you proceed with the same caution I've asked of everyone. Observe first. Contact us before engaging." A pause. "I would also ask — whatever you discover about yourself or your history — that you not make irreversible decisions in the field."
"That's a specific warning."
"It's a specific concern."
Nova was quiet for a moment. "You know more about what I am than you've told me."
"I know some things," Ozpin said. "Not everything. And what I know, I'd prefer you to encounter on your own terms rather than from my framing of it." He picked up his cup. "There are kinds of knowledge that should be found rather than told. Your parents understand that as well."
The word parents landed with the specific weight it was still finding its way to having.
"All right," Nova said.
"Be careful," Ozpin said. "All of you."
Nova stood. At the door, he turned back. "One question."
"Yes?"
"Ruby. The observation Cui will make—" He stopped. "I'm not sure how I know that name. But there's something coming for my team and for her specifically. I need to know if she's going to be safe."
Ozpin looked at him for a long moment.
"That," he said, "depends significantly on you."
Nova held his gaze. Then nodded. Then left.
Part IV — The Bullhead
Location: Beacon Departure Platform | That Afternoon
Scarlett Reinhardt spoke up before they boarded.
She did it with the specific preparation of someone who has been deciding whether to do a thing for a long time and has finally reached the end of the deciding.
"Before we go," she said, "there's something Aiko and I have been meaning to tell you."
The assembled students turned.
"We're aware some of you have noticed that we weren't surprised by what Sala and Rhubar revealed yesterday," Scarlett said. "You're right to have noticed. And we should have said something sooner." She looked at the group — at Yang, Weiss, and Blake specifically, who had been carrying the suspicion longest. "We already knew who they were. Not as professors. We knew them from before."
"How?" Weiss asked.
Scarlett looked at her sister. Aiko gave the small nod that meant it's time.
"Because," Scarlett said, "Sala is our aunt. And Rhubar is our uncle." She paused. "Which means Nova and Turuk aren't just Blake's brothers. They're also our cousins."
The departure platform received this information.
Nova looked at Scarlett. At the specific quality of her expression — the relief in it, the long-held tension releasing like pressure from a valve that had been closed too long.
He thought about the first day in the forest. The way they had fought together — the rhythm of it, the specific calibration of two people whose instincts were mapped in similar ways. The dozens of small moments where he had noted familiar and filed it without examining what the file was connected to.
He looked at Turuk, who was doing the same sequence of recalibration with the same expression of someone finding that a door they'd been looking for had been open the whole time.
"That explains quite a bit," Nova said.
"We should have told you sooner," Scarlett said. "I'm sorry we didn't."
"Why didn't you?" Blake asked.
"Because I didn't know how much you knew. About yourselves. About where you came from." Scarlett looked at Nova. "I knew you were saiyans. I knew Sala and Rhubar were looking for you. But I didn't know if you knew any of that, and I didn't want to be the one to take that away from them." She paused. "It was their story to tell. Same as it was their story to tell you they were your parents."
Nova was quiet for a moment.
"No," he said. "That was the right call."
Turuk nodded.
Ruby, who had been processing this with the specific expression of someone adding new information to a picture that keeps getting larger, looked at Scarlett and then at Aiko and then at Nova.
"Are there more of them?" she asked. "More family?"
"None that I know of," Scarlett said. "Not here."
"Okay," Ruby said. And then, with the specific directness that was specifically Ruby: "Thank you for telling us. I know that wasn't easy."
Aiko's tail wagged once, quickly, in the involuntary way of someone who has been anxious about something and has had the anxiety removed.
The bullhead arrived.
They boarded.
Part V — In Transit
Location: Bullhead, En Route to Tenkawa | That Afternoon
Nova and Ruby had found their corner of the aircraft with the specific gravity that had developed between them — not intentional navigation so much as the natural result of each of them knowing where the other one was and moving accordingly.
She had her head on his shoulder.
He had his arm around her.
His tail had found its way around her waist, which it did now with a frequency that suggested it had arrived at its own conclusions about the situation without consulting him.
She was petting it.
He was managing his reaction to this with the specific composure of someone who had not expected this to be a point of vulnerability and had discovered it too late to do anything about it.
"You're nervous," he said.
"You can tell?"
"You're petting my tail with the same rhythm you tap your fingers when you're thinking about something you're worried about."
She looked up at him. "I didn't know you'd noticed that."
"I notice things about you," he said, which was simply true.
She was quiet for a moment. "I'm worried about this mission. I don't know what's there and not knowing is—" She stopped.
"Harder than knowing," he said.
"Yeah."
He looked out the window at the terrain below — the forest giving way to the elevated, rockier geography of the eastern reach, the specific quality of a landscape that had not been built on and did not invite it.
