Alrighty! Third story time!

What's that? I'm writing too many stories at once? How about I'm not writing enough?!

In all seriousness though, I do genuinely want to do this, so at the very least I'm going to write out a chapter or two. If it gets received nicely and I can keep up, awesome. And if I can't keep up, well Hiatus is always an option, loathe as I am to use it!

So, without further ado...

Chapter 1

"HEY!" The diminutive figure in red called out in a high pitch, stopping the fleeing figure in his tracks, narrowing her eyes and preparing herself when she heard the sound of an engine whining up.

"Persistent." The other figure muttered, pointedly not looking towards her, instead, they were looking down at the edge of the building he had fled to the top of. Preparing herself for a fight, the young girl wasn't ready for a bullhead to suddenly veer up from where it was hidden ahead of them, startling her for the moment needed, allowing the man to clamber up into said bullhead, before he turned around, revealing the glowing red dust crystal in his hand. Yelling out "End of the line, Red!", the man embued the crystal with a portion of his aura, casting it towards her, and surprising her when the crystal didn't go off upon impact.

Looking from the crystal to the man, little Red was just about to smirk and quip some snarky comment about prematurity when she noticed that the man was already aiming his cane towards her, or more accurately, the still very brightly pulsing crystal at her feet, before firing it. Calling upon her semblance, the girl burst herself into petals, just as the round from her opponents weapon impacted the crystal, sending forth a wave of flame, incinerating a good portion of the roof, as well as the position the petals were all floating in.

When the smoke cleared, a single scorched petal wafted down into the new skylight the building now adorned, leaving the orange-haired man to smirk, waving his hand to his compatriot, who nodded, and he threw a last glance back at the young idiot who tried to stop him, and paid the ultimate price for it.

"Dad, I know you're worried, but Ruby's a big girl, she can take care of herself."

Sighing, Taiyang Xiao-Long gave his older daughter a strong glare, before rubbing his eyes and falling heavily back down onto their couch. Despite his daughers re-assurances, the man simply couldn't shake the feeling that Ruby should have been back an hour ago at the latest. Certainly, she was as capable as her mother at losing herself to weapon magazines and forgetting the time, but there was a big difference between that, and being several hours past her normal arrival time.

Shaking his head, Taiyang moved to look out the window again, resigned to simply waiting for her to come back down that path, and then promptly doing a double-take when he saw none other than Qrow Branwen walking up the path towards his home. Despite the fading light, Tai had spent enough time around his old team-mate to recognise his clothes and weapon, though maybe Qrow could shed more light on the whole situation. Perhaps Ruby decided to go and train with him and got injured?

Pushing the questions aside, Tai went to the door, ready to greet his friend and ask him what was going on. But, before he could open the door up, Qrow smashed straight through it, apparently far drunker than usual, which was saying something. The man could drink enough to make a Vacuan swoon, and still be sober enough to remember not to pee on the floor. If he was this drunk, something serious must have happened.

A polite cough sounded through the door, and Tai again had to do a double-take, as Glynda Goodwitch was stood alongside Ozpin, in front of his home, setting every alarm bell in Taiyang's mind off simultaneously. Before he could bring any questions to the forefront of his mind, Ozpin opened his mouth.

The first thought in Ruby's head was a long, resounding 'Oww', as the thudding headache she had woken up with was threatening to beat it's way out of her head entirely.

Her second thought was something along the lines of 'Where the hell am I?', as she took note in the fact that she was stuck somewhere, somewhere very dark and decidedly...moist.

Quickly clamping down on her rising panic, Ruby tried to take stock of herself, but found she was entirely incapable of actually moving. Try as she might, her body simply wouldn't respond to any attempts to move it, which did nothing to help her rising panic at the situation.

However, what truly confused Ruby was the odd feeling the situation was giving her, aside from sheer panic. She felt inexplicably safe, despite her surroundings being most definitely abnormal and remarkably terrifying.

