RWBY: Primal (#RWBYverseAwards)

Strife

In the coming days, not only had Primal become much more talkative, but he had seemed to warm up to everyone in Teams RWBY and JNPR. The only things he ever held back from them was anything regarding his origins. He would effectively dodge the question every time someone brought it up.

It had really started to get on Ruby's nerves. While he seemed to trust everyone, he would retreat into himself whenever someone would ask about his past. And she was determined to find out more.

On the way to Ms. Goodwitch's class, Ruby managed to catch up to Primal, not exactly a hard feat considering that everyone gave him quite a large girth to walk through.

"Hey, Primal!" She called, rushing up to him.

He turned his gaze towards her, his helmet's eyes glowing their regular orange color. "Hello, Ruby."

"Can I ask you something? And will you give me a straight answer?"

"I will try to the best of my ability." The large metal boy said.

"Where did you come from?"

Primal immediately seemed to go on the defensive. He looked around him, as if to find some way to redirect her attention or flee himself.

"I won't leave you alone until you give me a good explanation." Ruby said crossly.

Primal sighed. He found it extremely difficult to say 'no' to her. He reached into his armor and pulled out a small photograph. This one was quite odd to Ruby, considering that it was entirely in black and white.

Primal pointed to the people in the picture.

"This was my family." He said wistfully. He then pointed to a small, smiling boy in the picture. "And that is me."

Ruby gently took the picture and studied it. She handed it back to Primal and looked at him questioningly. "Why is there no color? And what do you mean 'was'?"

Primal inserted the small slip back into the crevices of his armor. "They are all dead."

Ruby immediately looked downcast. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring up painful memories. How did they die?"

Primal chuckled. "Naturally. From old age."

Ruby's eyes widened. "But that's impossible. If they're already dead, then how are you still alive? And so young."

Primal looked at her and sighed. "Because I am not from this time." He started.

"My family was considered the nobility of our clan. Among the Brotherhood, we were the fighters. Warriors. My specific division was called 'Carnage'. And I was believed to be the best among them. I was... crippled at birth. That was not acceptable by my family, and they had my unusable portions stripped. Replaced with mechanical counterparts. When I was thirteen years old, I was suspected of treason, and was cast out from my clan. I wandered the Badlands for a few years. Scrounging up meager resources to live by. And then I stumbled into the Frozen Fields. I was not prepared for the elements. My body was frozen. But instead of perishing, my mechanical parts put me into hibernation mode. When I reawakened, three hundred years had passed."

Primal finished his story and coughed once.

Ruby looked at him, dumbstruck.

"But how is that possible?"

Primal shrugged. "I cheated death. And now I am suffering for it."

Ruby laid a hand on his forearm. "You have us now. We'll never be able to replace a family, but we can try our best."

Primal smiled through his helmet. "Thank you."

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Ruby and Primal arrived at the arena, where Ms. Goodwitch taught her combat classes. They took a seat near the back, Primal's height forcing him to the same sort of hunched over position to avoid taking up the entirety of the field of view of the person sitting behind him.

"Hello, students." Ms. Goodwitch said as she walked into the room. "You all already know how this class works, so I'll get right into it."

The randomizer began spinning through each students' face. To everyone's surprise, the faces on the board after the spinning ended was non other than Primal and Cardin Winchester.

Cardin smirked. "I'm gonna pummel scrap metal into the ground." He brandished his mace and jumped down into the stadium.

Primal rose from his seat. Ruby looked up at him and gave him a wide smile and a thumbs up.

Primal quietly made his way down to the ground, where he walked to the opposite side of the stadium from his opponent.

"You all know the drill. First person's aura to drop into the red zone loses." Ms. Goodwitch said. "Begin!"

Cardin smirked and immediately made a dash for Primal, hoping to catch him off guard.

He had no such luck. Primal sidestepped his swing and jabbed his knee into Cardin's side, causing the overconfident boy to keel over in pain.

Primal gave no mercy and aimed a punch at Cardin's head. He just managed to roll out of the way as Primal's fist made contact with the ground, splintering the concrete around the impact area.

Cardin aimed a wide swing at Primal's head, but was surprised when the mechanical boy caught the mace by the spiked ball on its end.

Primal's arm began to thrum loudly. He hollowed a small piece of metal in the handle of the mace using his second semblance. Control over metal, a byproduct of his advancements. It turned out his parent's experiments had worked. He jerked his wrist upwards, and split the the mace into two portions, leaving Cardin with just a blunt, straight piece of metal.

Primal spun in a quick circle, following through with his disabling of Cardin's weapon, and slammed the spiked ball into the other boy's face as he stared, shocked, at his now useless handle. Cardin slid across the floor, and his aura instantaneously dropped into the critical sections of the red zone.

"Primal wins. The match has ended." The mechanical voice of the computer rang out.

Ms. Goodwitch looked dumbfounded at Primal as he threw the remainder of Cardin's weapon aside.

She shook her head and turned back to the rest of the class.

"Does anyone else wish to challenge Primal?" She called out.

Everyone stayed quiet for a few moments, before someone jumped up from their seat, smiling widely.

"Me!" Yang called out.

A/N:

Once again, thanks for reading guys! And we've officially hit over 300 reads! Wow! Never expected to get even a hundred. And this has been in less then 3 months! I am super grateful to anyone and everyone that's read this so far.

Sorry for the short part. The next one should also be about this length. But then I'm going to be starting the intros and such for Team WRPP, so that should yield quite a few interesting feats.

Like always, feel free to leave a comment. I love constructive criticism, and pretty much anything anyone has to say will be taken into heavy consideration!

Peace!