Chapter 14: Familiar Vibes

Scarlet chased Queen through the tear she made in space and time, but she wasn't sure where Queen was going to be heading this time. She was clueless on what Queen had in store for her, the more she tried to get closer to the spirit, the more Queen inched further away from her. Scarlet gritted her teeth and cursed under her breath.

"If you're trying to cut her off, may I be of some help?" Hero asked as he looked up at Scarlet from her arm. "I have magical powers, I can summon you a weapon to throw at Queen."

The Grimm girl looked down at the ginger cat puzzled, she wondered why he didn't bother to mention this before when she was facing the demons. But that didn't matter now, she wanted to hit Queen and have her crash land somewhere. "We'll have a small talk after this, hurry up then."

Hero seeing the anger in Scarlet's eyes made him a bit scared of her. But he did agree to be her companion, he couldn't back out now. He wiggled his way out from Scarlet's arm and flipped through the air, a tomahawk appeared before Scarlet, the right weapon to use. Scarlet grabbed the tomahawk and threw it at Queen. The ax spiraled through the air as the blade stabbed Queen square in the back, this had seemed to hurt the spirit as she winched in pain, then everything started to clear up as both her and Scarlet along with Hero crashed down int a forest. One that seemed too familiar to the Grimm girl.

Scarlet jumped up to her feet as Hero had also jumped to his feet as well, Scarlet glanced around as she sniffed the air. This place... it was familiar to her. The smells were also familiar, she scanned around as she didn't see Queen anywhere. Did the spirit vanish into the shadows after they crashed down, no it wasn't that. Queen was still around, she was just further into the forest bleeding out from the wound.

"Where are we?" Hero asked as the ginger cat jumped onto Scarlet's head, he lied down on the top of her head as his front paws hung over the edge of her head.

Scarlet stayed silent as she didn't answer right away, she was more focused on finding Queen right now. But if this was indeed where she thought she was, there was only one thing that could tell her where. She put both of her fingers into her mouth and whistled loudly, a flock of birds flew over head as a familiar roar was heard approaching Scarlet and Hero.

A Ursa had came to a complete stop as it locked eyes with Scarlet, it could sense that she wasn't no human. Yet it could also tell that both its kind and Salem was part of her, the Ursa seemed confused. It was clear now, Scarlet wasn't in her world of Remnant, but a different version of Remnant. She had a feeling she was back home, but it wasn't her home at the same time.

"Whoa." Hero spoke, he noticed the Grimm had come to a stop before Scarlet. "Is that?"

Scarlet shushed Hero, she looked at the Ursa for a bit. She didn't need to say anything to the Grimm, it huffed and walked off into the Emerald Forest. Once it was gone Scarlet resumed her search for Queen, that is until she sensed another Grimm around. This one was a different type, yet... she couldn't see where it was at, so she took to the trees jumping from branch to branch.

"Are you going to say where we are now?" Hero asked while still on top of Scarlet's head. "That would be helpful you know."

Scarlet stopped jumping as she rested on a tree branch, her eyes scanned the area ahead as she saw the DeathStalker cave. "We're in a different version of my home world. The reason why that Ursa stopped in its tracks was because it knew I was one of them. Remember, I'm not a full blooded human ."

"So...." Hero spoke before shutting his mouth, he noticed Queen coming out of the cave and vanish into thin air. "She's gone... great, now how will we find her?"

Scarlet scoffed and jumped from the branch and down to the ground below. "Tch, coward." She slowly entered the DeathStalker cave. "There are so many familiar smells around, I rather not risk getting spotted by Ozpin or anyone else."

Hero was confused by this. "What do you mean, if this is a different variation of your world. Then no one here would know who you are, wouldn't that be the perfect chance for you to search for Queen?"

