Nanosuit and Soul Magic: A Crysis/RWBY crossover

bonus 3

(Non-canon) Omake: Bad End.​

Cinder looked out at the carnage, and smiled. The field was littered with the bodies of her enemies, most of them dead by her hand. With the power she’d gained, even the mightiest Huntress was so much ash in the wind, and the Maidens had fallen before her.

Oh, there had been complications at first. Those brats at Beacon had even come close to stopping her, and many last-minute alterations to her plan had been necessary. Now, though? The last organization dedicated to opposing her lay at her feet. Any citizen that didn’t show fanatical loyalty had been purged. After all, the damage to the world’s militaries had left the areas they could defend...lessened. There simply wasn’t enough room for anyone that wouldn’t support her.

A scraping noise. Did one of the insects survive her fire? 

From behind the wreckage of an Atlesian Battleship staggered out a familiar figure. Oh, yes, she knew this one. The complication. The one who had appeared from absolutely nowhere, and threatened to undo decades of planning. All for naught, in the end.

He had seen better days. An arm was missing, ending below the shoulder in a frayed bundle of dark fibers, dripping with dark purplish-red fluid. Shrapnel stuck out of his synthetic hide, enough to kill a human many times over. His visor was shattered, the gaps revealing translucent skin stretched tight over bone, so thoroughly weaved with glowing technology that any trace of the human that he used to be was long gone. The one eye that she could see was pure white, the eye of a corpse, lit from within by the machinery that had corrupted his form.

It would have been unnerving, if he wasn’t utterly powerless. 

When he saw her, she could see the reaction play over what was left of his features. Even though it lacked any trace of humanity, oh that eye could show hate.

He screamed, ripped one of the metal shards from his body, and charged towards her. A gesture, and he was consumed in the heart of an inferno. The rock around his feet melted, and he collapsed. Cinder extinguished the fire, curious to see what would be left.

To her surprise, the figure staggered back to his feet. The exposed portion of his face was a charred ruin, and the metallic segments on his armor glowed orange, but he attacked her again. A sweep of her hand, and he was cut in two.

Cinder turned, thinking that would be the last of it. The scraping noise behind her proved her wrong. She turned back around, to see the dead man clawing his way towards her with his one remaining limb. 

Cinder thought for a moment, then made a small gesture. A razor-tipped spear of obsidian erupted from the ground, catching the living corpse under his neck and forcing him to hang in midair. Another gesture, and the obsidian twisted to bring the dead man to face her.

“You’ve had several opportunities to escape,” Cinder noted. “If you’d never emerged from the wreckage, I would have missed you. If you’d stayed down after the fire, I would have spared you. And if you hadn’t crawled after me, I’d have thought you to be truly dead. Why are you still trying to kill me? Can’t you see it’s hopeless?”

Despite the spear through his throat, the corpse had no trouble speaking. “You...you took everything.Everything that made this world better. The peace, the people, the kindness...you burned it all! You fucking bitch, you had paradise and ruined it!”

Cinder only smiled. “History is written by the victor. Future generations will hear about how I cleansed the world of four corrupt regimes, uniting Remnant under one strong ruler. You can scream about how I ruined paradise, but the truth is that nobody will know the difference. The ones I spared? I could scorch this world into a hellscape, and still comfortably rule as its Queen.”

The corpse struggled, trying to reach her with his one remaining limb. Cinder didn’t stop him, simply enjoying how pitiful her one remaining enemy of note truly was. Then, he stopped struggling.

And he laughed.

It was a bitter laugh. A laugh with all of the joy long since burned away. The laugh of a dying man who manages to spit at his killers one last time.

Had he finally snapped? Had the situation finally become too much for his mind? Or was it something else?

“You, you think you’re the queen of hell.” His tone was cold. As cold as death. “You’re just another trapped, damned soul. And now?” Another laugh, raspy, like the damage had finally begun to overload his non-vital systems. “Now, the real demons are here.”

The ground shook, and erupted. Cinder staggered as the earth crumbled beneath her, until she held herself in midair. 

From underground, an army was rising. A legion of blue and steel. Mechanical, serpentine limbs attached to impossibly complex bodies. Hundreds, thousands of them swarmed into the open air. Thousands more, giants compared to their airborne counterparts, crawled out of the massive crevice that gaped open in the middle of the former battlefield.

Cinder summoned her power, focused the fury of a star into a narrow beam and swept it through their ranks. The first dozen were cleanly severed, but then the effects changed. The next dozen detonated, then they melted, and then they...absorbed the fire.

They swarmed down upon her. Cinder fought, used everything she had, but it wasn’t enough. All her strength couldn’t save her.

Cold metal dug into her skin, dragged her underground, and the whole way down she could hear the hateful laughter of the corpse that used to be a man.

And then, all she felt was cold.

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