From Remnant to Multerra: Enter Shale Evans

[Fenix]

Shale stepped onto the scene, tapping on the steel plates embedded in her outfit with a constant repetition that made a soft clink that echoed through the night air. The huntress was staring with a grin as she walked through the entrance to the inner cave workings, through the tunnel.

“So lemme get this straight. You evade death with the rest of your witch and warlock buddies when Salem’s castle goes ka-blooey!” The hunter will add smoothly, heading into the darkness of the room. “You manage to actually make it out with your tails between your legs while everyone sane is celebrating their victory over a darkness that encapsulated the world! And what do you go and do?” Shale asked with a flippant voice as she continued into the darkness with a confident smirk. “Why, you immediately try and figure out how to fuck it up, of course! Such an amazing plan!” Shale will add with a grin.

“How did an idiot like you get past my men!” a deep voice added from within the shadows, and Shale just shrugged in response, as a glow went through the cavern and the Huntress found the area filled with grimm of all forms and types.

Shale looked around at the assortment. “Let’s see… beowolves, ursa, a beringel in the back I see, musta gotten really lucky with that, and… nevermores! Really?!” Shale will add without missing a beat, looking around at the selection. “Never directed grimm before?! You’re using birds indoors!”

The deep voice revealed itself to be a large man, taller than Shale, with a barrel chest and a cruel smile amid midst of age and stubble, a blond, short-shaven military cut stood upon the man’s head, and he wore military fatigues that seemed to off-put the dust wand he held aloft. “You can keep barking until my minions rip you apart, if you’d like, but I’d prefer you simply explain how you snuck through my defences in the middle of my ritual.” The man adds with a casual, unaffected shrug.

Shale looks around at the grimm that slowly drew closer, and grinned. “Can’t do that, sicne I didn’t sneak in. See, I happen to be a pretty old hand at fighting, and besides, my wife-”

From behind the huntress, out in the tunnel outside, a brilliant stream of rainbow energy blasted to the side at some unknown assortment of foes, and the screams of a group of acolytes followed to let Shale know Marisa had hit pay-dirt.

“...Yeah. My other wife’s the reason I found the place and got this far, though. She’s a very sneaky person. Hence why I’ve had a workin’ sketch of what’cha looked like for weeks now, Frank.” Shale will add with a grin.

The older man grunted in surprise and anger. “My name is-”

“It’s Frank you fucking nerd. Don’t tell me your magic title you made for yourself!” Shale will add with a wicked smile. “How ‘bout, I’ll call you by your name when you learn to shave properly and practice proper hygiene cupcake? Now, are you gonna actually try to set these grimm on me some time today, or are you waiting for me to give you a measure of respect first? Because these little guys’ll die of starvation before you get a shred of it out of me, and grimm don’t need to eat[/I]” Shale will add with a confident grin, as she makes an elaborate sweeping motion towards the sea of claws and fangs around her. With a scowl, the warlock named Frank snapped his fingers, and at once dozens of grimm leapt with savage ferocity to overwhelm the human. Shale pulled on the pin of a flashbang she’d clipped onto her pocket, and securely fitted her shades, and the room exploded in a burst of light and sound.

“Showtime!”

The Huntress reached for the backpack she held on her back, unpinned the clasp at the top, and grabbed out a rectangle of steel twice as big as her head from the bag. Pushing one small button on the steel cube, the Huntress chucked the collapsed weapon into the air.

With the sound of a few gunshots, the shaft of a handle about as long as Shale was tall zipped from the stone, and Shale caught her favored weapon in one hand before spinning it a few times in the air, before finally catching it in her preferred two-handed grip. Shale smiled as she held her partner, her special weapon, aloft.

That feeling of invincibility filled Shale once again as she held the hammer aloft. Grond glowed with the presence of steam dust as the weapon was ready to use. \
‘
“Well come on, then! I don’t know many grimm that are cowards!” Shale yelled as the crowd of grimm and their master recovered from the effects of the flash-bang, and the huntress took the initiative with one swift swing of her hammer that smashed the head of an ursa five times her size into the cave floor.