"If only it was that easy." Scarlet mumbled as she sat against one of the cave walls. "There's two new scents I picked up. One is a new type of Grimm, something I've never encountered before. The second one belongs to someone new as well." She raised her hands up and picked Hero up from her head. "Now, why don't you fill me in on your whole magic powers hmm?"

~~~~

Hero explained to Scarlet about his magical powers, stating that he would've brought them up to her while she had found him. But with all the chaos and danger around, it didn't seem like it would be the right time. After he had finished explaining it all to Scarlet, the two heard voices outside of the cave. Scarlet knew who they belonged to, she made a choice and went deeper into the cave, and right past the DeathStalker.

It had seemed the Orientation had begun, Jaune and Pyrrha were searching around for the location of the chess pieces. Of course unlike last time where they had entered the cave, they walked right past it. However, the DeathStalker still woke up upon hearing the two walk past.

"Are you sure we're going the right way?" Pyrrha asked as she wanted to make sure Jaune knew where he was going, she didn't want to feel any doubt in his choices. "Surly we've been going in circles."

Jaune stopped as he glanced around, Pyrrha seemed right. This part of the Emerald Forest seemed familiar to him. "I.... I think we're lost."

Pyrrha smiled a little as she put her hand on Jaune's shoulder. "Don't worry, we'll find the right way." As soon as she said that, the DeathStalker came out of the cave which resulted in the two running from it as the Grimm chased them.

"Run!!!" Jaune shouted as him and Pyrrha ran past the location of the chess pieces.

Nora, Ren and soon to be team RWBY were also there as they saw Jaune and Pyrrha behind chased by the DeathStalker. To make matters worse a Nevermore came swooping down and tried to attack Ruby and the others, to which also had them running away as well.

"Great, two giant Grimm on our tails." Weiss mumbled. "Any ideas?"

Everything played out like normally, except there was one draw back. The two teams noticed Scarlet on top of the edge of the cliff they were supposed to be up on after killing the DeathStalker and Nevermore, Hero was nowhere to be seen. So it was just Scarlet gazing down at them. It didn't take long for Ozpin and the others to take notice, of course with Scarlet being Salem's daughter. It gave Ozpin some flashes of memory that he had locked up, Glynda noticed as she glanced over to the other person next to Ozpin.

"Shion, get everyone back inside at once. There's a change of plans..." Glynda said as she looked at them.

Shion nodded their head as they walked off to gather the students up, well almost all of them. Team RWBY and JNPR stood there looking up at Scarlet, then she saw it. The new Grimm had attached itself to Jaune and Weiss. A flower based Grimm, one she hadn't seen before. This gave her an idea, but she wasn't too sure how this new Grimm worked.

"Hey uh... why does she..." Nora asked looking over at Ruby. "Why does she look like you Ruby?"

Ruby stared up at Scarlet with wide eyes of fear. "I....I don't know...." She backed up a bit as she didn't know why Scarlet looked exactly like her, of course if this was the Ruby Scarlet knew, she'd figure it out rather quickly. But this variation of the team and everyone else was rather interesting.

"Did dad have any affairs after our moms gave birth to us?" Yang asked as the blonde bimbo looked up at Scarlet. "Who are you?"

Scarlet smirked and was about to speak up, but she could smell Ozpin coming along with some of the other professors. "You're lucky, Headmaster Ozpin is coming to save you all." With that she turned and walked off.

~~~

After Ozpin and the others had showed up, all traces of Scarlet being around were gone. Ozpin felt fear deep down. He wasn't sure but he didn't want to assume so quickly on who Scarlet was or who she was related too, of course he knew that the one answer that was correct. Salem, but he knew she tried to get rid of him before. And her Grimm showing up like this wasn't her doing, the Grimm have been around longer before they were. Did Salem have enough time to make a humanoid Grimm without anyone knowing?

Ozpin trailed off from that topic eventually as he formed the teams together, of course everything once again played out normally. Until the very next day where Jaune didn't wake up from his nap, it was up to Shion and everyone to figure out what was going on. Of course, blended within the crowd was Scarlet, no one knew she was there among them. But she listened to what Shion was going to say about this situation.

"A Nightmare Grimm." Shion spoke. "It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of their fears, luring them into a deep sleep. Either making their dreams their worst nightmares or fulling their hearts desires into what they want in their dream."

This caught Scarlet's attention, she was surprised that a Grimm like this could even exist. But she continued to listen as she heard Shion mention that the only way to wake a victim up from the Nightmare was to send others into said persons dreams to slay the Grimm and save their friend.

She watched as team JNPR got into position onto the yarn net Shion's semblance had made and soon was cocooned in the yarn before joining Jaune in the dream world. Scarlet watched as no one suspected her to be there with them, of course with the disguise she had thanks to some help from Hero. Scarlet seemed just like a regular student of Beacon academy, it wasn't long before JNPR saved Jaune from his Nightmare and the Nightmare Grimm being pulled out and stored into a container of sorts by Shion.

The Grimm girl had a new task in mind now, she needed to get her hands on the Nightmare Grimm by all means necessary. She could use the Grimm to her advantage to trap Queen in its thorny vines and trap her in a dream, but she could also use it on others as well. But was there only one of them or were there more. She needed to know, she needed to find out if there were more Nightmare Grimm around. But until then she had to keep a close eye on her two sisters and the others as well as the newcomer Shion.

Once it was all situated everyone went on about their day, but things seemed to play out differently. Scarlet followed everyone around, but more importantly she kept close to RWBY, she noticed the vine marks on Weiss similar to what Jaune had. It was possible that there was indeed another Nightmare Grimm, but it was inside Weiss now. She needed to get the one Shion had and the one Weiss had inside her, but the question was how would she be able to do that?