OOC: Same continuity as 'The opposite day'

“GAH!” Diamond woke up with a start, drenched in cold sweat. She thought she got over it, but the nightmares of that day haunted her even now, a year after. Sometimes she wondered why she was even still here.

Today was the first ‘anniversary’ of The Incident, yet Diamond only shown up for a little while. They lost so many that day that she could only celebrate with grief and mourning. And, as it became a habit once more, a smoke. Something she was craving right about now, so she got up and left the dorm for a midnight stroll.

[b][i]A year earlier…[/i][/b]
A familiar voice howled in pain, and Diamond turned only to see Aurelius fall on the floor, face twisted in a pained grimace. For him, that meant something truly bad happened to him. “Get him out of here!” Marcus yelled over the noise of battle to her.

Without a moment’s thought, Diamond carved her way through two of the cultists and closer to Aurelius. That was when she saw what kind of mess did they made of him. Kitty was standing above him, his knee spotting a hole made by the mechanical tail that was now about to sink into his chest.

Angered, Diamond summoned a sizable spike of ice and launched it at the faunus. The woman’s aura blocked the shot, but visibly drained her as color vanished from Kitty’s face, and she ran away. Diamond looked at the poor guy on the floor and wanted to pursue. There would be hell to pay. But first, she had to drag the guy out of harm’s way. Apparently his semblance has reached it’s limit, and the world of hurt that was put upon him caused him to blissfully fall unconscious.

Pinning one of the cultists to the wall with a shadow lance, Diamond hurried over propelling herself along an icy slide. She scooped her teammate up and unceremoniously hung him over her shoulder before bolting out of the hall with her cargo. The fighting was concentrated on the ground level and the basements, so the girl went up the stairs.

She nearly bumped into someone when she turned the corner on the 2nd floor, intending to head for their dorm where she could get her comrade first aid, but they actually bumped into a nurse. Perfect! She gave Aurelius to her care and turned around. There was a world of hurt to be put on a certain 'classmate' before she vanished.

[i]An hour later...[/i]
The cultists were being pushed back. Tactically they lost, but it was obvious strategic victory for them. They proven that even Beacon itself wasn’t safe from an attack, and some misguided idiot out there would certainly rub it in their faces, along with the fact that there were numerous casualties on the cultist’s side. No One cared that it was due to their sheer fanaticism and that it was either them or the hunters. The anti-hunter propaganda was as strong as it could get lately.

But right now, Diamond couldn’t care less about the life of the one she was facing. She managed to block all escape routes out of a basement they were in with debris and ice. Her own aura was down a good chunk, but so was Kitty’s. “You’ll be undone today. There’s not gonna be enough of you left to run a DNA test.” the faunus snarled. Diamond merely regarded her with a deadpan expression, angering the Faunus further.

The two of them charged at the same time. Kitty deployed a spike from the end of her tail and held two shortswords she picked off of a fallen cultist, Diamond summoned her trusted cane. With a feral growl, the two swung their weapons against each other.

Diamond immediately fell on the defensive, her cane zooming through the air to block the furious attack of Kitty’s weapons. The swords broke after a few hits when confronted with the shadow weapon, but the faunus managed to connect with a swipe of her tail and knock Diamond to the ground. She rolled out of the way just in time for the tail blade to embed itself in the concrete floor.

Seeing her chance, Diamond reformed her shadow into a rapier and stabbed it into the mechanical appendage before Kitty could free it. Jumping to her feet, she twisted the sword and the tail broke apart. Now disarmed, Kitty retreated a few paces, hissing in anger. However she realized she was on the losing side and was backing away from the tip of Diamond’s weapon.

“Thought this was gonna be a catfight?” Diamond taunted the faunus. Oh, she didn’t know the half of it. Diamond was going to enjoy making her suffer for what she did to her teammate and what her buddies did to her friends. She let her weapon dissolve, popping her knuckles. “Damn straight it’s gonna!” she growled, anger showing on her face the first time in that fight. In a second she was onto the faunus, and another round of the fight began.

“Who. Sent. You?” she asked coldly, sending a chill down Kitty’s spine. The Faunus was bloodied, one of her ears had a piece bitten off, her left eye was swollen shut and she was missing a few teeth. Above all else. Still, there was a defiant anger in her face as she spat blood to Diamond’s face.