The grimm, for their part, recovered immediately, and a group of beo-wolves dove for Shale. The huntress jumped over one, landed on the head of another, and used the beowolves head as a platform while she smash the third with a vertical swing of grond’s heavy hammer-head. Leaping up as a dozen more wolves leaped in, A second button was activated on Grond’s bottom, and shale leaped up as a length of chain appeared from the bottom of her handle. Shale concentrated, and the steam dust chambered within the weapon surged as the experienced huntress swung her weapon around by the chain into a mighty whirlwind. With a powerful throw, She crushed the head of a diving nevermore with the weapon, and the dust within exploded in a burst of superheated vapor that left a group of boiled, dissolving grimm below her.

“Not done yet!” Shale would quip before grabbing a glass vial at her side filled with azure powder, and with a grin and a palm facing straight towards the other side of the area, she released a blast of water that covered the rest of Frank’s little army in water.

To her surprise, Shale saw the man she was fighting hold up a black, glowing orb of energy, and a split-second dodge of pure guesswork was all that saved her from a blast of black lightning that destroyed a large chunk of the cave roof behind her.

“Hey, I’ve never even seen that one!” Shale added with a chipper tone as she fell to the ground, throwing away the spent vial and grabbing another one filled with a bright yellow powder. “But, hey, you skipped part of the show early!” Shale will add with a resurfacing grin as she lands next to the water-logged grimm waiting for her below.

And that was when the clever magician concentrated, and sent an electrical current through the rest of the makeshift army of beasts and monsters. The air filled with the smoke of the dissolving corpses of grimm as she grabs her fallen hammer by the handle, and the huntress rested the weapon on one shoulder as she turned to the warlock with a chuckle.

“So… Not gonna lie, you’ve got some talent here man. Have you ever thought about putting it to better use? Y’know, maybe making the world a better place?” The huntress asked with a grin. “You’re a good magician, even if it seems like you got a gap in your library near the ‘hygiene’ spell. Why go to all these lengths creating a ruckus like this instead of making the world a better place, Frank?”

“My name is Fenrir!” The angered warlock will respond, before bringing out a jewelled knife. Shale shrugged at the comment, and readied her weapon for the sorcerer’s attack.

But Frank’s mouth curled into a grin as the knife cut through his own arm. Blood leaked to the floor, and a glowing array of lines and intersections criss-crossed throughout the floor. “And you’re about to see why!”

Every trace of Shale’s casual demeanor vanishes, as she looked down at the runes.The array was one she recognized from her own trips into darkness, and as she looked around the ritual chamber she found herself in, she recognized some of the ingredients. Rare ingredients. Things Shale knew were only useful in one or two of the worst things possible.

“Kami”. That was the spell that the book had given this one. And more importantly, the Diagram was…

The town they’d tracked these guys from. Twenty thousand humans and faunus. All encircled in the binding. Which meant…

Oh fuck.

“You figured it out!” The fell magician jeered as he looked towards the sweating huntress. “I’m surprised you know the magic, but it’s as clear as the sweat falling from your neck that you know exactly what happens next. Soon, twenty thousand people will give their lives for my ascendance! Soon I shall achieve the same heights as Salem! The heights she greedily kept for herself! And with that, I will be far past the powers of a meager hunter.

Shale’s shock turned into a scowl. “She didn’t keep them!” The woman snapped, raising her hammer, “She was cursed with them! And for all her corruption, all the darkness that was put inside her, she never once considered cursing anyone else the same way!” Shale would snap.

The Warlock gave a confused look at the statement, as he started to gain an inkling of who Shale might really be. Still, he had no time, as the circle glowed, and opted to begin chanting instead of continuing the verbal duel, a blackened aura erupting around him.

Shale had only a few seconds, and she knew the kind of barriers that stood between her and her opponent as she rushed forward. She couldn’t guarantee she could 0 the sorcerer’s aura, and if he lived even a little bit, the ritual would restore him to full, and kill everyone in the town.

The huntress bit her lip, as she heard a pair of footsteps enter the chamber. She knew it was Marisa. She didn’t know where Kayle was. That was a good sign - if she entered the room now, as a creature made of magic, she might become part of the spell. That wasn’t an end she wanted for the grimm they’d married.

A grin came across Shale’s face even as her body broke down in sweat at the risk she was about to take. Pressing her hand to the circle herself, she began chanting a spell of her own as her own aura blackened.

