RWBY Through Worlds

146: Been Burned

Wally wasn't affected by the plague itself, thanks to his enhanced aura, but he couldn't do a thing to stop it.

[AMV the Plagues Apothesis, In case some of you wanted to see it for this chapter too. Set the tone.]

He tried to draw the spores into a whirlpool and carry it away--but they drifted back towards the kingdom, like it was seeking human hosts...he supposed because it was grimm.

And Glynda was unfortunately too late, because well meaning hunstmen had blown up most of the other pods, and the few left were doing nothing, but that didn't matter, pretty much everyone who was outside was getting infected by the spores.

The only good thing was it didn't seem entirely lethal. People were writhing, crying, and developing sores from where they got burned--and they started to fester--but it didn't seem to get into their bloodstream.

The only people who were sicker were ones who had open wounds already who'd been infected--they were suffering worse internal damage.

It took Wally only a short time to find all this out.

He took Theo back to the school, not sure what he was going to do about this, and hoped that Shine knew what to do...but where was she?

There he found Cinder infected already, and Glynda trying desperately to keep it away from herself, while Ruby and Oscar were protecting themselves with aura shields, but didn't know what else to do.

Cinder had too many exposed areas also, she was in agony.

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I kind of feel sorry for her," Ruby said, backing up. "Can we stop this?"

"We have no way to stop it," Glynda said. "We should put her out of her misery before it does. In fact, that would solve our problem."

"Were you not listening? We're not doing that," Oscar said.

Theo coughed. 

"Mr. West, you can't heal?" Oscar said to him. "I know Alicia could."

"The thing is, Oscar," Wally rubbed his head. "I'm still barely learning to use my gifts, I don't know what all of them are. Maybe... but I don't know. We all do different things. How did Alicia do it?"

"Her staff--" Oscar stopped and looked at his staff. "Hang on...Alicia told me she was giving me some of her authority...do you think that would include her gifts?"

"I'm not up on this stuff yet," Wally said. "But it sounds like it could mean that."

"It's worth a shot, Oscar," Ruby rubbed her arms. "We should try something. Cinder can't do anything while she's like this--and Theo too. This is awful."

Cinder was clawing at herself to get the dust off--and it was stuck.

Glynda was covering her ears while still trying  to keep them away from herself.

"Well..." Oscar held up his staff. "The way she did it was just them looking at her staff. I don't really know why that worked but it's what she did."

"That's crazy..." Theo muttered.

"Please Theo," Ruby said, using her cape to cover her hands and then lifting his head up. "We could at least try it."

Oscar wasn't sure what to do here.