AN: Hey folks. Welcome to my new story. It is sorta based on a book i wrote when i was a kid, but more of than after the chapter. I meant to get another chapter of RWBY:CE done today but My Hero Academia was so fucking hype i completely forgot to actually write the damned thing haha. So i guess you will have to settle for this.

Last Time Around: Chapter 1: Fate

The end of the world is nothing like I imagined it would be.

Grimm flooding across the city, piling up and climbing over each other in their mad rush to kill everything. Volcanos erupting and blanketing the land with lava. Meteors striking remnant and blasting entire sections of the world to smithereens. That's what I expected the end to be like. Chaos and carnage, death and destruction on a massive scale.

I didn't expect it to be absolutely silent.

And for me to be completely alone.

The ruins of Vale, a place I often find myself when I want to reflect on my horrible life choices, are silent like the graveyard I knew it to be. No Grimm scurried furtively between the rubble, no birds flew overhead, and no humans picked their way through the destroyed city looking for something of use.

After all these years, I am the only thing left.

Not just in Vale either. The fallen city breathed its last almost a hundred years ago now. It was only ten years between the fall of Vale and the demise of the other bastions of mankind. And without those safe havens... humanity never really stood a chance.

I can't help but sigh at the memories pushing through the fog in my head. Billions died in just a few years, tens of thousands of Hunter's fought in one last effort to cut the head from the snake and hopefully end it all for good. But it was all for naught.

The enemy died, but the damage was already done.

The beasts of the night lost their focus, but the madness that overtook them was almost as dangerous. With no Hunters left to protect them there wasn't anything anyone could do.

But not me. I could have saved them. Saved everyone.

My eyes could have made the difference. Stopped everything in its tracks years before it reached its tipping point, but by the time anyone actually bothered to let me in on the secrets of the world, it was too late. Far too late.

My silver eyes sting slightly at the thought. I know if I could look at myself an ethereal pale mist is pouring from them and down my face. These eyes could have made all the difference.

No point in thinking on that now however. I finished hunting down the last of the Grimm years ago. Now these legendary eyes are useful for little more than lighting up a dark room. Even than they do a far worse job than Fall.

Or Spring, or Summer. Hell, even Winter does a better job making a light.

My long walk is interrupted by the massive towers of the school I attended almost a century ago looming over me. The broken skyline towers high above on top of a sheer cliff, stabbing up into the sky like some monstrous twisted talons of a beast that doesn't yet know it's dead.

I want to be up there, see the place that meant so much to be one final time.

On my hip, four small lamps leaking multicolored lights flare brightly.

In less than the time it takes for you neurons to begin to even register time has passed I am standing on top of the cliff among the towers I used to adore so much.

The four relics were incredible little devices capable of creating magicks unheard of even in the ages of legend. When I first obtained them, I hoped to use them to fix the world. Do what every child who can't accept their favorite story tastes bittersweet hopes to do and go back and fix what was done wrong.

I learned the hard way that nothing, not even a physical god can bring back the dead.

And believe me, I am a god now.

Or close enough, there isn't really any competition with everything else on the plane dead and gone.

I'm fairly certain Blake told me once that in one of the books she was reading they made a point talking about how being effectively a god, and actually a god, were the same thing.

I wish I read more with her before she... before the end. I never spent enough time with my team. In the beginning I tried so hard to be with them, but soon enough I always found an excuse on my lips.

The downfall of humanity is a good excuse for pushing away your friends.

I make my way through the worn overgrown paths. Memories fly unbidden through my mind with each step.

Tripping over my soon to be best friend Weiss and accidentally exploding.

That same pale face, laying on her side, eyes wide and unseeing. I was always oddly thankful she died before the creeps got to her and began to tear her to shreds. No one deserved that.

My fiery sister Yang starting the mother of all food fights. A ghost of a smile tries to form on my face at the happy memories of absolutely destroying the lunch hall.

The almost happy moment is ruined by the image of my sister dead, half destroyed corpse laying in my lap.

Then sting in my eyes grows to an intense burning. Like little flames have been shoved in my eyes.

I consider myself unfortunately that I know so vividly what being burned to death feels like.

Blake left soon after that. The quiet girl just... shut down. No real team left. No family to tell her everything would be okay, and the blood of her younger brother fresh on her hands she just... stopped.

Her job was done and she had nothing left to fight for. Nothing left to live for.

Except me. But by that time, I was a just a shadow of the friend I once was. A dark imitation, like a shadow cast by a great woman when light and heat fall upon them.

Just a void with a similar outline.

I would like nothing more than to blame my mother from that, but I know my choices caused more strife than Raven ever did. Say what you will about the old bird, but at least she was straightforward. I can think of only a handful of times she bent the truth, or even used an ounce of subtlety.

Compared to Oz and his damned secrets and lies it was much preferable.

I shake my head to draw myself out of the familiar rut. if I let myself think about that bastard of a wizard for long it ends up being all I can do. He tried to take the relics from me in the end. He claimed it was all part of some fucking plan.

I can only assume the blade of my scythe ripping his throat to bloody ribbons was not a part of it.

If it was, well... Fuck him. I got sick of his scheming when I was still a wide-eyed child.

I finally break myself out of my haze and stare at the door in front of me.

JNPR

I don't want to think about them. I turn and look at the opposite dorm where I once lived along my team.

RWBY

We were a good team. Probably the best there ever was by the time we actually got running. If we had actually managed to get all the maidens and relics split between us we probably could have destroyed anything on the world easily.

The door falls to pieces when I give it a gentle push. The room in side is much as I remember. albeit with a century of wear and tear on it.