The sorcerer looked at her with widened eyes as he realized what she was going to do. Shale would take what pleasure she can in at least putting one more over on the putz. Magic of this sort was risky for the user’s health - it required taking in the essence of destruction, and that sort of energy only sought to annihilate one on a physical and spiritual level at the end of the day.

The other thing it required, though, was lots of precision.. Without the use of dust, the whole damn system came off easy mode and you needed to do exactly what you wanted to do.

Which is to say, someone yammering some beginner-level black spell while drawing on the same power you were using to obtain godhood was a fine way to muck it up!

What it would actually cause, however…

Shale groaned as she struggled against the familiar feeling of destruction filling her frame, of an instinctive urge to devour the human in front of her filled her body, and she felt the strength of the spell almost threaten to overwhelm her as the energy of the circle bent and cracked.

WIth a thundering boom, a sphere appeared in the middle of the sorcerer and the huntress, and both of them looked up with wide eyes as a circle of black and white appeared. Meanwhile, the array shattered completely, the glowing circle shattering like white glass and flying through the air before them.

“What did you do, witch?” the mercenary Roared, and Shale moved to leap away only for her legs to suddenly turn to jelly.

“You know damn well I just rolled the dice! This is as much a mystery to me as you, Frank!” Shale shouted in frustration.

“Shale!” She heard Marisa yell from behind her, and she struggled to turn around as gravity seemed to shift.

“Don’t come any closer!” Shale yelled, a tone she didn’t use very often.

As she turned around she saw her wife, her beautiful wife, and the orb between her and Frank exploded in size, growing into an 8 foot tall sphere.

Shale looked behind to see Marisa, her eyes open with fear as she saw the sphere open, and Shale’s feet started to buckle against the pressure.

“Shale! Get over here! now!{/i]” The ordinary magician snapped, and Shale looked in her wife’s golden eyes and winces as she saw the fear hidden behind them.

“Marisa, listen to me! I’ll be fine! You need to figure out what the hell this is!” Shale yelled back, failing to keep the fear out of her voice as she watched her weapon fly past her, hearing grond enter the portal behind her with a ‘foosh’ sound effect that wouldn’t have been out of place in one of the old movies she liked to watch so often.

“Shale, no! Hold on! I’ll-”

“There’s no-” Shale started, before she felt her knees finally give in, and she looked up at her wife with terror. “Listen to me! One of us will find a way back! We will figure this out!”

Shale’s fingers dug into the earth as she heard a grunt from behind her - sounded like Frank was joining her on this ride. “Listen! I love you! Tell Kayle I love her too! And… that I will come back!”

The last view of the witch she had was of her sobbing face as she looked up. “Shale… you’d better mean that! Do you hear me? I better…”

Shale realized tears were trailing down her own face as the adrenaline left her. “Hey, this should be easy for us, right?” She’d ask with a joking tone.

Marisa blinked as the orb expanded again, and Shale was sucked into the void.

“I love you, Shale! So please, please…

Come back to me.”

Marisa’s words echoed through the void as a vortex surrounded her wife, and Shale found herself trapped in a black vortex.

She’d be back.
She had to be.

 

[Fenix]

Shale’s eyes lit up to life with a grunt of pain and a flash of white as her eyes opened and her brief bout of merciful unconsciousness was sadly cut short. An unfamiliar sky welcomed her with a view of beautiful green foliage before her…

Shale looked left and right and only saw 2 things other than clouds and muck in the area: The first was Frank, “Fenrir”, the sorceror. The second thing was a steel hammer swinging like a windmill through the stratosphere. Shale reached out a hand.

“Grond! Come back!”

The Hammer was unable to answer the huntress’s pleas. Within a few moments, the rapidly accelerating hammer blazed through the sky below a cloud, and left Shale’s sight.

Shale’s hands clenched into fists as the last remaining piece of her happiness left her sight. Holding back tears, she turned to take her anger out on the man who was responsible for bringing this about, freefall be damned, but with only a single look, she noticed a bit of terror on Frank’s face.