"Whatever is there," he said, "I'll be with you."
"I know." She tightened her hold on his arm slightly. "I need you to promise me something."
"Okay."
"You stay alive." She said it simply, without drama, which made it carry more weight than if she had said it with drama. "Whatever happens out there. You come back."
He looked at her.
"Nova," she said. "I just got you. I am not losing you now."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I didn't lose my mother when I was a kid," she continued, very quietly. "I've been told I don't remember her well enough to grieve her properly. But I know what it feels like to have a shape in your life that should be filled and isn't." She looked at his collar rather than his face. "I don't want that shape to be you."
He put his free hand over hers.
"I promise," he said. "We both come back. Together."
She exhaled.
"Good," she said. "I'm holding you to that."
"I know you are," he said.
She looked up at him with the silver eyes that had been the first remarkable thing he had noticed about her — the specific quality of them, the way they caught light differently from other eyes — and he looked back and thought about the word irreplaceable and found that it arrived with a clarity it had never quite had before.
"Nova?" she said.
"Mm."
"When we get back—"
"The date," he said.
"Yeah." She smiled. "The date."
He brushed his thumb across the back of her hand. "I haven't forgotten."
She settled her head back on his shoulder, and the bullhead carried them toward Tenkawa, and for a while neither of them said anything more because nothing more needed to be said.
Across the cabin, Turuk was watching the landscape and Yang was watching Turuk.
"You're quiet," she said.
"Processing," he said.
"Cousins the whole time."
"The whole time." He exhaled. "It explains a great deal."
"Good explains or complicated explains?"
He thought about it. "Both."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Are you okay? With all of it — parents, cousins, the whole thing?"
He turned to look at her. He did this with the specific directness he had — the willingness to look at people directly when he was answering something real.
"I think so," he said. "I'll know more when I've had time to sit with it." A pause. "I've always known something was missing. Knowing what the missing thing was doesn't hurt — it just changes the shape of things."
"Yeah," she said. "That makes sense."
He looked at her. At the specific quality of her — the brightness of her, the specific warmth she brought to everything she was in proximity to.
"Yang," he said.
"Turuk," she said.
"Thank you for—" He stopped. Found the specific thing. "For staying beside me this year. Even before I knew what you were doing."
She looked at him.
"I wasn't doing anything," she said.
"You were choosing me," he said. "Repeatedly. When you didn't have to."
She was quiet.
"I choose you back," he said, plainly.
Yang Xiao Long, who was not a person who went quiet, was quiet.
Then she found his hand with hers, and held it with the specific grip of someone who has been hoping for something for long enough that the arrival of it requires a moment to process.
"About time," she said.
"I know," he said.
Part VI — Tenkawa
Location: The Village of Tenkawa | Late Afternoon
The village had the specific quality of somewhere that had recently been full and wasn't anymore.
Not destroyed — the structures were standing, the streets were intact, the architecture of the place had its bones. But the absence of the population was thorough in a way that suggested it had happened suddenly rather than gradually, the way a room feels different when someone has just left rather than when it has been empty for years.
The students spread through it in their assigned groups with the cautious attention of people who had been told to look before doing anything else.
Group A — Nova, Ruby, Jaune, Pyrrha — moved through the central area.
The grimm signs were everywhere and also, specifically, insufficient. There had been grimm here. The evidence of that was in the marks on several structures, in the specific disruption of certain pathways. But grimm activity alone did not account for the scale of what the report had described, and it did not account for the specific quality of absence — the sense that whatever had come here had come specifically, with knowledge of what it was looking for.
Nova moved with the focused attention of someone who was using every available sense.
"Something drove the grimm off," Pyrrha said, quietly.
"Or came after them," Blake said, through the communication channel.
"Either way," Nova said, "something with enough presence to clear a grimm population from a populated area." He looked at the sky. "That's not a standard threat."
"What is it?" Ruby asked, beside him.
He was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know yet," he said. "But I have a feeling—"
The shadow arrived before the sound did.
It was large enough to make the afternoon light behave differently for a moment — a disruption of the quality of the day, not an eclipse but something that had the same structural relationship to the sky that an eclipse had. And then the sound, descending, which was not wind and not any grimm vocalization in the catalog and not anything from the human acoustic tradition.
Nova looked up.
A figure descended.
And behind it, arrayed with the organizational precision of a military force, more figures.
The central figure landed with the impact of something that had crossed a very significant distance and was not tired from it, and the sound of the landing was the sound of weight applied to earth by something that had done this many times before.
It looked at Nova.
"Well," it said. "There you are."
The voice had the quality of someone who has found something they have been looking for and is experiencing the specific satisfaction of a search concluded. The language was Vale standard, which meant translation or intention, neither of which was reassuring.