As she tried once again to move her body, she was suddenly jostled, drawing the attempts at a yelp from her mouth, before she realized that, other than breathing and thinking, she was capable of practically nothing. Attempting to focus on whatever the hell just happened, she again was unexplainably jostled, despite no light in her surroundings, or any indication of how exactly she was moving.

Now reasonably unsettled, Ruby began desperately recollecting what happened, trying to find what could have caused this. She remembered entering From Dust Till Dawn, the name still drawing a small amount of amusement from her, finding a goon trying to rob her, and the subsequent smackdown she gave to all those idiots. Then their leader tried to escape, she chased him, and he blew up a dust crystal beneath her when she had dissolved into petals.

Despite racking her brains for an answer, Ruby simply could not come up with any reasonable thought as to how this situation could be described, aside from 'Bizarre'. Perhaps she got stuck as petals and was now in a closed urn. She quickly decided that wasn't it, though the implications for that absolutely terrified her to no end. Being trapped as rose petals was not an end she would ever wish upon anyone but the Grimm.

Once again, her world shifted in an unexplainable way, and Ruby settled her mind as best she could, waiting as patiently as the hyper-active redhead was ever capable of doing so, resolved to wait for whatever was happening to simply happen.

Without warning, Ruby had the urge to attempt to move her body again, and found, much to her joy, that something responded to her. Pushing out every part of her that she was capable of moving, Ruby could herself encased in some material, though it felt quite strange, almost like marble, but covered in some weird liquid, the same liquid she could feel around her own body.

Pressing herself out as hard as she could, Ruby's attempts were rewarded by the sound of cracking, before, all at once, whatever was holding her captive broke apart, and she tumbled out with a strangled yelp.

A yelp matched by a similar sounding yelp from somebody else in the room, and a loud gasp of astonishment from another.

Earlier that day

"Come on you big beauty, just a little longer." Eragon urged quietly, watching as the deer ahead of him settled down in the brush, munching away carelessly on the grass surrounding it, entirely distracted from its surroundings, allowing Eragon to creep up closer to the beast, preparing an arrow.

Waiting for a few short moments to check his aim, the boy began releasing the arrow, when a flash of white and crimson light blinded him, completely disrupting his aim, sending the arrow into a nearby tree and frightening off most every animal nearby, not by the arrow but the sheer luminosity of the sudden glare.

Blinking away the large patches of blindness in his vision, Eragon had to blink again when two beautiful stones sat at his feet. One was a sapphire blue, shining in the fading light like a beacon.

The other was a deep crimson, straddling the line between black and red carefully, seeming to almost draw the light from the skies to magnify its image. Shrugging his shoulders, Eragon ran his hands over both stones, feeling nothing peculiar from the red one, but having an almost strange feeling of longing for the blue one. Picking both up, he figured they would at the very least get a few crowns, and if not, they'd be beautiful ornaments somewhere in his home.

Tucking both away safely in a satchel, the boy gazed wistfully towards the trail the deer had left in it's hurried rush, mentally imagining the bag of crowns that deep would be worth running off on its own into the forest.

Thinking no more on it, Eragon shouldered his newly-found burdens, and began the trek out of the spine, and back to Carvahall, already imagining the verbal lashing he'd have waiting for him upon returning home with no carcass to sell. At least the two precious-looking stones might help to alleviate some of that response.

But, before he could actually re-enter Carvahall, his wrist was grabbed, and he was harshly tugged by a mysterious figure with their face hidden beneath a hood towards a hut near to but not quite in the town. Realizing that the home they were approaching was one owned by the old story-teller, Brom, Eragon looked at his dragger closer and noted the slight whiteness on the tips of his slightly exposed beard, and concluding that it was likely that Brom, and that the man had something important to tell him.