A second later, as her aura sprang to life, Shale realized why. The portal hadn’t just dropped them into this world. Shale had hit full free-fall velocity a few moments ago, and both her and the sorcerer were still accelerating! Flames rapidly erupted from the sides of her aura as Shale felt her energy buffeted with the consequences of her sudden acceleration, and she knew there was no time.

With one swift dive of her arms, and a grab at the pin of one of her grenades, she headed over to Fenris. “Yo!” She yelled over the din. Judging by the strained look on the villain’s face, she’d guessed correctly on how much the man was hurting. Whether it was protection or magic, the people of Remnant sourced it all from the same place: Aura.


And after trying to eat a town, Fenris had to be running low!

Shale would glare at the man as she threw a grenade in front of them, and both of them were blasted with the Frag’s explosion of metal and flame dust.

“Still trying to kill me, hunter?”

“I”m still not trying to kill you, fuckface!” The huntress yelled, shielding her eyes from the blast with her arms. “And that’s not going to be enough to let us live through this!”

Frank blinked a few times, trying to process what the huntress had just said, and the huntress dove close enough to the corrupted magician to put an arm on his shoulder. “Grab 3 dust vials! You can do a dome with dust, can’t you! I’ll do the rest!” The huntress will shout. “Or do you wanna die before you ascend, mr. god?!”

Those last words triggered something in Frank’s brain, and an angered, “Alright, alright!” followed Shale’s taunt.

Focusing the remaining dust - water, air, and gravity - Shale focused every remaining bit of aura as she could spare as the accelerating effects of the portal caught up with them again. Sparks of magic danced through the duo’s hands in multiple colors as the pain and weight of reaching escape velocity struck the two of them again. The flames licked at Shale’s arms, and the huntress groaned in pain as she struggled to concentrate on the dust magic, on saving her life. It was only Shale’s fourth or fifth time being burned, and each time it felt just as utterly terrible, as soul-crushingly painful. She ignored it. If she didn’t concentrate on this next part, they would die, and the effect would be slow and painful.

Wisps of wind streaked past the duo as Frank yelled in defiance of the gravity that threatened to rip his body apart. Holding his hands up, and bellowing, the mercenary made a shield of Earth and ice that encapsulated the duo. Next to him, Shale grinned through the burning blaze, and concentrated on creating an encapsuling wreath of water and air, and the two felt the mass of their new dome grow lighter as the falling magus’es hit layer after layer of water that shook their dome cocoon and slowed their descent.

Shale concentrated as the two continued to fall, no longer able to see and forced to guess on feeling with the last of her water and air dust. “Shit.” the huntress swore to herself. They were still falling at a dangerous pace. Taking a deep breath, the huntress mentally prepared herself to lose the last of her dust, leaving her with fists and harsh language for any foes she may have to deal with in the world below.

There was no time to regret during a desperate bid for survival. though. Taking off her jacket, she hefted her final vial of lightning dust and charged the metal panels inlaid within. The dome exploded as she took the jacket in two hands and the earth started speeding dangerously close.

“What are you doing!” The sorcerer yelled.

In response, Shale just grabbed the man with one hand as she hurled the jacket upward with a burst of superhuman strength, and slipped a vial of magnetic dust into her hand quick as lightning.

“Saving your fucking life with a 600,000 Lien jacket! Now shut up!”


The huntress looked upwards and focused all the electro-magnetic tug she could put between the vial and the jacket, and no sooner had she than the two objects pulled together, cutting their velocity in half.

Shale looked down, and realized the ground was a heck of a lot closer than she’d thought, though, and based on a history of jumping off high places? They were still going way too fast, and way faster than any normal creature should have.

The woman smiled to herself. Long ago, she’d heard of a man with wax wings that got too close to the two brothers before the constructs melted, falling away from the sun he’d so wanted to reach at terrifying speed, and dying on impact with the earth he’d so despised.
A spell failure like this may just have been the idea that they’d talked about. Magic had no use for a failed god, so it entreatied him and anyone else who would trifle with such magic to being cast out. Their metaphorical fall would be made quite literal.

Shale smirked to herself. Then again, she also knew Marisa would both call her stupid and a complete dork for thinking about something like this right as her feet were about to violently hit Terra Firma.