The figure was bipedal, humanoid in the general architecture of it, but the specifics were wrong — the skin tone was wrong, the eyes were wrong, the armor it wore was not from any kingdom's military tradition or any mercenary catalog that any of the students had ever seen.
Nova looked at it.
At the armor. At the specific crest on it. At the quality of the ki he could feel coming off it — dense, purposeful, the ki of someone who had spent a very long time developing it for very specific applications.
"A Saiyan," the figure said, with a quality of satisfaction. "Still alive. After all this time."
"You keep saying that word," Ruby said, from beside Nova, with the focused attention of someone who has connected a word to a pattern.
"It is what he is," the figure said, not looking at her.
"He's a faunus," she said.
"He is not." The figure looked at her for the first time, and the quality of its attention as it did was the specific quality of something that has found unexpected information. "Interesting. Very interesting." It looked back at Nova. "My name is Cui. I represent the Glacial Force, currently authorized to—" It paused with the theatrical timing of someone who has rehearsed this moment. "—conduct a final elimination of the Saiyan population. Which has been running lower than expected but has not, it appears, reached zero."
"Glacial Force," Nova said. "I don't know that name."
"No," Cui said. "You wouldn't. You were quite young when your world was removed from the census."
"What does that mean?"
Cui tilted its head. "It means your race was destroyed. Your planet — gone. Your people — nearly all of them." A pause. "There are four of you here, by my count. Which is considerably more than expected."
"You're saying we're aliens," Turuk said, from his approach behind the group.
"I'm saying you're Saiyans," Cui said. "Whether you consider that alien is a matter of perspective. It is certainly not faunus." It looked at Ruby again. "The girl is something else. An accelerant, perhaps. Interesting timing for that."
"What are you talking about?" Ruby asked.
"Nothing to concern yourself with yet," Cui said, with the quality of someone deflecting something they don't want to explain. "Though you will find out eventually, one way or another." It raised its hand, and the soldiers behind it shifted their attention into something more immediate. "Now. I have a mandate to fulfill, and I'd prefer to be efficient about it."
"You're saying you came here to kill us," Nova said.
"I'm saying I came here to complete an assignment," Cui said. "The sentiment is accurate, if a bit crude."
"We're not going to make this easy for you," Turuk said.
"No," Cui said, with the tone of someone who has done this before. "They never do."
Ruby moved to draw Crescent Rose.
Nova put his hand on her arm.
She looked at him.
"Remember what I showed you," he said quietly, meant for her. "You don't need it for this. Stay close, stay fluid, and trust your training."
She looked at the arrayed force — dozens of soldiers with weapons she did not have a frame of reference for — and then back at Nova.
"You promised," she said.
"I know," he said. "I intend to keep it."
She shifted into the stance he had taught her. The specific one — weight back, center low, arms up in the guard position that he had spent two months making into muscle memory.
He looked at her.
She was ready.
He turned to face Cui.
"You have a mandate," he said. "We have something better."
"Oh?" Cui said. "What's that?"
"People to protect," Nova said.
His ki ignited around him — the white, specific flame of it, brighter than it had been six months ago, brighter than it had been six weeks ago, responding to the specific quality of this moment with the specific quality of something that has been growing toward exactly this kind of demand.
Cui looked at it.
For the first time, something in its expression moved.
"Hm," it said. "Perhaps this will be less routine than I expected."
The soldiers charged.
From a significant distance, behind the treeline, the masked figure watched.
She watched the white flame and the silver-eyed girl beside it, and she watched the arrayed force come forward, and she watched the specific quality of what was about to happen.
Her hand was on her blade.
She did not draw it.
Not yet.
But she was watching.
★ END OF CHAPTER NINETEEN ★
Next: Chapter Twenty — "Lost Heritage: Saiyan, Not Faunus, Part I"
Just imagine Black Clover Ed 12 with the cast and characters of this story... so the Teams Rwby, JNPR, & NDTSA. Swords being replaced by the dust weapons and.... asta and his devil being replaced by Nova in his normal form looking at his battle form (Ikari state for now but it will change as the story progresses further).
This will be the start of Nova and his teammates discovering why they're so different from other faunus. The villains for this little mini arc most dbz fans should know. I will try and make it so these villains are actually a decent challenge for our saiyan characters cuz no one wants a boring villain.
Also if you caught the little detail with Ruby near the end, you should know what I plan on doing with Ruby in this story. Yang & Weiss I'm undecided on at this time, but we'll see. Anyways, hopefully you guys enjoyed this chapter and I apologize for such a long wait in getting this out! Next chapter won't be nearly as long of a wait, I promise! Well anywho, I'll see you guys in the next update!