Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY.

Author notes: There are a few (admittedly rare) well-written 2nd person POV stories out there (Jbern's Bungle in the Jungle comes to mind), and quite a few rotating 1st person, or limited 3rd, or…

This started as me experimenting with point-of-view and tenses and then sort of got out of hand. And so we have a 2nd person PoV, plus 1st person riding shotgun, and 3rd following others around. And, because time-travel tends to muck with tenses, the 2nd PoV should be (hopefully) present tense, while the 3rd should all be in past.

RWBY

*Titanium Trailer*

Cue: 'Titan' by Cruxshadows

The aging Atlesian-290 'Paladin' has autocannons, energy beams, a rocket pack with an impressive number of reloads, and a mean right hook. The Dread Knight Combat Chassis while appearing very much like the older mech, is a rather different beast within and without.

For starters, the heavy autocannon in each arm fires an armor-piercing 'military ball' that has sufficient penetrative power to bust its way through three goliaths stacked nose-to-tail. The lasers mounted sidecar have sufficient energy transfer that they explode—rather than cut or melt—anything they strike. Heavy machine guns, incinerators, plasma-rifles, grenade and missile launchers, particle beams cover the torso, and scythe-like blades tip the fingers and toes. I once watched a greater wyrm swallow a Dread Knight whole, only for the mech to cut its way out of its side.

It makes the force arrayed against me kind of a joke. But I've been on the other side of the joke, and won, too often to laugh.

I reprioritize feed queues. Armor-piercing ammunition swaps with explosive-cored blast-fragmentation warheads. A ruby-colored laser sweeps out and shreds a dozen knights. Machineguns rattle, scything down another windrow of hapless robots. I reach out and trigger the autocannons, blasting great rents into their line. And then I am on top of the feeble force of conventional armor.

Return fire, disorganized and ineffective for more than marring and streaking my armor, reaches back towards me as they burn.

I turn towards you, toss an irreverent salute, and then the gravity-dust induction drive kicks on and burn dust kicks me away from the planet the induction drive is allowing me to—for the moment—pretend doesn't exist.

Ahead and above me flies the last air armada in Remnant.

The one that is coming for us.

For you.

A monitor in the cockpit covers the aft the Dread Knight. Centered on you. At what lays beyond you.

Maybe they're right but we don't have a choice anymore.

Gravity dust has freed me of Remnant's shackles, and a combination of burn and wind dust gave the Dread Knight more thrust than anything its size should be able to lay claim to. It is far nimbler than the most agile fighter, faster than anything short of a transonic transport, and if it doesn't have a battleship's awesome armor it's because it doesn't need it.

But even as I start to destroy the fleet, part of me is with you watching the baleful red digits counting down the last minutes of the world. I can't really blame them for deciding that if they weren't going to be allowed to live in the world in peace then no one should. I can't even really blame them for deciding that if they were going to be exterminated then so should everyone else.

That doesn't mean that I would let those numbers keep counting down if I could stop it any more than you would. And unlike me, you might be able to do something about it. Which is why I get the air fleet and you get the doomsday weapon.

Penetrating the first case is easy.

You open it up while I'm using the Dread Knight's particle beams to turn a pair of fighters into metallic splinters.

Once you do you are looking at a maze of devices, switches, cables and wires that may or may not lead to anything, a small screen that flipping through pictures of all the really nasty stuff humans and faunus have done to each other, and a mirror of all things.

After that things get complicated for a while. I'm still aware of you, of everything you're aware of, but now I need to concentrate on the fighters, dropships, cruisers, and assault ships.

By the time I touch down I'm out of ammo and missiles, burn and thunder and wind and…pretty much everything except gravity Dust and I don't really have much more than what I need to not leave a crater when I touch down.

You turn, and I can see the Dread Knight in your eyes. Armor shattered and rent, fluids leaking from joint casings as smoke billows from a missing shoulder plate, is standing behind you. You lift your scroll and the face lights up. The Dread Knight keels over and then a face—my face—appears on the scroll.

"They're breaking off! Did you get it?" I ask. Because unlike conventional life they might actually survive this if you haven't.

You look at the black plate that is the part of the weapon you're able to actually reach. The whole thing is huge. Bigger than you. Bigger than the Dread Knight. Some joker had painted the name 'Final Answer' above the access plate you removed.

You've managed, barely, to expose the core of the weapon without setting it off. Before you is the single largest concentration of gravity dust ever assembled, surrounding it is a shell of gravity and burn dust. All that is needed to generate a gravitic-lensing effect strong enough to destroy the world.

"No," you say. Maybe if you had another day, heck, another hour and maybe but… You sigh and slump with your back to the weapon. "I'm sorry," you say, not sure if you're talking to the world, the pitifully few people still alive, or the face peering out of your scroll at you. "I love yo—"

Black swallows us as Remnant is torn apart.