His mind immediately returned to the stones he found, and he had to restrain himself from yanking his arm back and running away in fear he'd accidentally stolen them from Brom. Surely, the old man wouldn't want to actually harm him if that were the case. The worst-case scenario would be that Brom could tell him that he in fact owned those stones, and Eragon could return them, and maybe even get a reward for his effort. Though how Brom could know that he'd found the stones left a gaping hole in his idea that Brom even knew he had them. No matter what, running away would achieve very little.

Throwing open his door, the figure quickly swept his view around the hut, and, apparently satisfied, hurled Eragon inside, closing the door behind him, and removing his hood, confirming to Eragon that it was in fact Brom who was dragging him. Though, that thought didn't relieve him much when he saw the anger, confusion, and most importantly, worry adorning the old mans face.

"Eragon, I'm going to ask this one time. What the hell have you done?" The old man asked quickly, much to Eragons confusion, broadcasting this fact quite clearly on his uncomprehending face. All he did was pick up a pair of shiny stones!

Sighing, Brom palmed his face, before gesturing a hand towards his satchel. Picking up on his intentions, Eragon quickly unlimbered the bag from his back, opening it and revealing the blue stone to Brom, who looked at it with a fleeting recognition, before he hid that back behind his iron-wall of mental discipline, and gesturing quickly to Eragon, beckoning him closer.

"Alright, listen. I don't have time to explain this properly, so you must learn fast. Eragon, what you've got there...is a dragon egg." Brom said quickly, not missing the brief glance Eragon threw both the egg, and more confusingly the satchel which housed the familiar egg, before his face morphed into terror.

"A-A...Dragon Egg?" Eragon asked hesitantly, hoping he was somehow mistaken. Eragon, as all who lived within the Empire, knew of Galbatorix, and knew what he'd do if more dragon eggs were ever found. Glancing back towards the satchel again, he looked towards Brom, who simply looked at him confused, though his confusion morphed into pure astonishment when Eragon rolled out the second egg.

"A second one? There shouldn't be a second one..." Brom muttered to himself, too quiet for Eragon to hear, though he did hear the muttering, in general, he couldn't make out the words themselves though.

However, his musing was interrupted when the second egg became moving rather violently, surprising both the men present, especially Brom, who knew that this dragon should most certainly not be hatching for a good long while, narrowing his eyes in suspicion that the egg wasn't, in fact, a true egg, but was a trap.

Before either men could attempt anything, with a sound like a yelp, and a rather violent destruction, the egg all but erupted, sending egg shrapnel and the majority of the fluid all over the room, covering Eragon, who was currently getting more red over the noise he'd made when the egg exploded, whilst Brom simply ignored the fluid dripping from him, instead focused on the Black and Red dragon currently looking around the room, a scarily intelligent glint in its eyes.

Brom knew from his own past that dragons were far more intelligent than any mere beast, but when they were young, they were still rather ignorant of the world, and while they were born with an innate knowledge, just like instinct for animals, about certain things, that didn't excuse them from still acting in a child-like manner. It fell to the rider to teach the dragons about the world outside of their born knowledge.

What really caught his attention, however, was the pure mental presence this dragon was somehow letting out, things that should have been being sent only to it's rider, a mixture of awe, confusion, and most notably terror, though it was all, once again overshadowed when words the dragon could not possibly know erupted from its equally impossible maw.

"WHAT THE HELL?"

Alrighty.

Yes, I know. It's short for a pilot chapter of mine. The other two were both over 4900 words, this one is a meagre 2500. I didn't want to get massively invested if this isn't received very well, so I didn't write as much into it. I also jumped perspectives a lot more than normal in this story.

So, as I said in my authors note chapter for Crimson Dovah, tell me, what do you think? I am definitely writing this story at some point, since I like the idea too much to pass up, but if it's not liked very much I may well put this on Hiatus until I'm more comfortable with it.

I don't really have a big plan for this yet, I just had a serious hankering to write this. And, please, if I wrote something stupid, please understand that I threw this together in just under an hour and a half, so don't go too harsh on me =P.

Next Chapter: No idea, depends on the reaction to this. But within the next two weeks at ABSOLUTE Maximum.