The impact hit with a violent crunch, and in Frank’s case, a high-pitched scream of pain. The familiar cracking sound of twin auras breaking accompanied their return to earth, and for a moment, the two just stood there groaning.

“Fuck. You. Frank.”

“Whatever, you up-tight overdressed bitch! If you hadn’t shown up…”

“You’d have gotten to kill a bunch of people and momma salem would finally wuv you, I get it!”

“You don’t know the first thing about who Salem really was!”

“Then, by all means, give me story time about grandma, chuckles!”

“...Wait, what?”

The militarily dressed mage turned to her with a quizzical expression, and Shale didn’t even have time to give a simple shrug before the air shuddered under the howl of a giant.
It wasn’t a goliath, but it had the tremor. It wasn’t an ursa, but it had the anger. It wasn’t a beowolf, but it had the same viciousness.

Shale looked towards the jungle with anxiety coursing through her body as she realized she’d just tapped every resource she had, and whatever horrifying thing that just roared it’s claim across the area was headed this way!

Shale turned to get into a fighting stance as the earth trembled. Whatever was coming might be unfriendly, but with two skilled fighters-


The quick sound of footsteps running directly away from the thunder caused Shale to sigh. He was running away. She was going to need to catch him later.

Which…

Thundering footsteps zeroed in on Shale’s location as trees started buckling and falling throughout the crowded jungle.

That meant that she was about to try and fight a giant beast.

The trees in front of her buckled and groaned as another roar split through the forest.

Alone.

Which was stupid.

The tree-front finally exploded and Shale found herself staring down a monster she’d never seen before. It wasn’t a grimm, but it reminded Shale of the dragon she’d seen so many years ago. Drool fell from salivating rows of teeth attached to a mouth as big as shale’s entire body and fell 13 feet down from the roof of its mouth to the earth below.

“Guess there’s no helping it…” Shale sighed with a warning look to the beast, as it glared with hungry, unfeeling eyes that scared Shale more than a Grimm’s. It was at times like this she was forced to think back to her time in team PCHS, and the tactics the unorthodox squad leader had put forward. She wasn’t the strongest military mind, but she knew strategies that worked better than she’d seen from the finest commanders.

And one in particular Shale had taken particular care in learning well.

“Pov’rel secret technique:”

Shale’s feet caught just so on the ground as she propelled herself firmly in the other direction as the rex charged, an expression of terror accompanying an arm-swinging run of complete horror

“Run for your life!”

The Tyrannosaurus behind her (not that Shale knew the name) followed with a thunderous howl of anger and with all the condemnation of a predator that had marked it’s prey, and followed the huntress into the jungle proper.

It was going to be a long day.

 

[Fenix]

Shale Evans face was one of contemplative concern as she moved through the jungle, seemingly heedless of the giant archosaur behind her for all the fear that could be seen on her face.

“I think he’s gaining on me…”

A titanic roar echoed through the trees as the Rex slammed through another palm tree like a walking landslide and the huntress pumped her legs just a little faster.

“I think he agrees!”

Shale looked around at the strange greenery and untamed landscape that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the countryside of Mistral. If she were in a different situation, she would have probably been taken aback by the natural beauty of the place. In her current situation, described as ‘running away from a sharp-fanged monster’, she was more frustrated by the constant assortment of tree, flower, rock, and other assorted foliage.

Finally, she saw something that might help her out with this situation. A rotted tree of unknown origin. She dashed as fast as she could, doing her best to ignore the Rex not far behind as she dashed behind the fallen log.

With a titanic exertion and a low grunt, shale put both hands around the tree and hefted it in the air like a club. Shale reckoned the thing weighed close to a thousand pounds - even heavier than the four hundred pound weapon she was used to. Even so, the youthful huntress smirked as she brought it back behind her head and, with a little bit of exertion, swung it straight for the charging dinosaur’s head.

The effect was immediate, sudden, and violent. Which is to say that it didn’t go in Shale’s favor. Layers of wood covered in bark hit with all the force of a sledgehammer against the creature’s head, only to splinter into a thousand pieces when faced with the unbridled power of a T-rex’s head-butt.

The monster glared down at Shale with the sudden change, and the Huntress looked up with a look of shock and surprise. Then, the monster snapped it’s jaw forward, almost seeming to catch the huntress…

But missing. A black-and-white blur zipped out of the way, and the Rex’s jaws snapped on air.