What was once two impromptu bunkbeds being now piles of rotted out wood and cloth. The desks are still almost standing, each teetering dangerously. A fly landing on them would probably collapse them like the door.

I step inside the room and spin around slowly to take it all in. The old familiar smells of my team are long gone, eroded away like everything else. The once vibrant posters that adorned the walls are faded away or tattered shreds. Blakes precious books that she had to leave behind during the fall (and often complained about for years afterwards) were nothing more than rat chewed shreds by now.

So, all in all, about what I expected to find.

A burning heat trails down my cheeks. I reach up and wipe the glowing silver tears from my face. Each one has enough power packed inside of it to demolish a building, but they are useless to me now.

Even my own fucking tears are taunting me for being so damned useless.

Useless.

A thousand memories force their way through the fog and I fall to my knees. My breath comes in shallow, panics wheezes and sobs tear their way through my throat. I can't get enough air, but I can't stop weeping.

Gradually everything fades away, and the fog once again covers my eyes.

When I awake again the world is dark. Not the normal dark of night, but a primal, endless deepness. No natural night could prevent my eyes from piercing through it, especially emboldened by the other magicks flowing through me, but the slick oily darkness fills everything.

I don't have any sense of time in here, not that I had a good one before, so I don't know how long I am floating before a soft feminine voice whispers in my head.

"Oh, little one. We gave you so many chances. So many opportunities to make things right. Why must you fight us at every turn?"

I turn my head seeking the voice, but it seems to come from inside my mind.

"I tried my hardest." I whisper back. I don't know what this voice is but something about it scares me. I feel tiny and week under an invisible gaze I can't trace.

"No. You barely tried at all. Every single choice presented, you spat in the face of fate and chose the worse option. Maybe not the worst, but never the best. Not a single time did you make the proper choice as you were told."

"Shut up! It's not... it's not my fault!"

A second voice joins the first. This one carries just as much weight, but in place of the overwhelming disappointment of the first this one harbors and overwhelming rage.

"Of course it is you pathetic creature. If you never existed the world would have turned out far better than this... boring mess you turned it into. Every single time we gave you the chance to make the world a better place you turned it down and spat in our faces. Everything that brought the world be created to ruin can be placed on your shoulders."

I reach for the magicks swirling around inside of me.

"Don't bother little rat. We already have a punishment for you, there's no getting out of this."

Just as fast as I grab onto it the comforting heat of the maiden powers are ripped from my grip. It feels like a chunk is torn from within me and pulled out through my wrists.

"We can hear you mind. You think that if you just knew how things would turn out you could have averted everything. We will show you just how wrong you are little rat."

My skin starts to burn and the darkness bleeds away revealing two figures floating in front of me. Both are humanoid, one a woman with long flowing white hair and dark skin. Her face was trailed with tears, pure sorrow carved into her face. The other was a man with pale skin and midnight black hair, a rictus of anger and hate marring otherwise perfect features.

The man speaks. His voice thunders through my ears and sets my mind aflame.

"You will continue to fail. Over and over. No matter how many times you try. Because despite all the gifts we bestowed upon you, you are still too weak to do what is right in the end."

The woman to his side sobs quietly and wipes tears from her face.

"I'm sorry Ruby" The goddess whispers, "But we can't forgive you for this."

I scream in agony as the world flares bright. Far brighter than anything even my eyes can take.

The world bursts around me and I begin to fall.

I open my eyes to a familiar sight, an issue of Swords and Ammo. It was a weapon magazine I used to read when I was a kid.

Wait a minute...

I spin around in shock. I was in From Dust Till Dawn. The dust shop I often frequented as a child when I felt like reading magazines or needed more ammo for Crescent Rose.

"I said put your hands up!" A deep voice comes from beside me. I turn and frown at the goon pointing a machete my way.

Instinct takes over. A century of battle instinct from thousands of fights to the death take over. A burning sensation spreads across my face and a bright flash of silver light illuminates the room. The goon stands still, unmoving and not breathing. After several seconds the man simply crumbles away into a pile of dust.

I step over the pile, careful not to get any of the trash of my boots.

Time to save the world.

Welcome to the bottom!

Okay so lets see.. what did i wanna talk about...

Well for start this chapter is in first person, and the entire story should be in 1st as well. I enjoy writing in first person because i find it flows a lot better for me, but i tend to have problems like starting every god damn sentence with "I" so i need the practice.

The United States of Smash was as glorious as i hoped.

And the story this is based on...

When i was young i wrote a draft of a book. I think i was like 14 or some shit. Basically the way it worked was the story was from the perspective of a hero training at a magical school type of deal in a fantasy world, and their was another background character student who knows way too much and keep throwing a spanner in the works to change things. The main plot was that the background character was the original hero of the story, and would have been the main character, but they lost and he sent his memories back to the past to fix things. Every time they failed again, or he died, he would flash back to the past again over and over until he had done it millions of times.

The main sort of takeaway from the story was that even with all the knowledge in the world, some things are just impossible to overcome. The ending of the story was him accepting that he lost after expending literally every possible option, although that final timeline was told from the new main character perspective.

It was fun to write. Had a lot of mystery because so little was explained, and didn't feal like a Fix Fic type of thing because their was no original story.

i want to go back and re-write it, but i decided to redo it as a fanficiton first as practice because hot damn my first drafts are still fucking awful.

If you dont believe they are awful, read the text in this chapter a second time. Its fucking trash hahaha.

But that is why we practice after all.

Oh, and the United States of Smash made me cry like a little fucking bitch. It was great.