That was it. Diamond didn’t usually resort to violence, but she’s had it with this one. That, and Kitty ruined her clothes, bit a chunk of her forearm off and broke one or two ribs. Tossing her against the wall she walked up close, and with a single precise kick with her heel obliterated one of Kitty’s knees. “That’s for Aurelius you grimm whore!” she hissed to Kitty’s ear while the other screamed and whined. “We’re alone here and will be until the rest of your buddies is mopped up. No One will hear you scream. Plenty of time to talk. Minutes. Hours. So I suggest you start talking. Because I swear, I will not kill you, I will be [i]killing[/i] you. One piece at a time!” she hissed and just to prove her point broke Kitty’s trigger finger. The beaten girl let out a long wail, begging for Diamond to stop. “Tell me names! Places! Resources!” Diamond insisted, summoning her cane and crushing one of Kitty's toes under it. She knew all kitty knew within ten minutes.

[b][i]Present day…[/i][/b]
It mattered little. Nobody ever made an arrest. None of the Order’s heads were ever found. Even Kitty didn’t do any time - they stuck her into a hospital which she didn’t leave for half a year after Diamond was done with her, and afterwards the woman further cooperated with the law, keeping herself out of the joint.

But since that day, MODA was short of their A. Even with his semblance full on, Aurelius still felt every movement of his knee. They tried everything, but some wounds just never healed. Today their teammate officially left the school. And with that, something in the rest of them just broke. Aurelius was going back to his family business. Oswald insisted on going back to help defend his village, with or without the team. And Marcus got a very good offer from Althesian skunk works. Of course, Diamond didn’t fancy her chances alone. Nobody wanted to say it out loud, but their team was finished the second the school released them.

She snuck away at night again. After The Incident, she knew of only one way to relieve herself of the grief that day, and it made her relapse. But she kept her smoking secret not to add more worries for the team. It wasn’t even helping anymore. Now it was just a necessity. She cursed herself to let it go this far, but she couldn’t stop herself now.

Diamond sat on ‘her’ bench, and another painful memory came back to haunt her. Not everyone was as lucky as Moderation to get off with scars that would last a lifetime. BAST and KESS were completely wiped out when the bomb detonated, and Rayna and Priscilla fell as well, taking Rumple and Lady with her.

She flipped the lighter open and took the carton, when something strange happened. Her accessories froze over, almost as if her dust gone out of whack. Except she didn’t do it. Then, something pierced the skin on the back of her neck, and the world went dark.

Was this it? She was going to be poisoned like some kind of rat? By someone who didn’t even had the guts to look her in the face? No! She still had fight left in her, she… she felt good actually. Better than in months in fact. Well, if she was dead, then at least it wasn’t half bad. Save for the hospital smell… wait a minute.

It took some effort, but Diamond opened her eyes to see Beacon’s infirmary. So she was alive. But something was amiss. The place was deserted save for herself, and a shadow she could see against the moonlit window. Against the light, she could not make out the stranger's face, but there was something very distinct sitting on top of the stranger’s head. Diamond blinked to clear her eyes - That couldn’t have been! Just to confirm, she reached on top of her own head and found the hat right where it should be. The creep noticed and turned around: “Oh, but it is your hat. I missed you, [i]mom[/i].”

Diamond never went from drowsy to alert this fast. She sat upright and grabbed the head of the stranger, not believing a word she said. But what she saw when she started twisting made her stop. It was her face, just with brown eyes and a mane of natural-colored golden hair, much like her own. Her jaw went slack. The resemblance was uncanny. “Then… you must be… Mia?” The stranger shook her head, “Lilith Amaranth” she corrected. Diamond’s eyes went wide. That was the name she thought she would give a daughter if she ever had one! “Correct.” Diamond whispered barely audibly, making the girl in front of her smile: “I did not know I was planned this far ahead.”

“Prove it.” Diamond demanded. This just couldn’t be! But the girl that couldn’t have been older than 17 in front of her blushed. “You… you’ve got a name tattooed in an ancient script… Ehm...” Diamond’s hand promptly shot forward to silence her. “How...?” Diamond whispered, drops of tears falling from her eyes. It was insane, but at the same time, it was the only explanation. Perhaps her kid (This was so strange!) would elaborate.

“How? Umm, well…. you see I wanted to be like you… in everything… and I kind of got matching tat when I saw yours one time, without knowing what it meant...” Despite the seriousness of the situation, Diamond roared in laughter. Long time ago, she had Amy’s name made… somewhere special. But just in case, she had it made in letters of a dead language not many could read without consulting books. She pulled the younger woman into embrace. “Okay, okay, I believe you. Not what I was asking though. How are you here?”