“You didn’t think I was really that slow, did’ja?” Shale asked from a few feet away from the rex. Inwardly, though, she found herself panicking. A few seconds… that’s all her body had the stamina for suddenly. That tree was also much heavier than it should have been. She wished she had a second to figure out the why, but there was currently a very large lizard Yelling at the top of it’s lungs how much it wished to eat her staring her right in the eyes, so instead, Shale turned right around and continued to run as fast as her legs could carry her.


“Back to plan A!”

The howling lizard chased Shale through the thickness of the jungle once again, and the huntress was careful to make sure she didn’t let the panic of the moment take away from her sense of direction. After all, she wasn’t just looking to run away without some form of plan.

The mad dash continued for a few minutes, with Shale swearing she could feel the hot breath of the lizard hot on her back, but eventually the flat, swampy areas of the jungle gave way to a rocky trail up the nearby cliffs. Shale followed them and to it’s credit, the tenacious rex did too.

“Come on! There’s no way I’m nutritious enough to justify any of this effort!” The huntress called back, but the only response from the massive animal was another thundering roar.

“Well, fuck you too then!” Shale called back, Before setting her attention back to the ground.


“Come on, come on…”

She’d been keen with her eyesight even when they fell, mapping out the area. She was one of the more perceptive hunters around, luckily, so she’d noticed the rough areas in the cliff where he fell. There was no way that a fall like that would be enough to finish him, even if he did come out of it a little banged. She’d poured her heart and soul into him…

Shale closed her eyes for a moment.

A twelve year old child with short black hair and a loose business suit dusted off her hands with a broad grin, sitting next to a steel table covered in filings. “Is he done yet, Shale? Is he done? Can I finally use it?!”

A much older, wizened hand clasped onto the younger girl’s shoulder. “Not quite yet. Vayle, a hunter’s weapon is meant to kinda be their partner. You’re gonna have to treat this way better than any other weapon you’ve had before. So, I’m going to need you to give this fine piece of machinery a name, okay, lieutenant?”

Vayle grinned with a delirious happiness as she looked over the weapon. It was massive enough for even her to have a little trouble wielding it, and her height and a half tall. Everything about it screamed intimidation and brutality. It was perfect for her. Thinking back on the stories she had read as a young child, of an age of dark lords and mighty heroes, an answer came to her lips.

“His name is-”

“Grond!” Shale called out. Out towards her reaching grasp, she saw her partner, her first friend, her other half, and for a moment the Rex stopped mattering entirely.
The weapon was located in a small crater that had created a makeshift clearing near the cliff’s edge. The silver steel glittered in the sunlight in opposition to the foliage around her, sitting upon its own head. Shale dashed forward as fast as she could, becoming a blur as she zipped to the weapon.

A distant roar could be heard behind her, and Shale smiled. One hand softly brushed the shaft with a gentle caress.
“Sorry I kept you waiting.”

Two hands gripped the metallic shaft and Shale’s heart slowed. Despite the screwed up day, despite her new circumstances, despite the sheer difficulty of the situation, Shale’s mouth turned into a cocky grin as her hands found their familiar footing and the world just began to feel right again.

With one smooth motion, she turned to the Rex, hammer in hand. “Y’know… you seemed like just a normal predator before, and I didn’t wanna hurt ya. This is your land. So you’re gonna have to forgive me…”

The Rex Charged head-first to try and gore it’s challenger. Shale dashed forward and brought her hammer up.

“But I’m gonna need to give you a time-out!”

The Huntress swung, as she had a million times, just a half second before trying to skid to a stop. The steel weapon met the Tyrannosaurus’s head, and a resounding crash reverberated through the jungle as the two collided.

For a second, the Rex seemed unbothered, Still glaring daggers at Shale.

Then, the light faded from its eyes, and the tyrant lizard king fell to its knees.

“Not a bad sparring partner. I’ll look you up next time I’m in town.” Shale would add with a wistful smirk. The huntress padded down her shirt for a moment, and then suddenly frowned.

“Shit. My scroll was in my jacket, wasn’t it? Marisa would’ve loved a picture of this for when I get back.”