In the next few hours, Lili described to Diamond what happened (happens? will happen? Diamond’s brain was having trouble coping with the unreality of this situation) in the years following. She confirmed the team disbanded, and that Diamond gone with her plan and opened a bar. But the ghosts followed all of them. When Aurelius was shot dead in the middle of a press conference, Diamond thought he just made some bad shady deals. Then Oswald simply vanished in the forests around his village. Everyone blamed the Grimm, but their activity at the time was at all time low. Headmaster Ozpin died the following year. It was attributed to a heart attack, but not everybody believed it. Team RWBY got wind of her past and was willing to drop the matter if she did them a favor; And thus she broke into the morgue and smuggled the headmaster’s body out to a certain personal clinic. They confirmed the Headmaster was poisoned with a very rare substance. That convinced Diamond and Marcus that somebody was targeting Beacon’s hunters specifically. “You know, you keep avoiding the real question. Who’s your dad?” Diamond asked, curiosity at all time high. However, Lili only grinned and shook her head, making Diamond pout.

“You were so close to a breakthrough and then… you died.” Lili said with a hiccup. “Those damn smokes of yours killed you before the war even started.” she said, tacklehugging Diamond again. “And then… I found your diary. And I found how you managed to travel through time once before. When the war started and a cure for your condition was developed… I… I know your notes said to never attempt this, but the world was heading to a quick end. When Atlas finally moved against the other kingdoms… Mistral fell in just weeks! I had to do something!”

At that point, Diamond moved to calm the girl. “Shh, It’s OK. You warned us, we’ll fix it, so when you go back-” But Lili broke the embrace and shook her head violently. “No. It only worked for you because you didn’t change anything. And I - I intend to change it all. In fact, I already did. Do you feel like one?” Lili said and offered Diamond her smokes. And to her surprise, that unquenchable craving was all gone. She grabbed the carton and mercilessly crushed it in her palm.

“I hope you realize we can’t tell anyone who you are. Or that... we... won’t be as before. The fallout if this ever reaches the ears of public...” Now it was Lili’s turn to comfort Diamond. “I already thought of it all. There was nothing left for me there. Unca Marcus probably ended up in jail once the war broke out - he would have never agreed for his work to be used against other countries. And with you gone… I missed you so much!” she broke into tears, taking a few seconds of Diamond gently rubbing her back to stop. ”But… there is one person we must tell...”

Ozpin was aroused from his sleep and he immediately had the assailant in a chokehold. The old man was so quick they couldn’t react in time - pathetic assassins indeed. Now, to extract some information from them - maybe he should call in Diamond. She had a knack in interrogating.

Spinning around and throwing the woman against the wall (If that was a man, he really needed to eat and work out more). While the she weas picking herself off of the ground, the headmaster turned the lights on, training his weapon on her. To his surprise, he saw the very one he thought to call. “Miss Frost? Care to explain yourself?”

“Well, apparently I had a daughter.” Diamond said flat out, observing with amusement the look on Ozpin’s face. “Please excuse me.” he said and headed towards the kitchenette. He returned with a steaming mug of coffee and took a seat at the table, motioning for Diamond to take the one opposite. After a long sip, he nodded. “Come again?”

“You heard me.” Diamond said with a smile. “And when was that? Pardon me, but you did not look the part any of the last four years.” the headmaster inquired. On cue, Lilith emerged from a shadow she was blended in and put a hand on Ozpin’s shoulder, causing the man to twitch in surprise. “Well, I suppose tomorrow at the earliest, if I put some work into it.” Diamond grinned. Lili did not find that particular mind image appealing though. “I’m going to need brain bleach.”

They spent another hour retelling the tale and how it came to be. Eventually, they formed a plan of action.

[b][i]The next morning...[/i][/b]
The summon was like lightning from clear skies to Marcus and Oswald, and Diamond had to fake her surprise with a good deal of effort. The Headmaster summoned them to his office early, telling them of a disturbing new evidence that team Catapult was bribed and the order of grimm funded by Atlas. And tasked them with a rather dangerous mission: To stop a war. “You will be listed as AWOL. This can under no circumstance be traced back to us. However, you will also need complete team.” at that cue Lili walked in from behind a shadow - which she could completely meld with, as Diamond was told. “Lily Amanda Snipes, reporting for duty.” Lili introduced herself under a false name.

“I will give you a day, then I must report you as missing.” the headmaster notified. “You must not fail. Good luck, and goodbye.”