RWBY Fanfiction Thread

Roman attacks a street vendor who sells a special variety of dust, the ... Pyrrha had managed to convince team JNPR and RWBY to give him a ...

In generations to come– or possibly only days. Mere hours, even– Weiss Schnee was certain everyone would look back and agree this utter disaster was all the fault of the idiot that put Ruby Rose in charge.

As her friend, Weiss did everything in her power to rephrase things such that they were not directly Ruby's fault. The little bundle of energy was a pleasant enough girl who only wish well of everyone around her and threw herself enthusiastically into everything. It was only natural that on graduation, while all the academic awards and such went to other people, Ruby had snagged the 'Most Promising Huntress' Award. She'd also gotten the informal 'Best Leader' award from her fellow leaders, with all but two votes (Ruby hadn't voted for herself and Cardin was an ass).

Why someone thought those qualified her to be just the right person to run a new settlement intended to reclaim Grimm-occupied territory was anyone's guess, but she suspected some moron who used the words 'optics' and 'gladiator' a lot was probably behind it.

New Glenn Settlement, named after the late and lamented Mountain Glenn expansion, was the result of Vale's new expansion initiative to reclaim Grimm-held wilderness. It was meant to be the experimental pioneer attempt an organized and safer method of expansion. The idea was simple enough: find desirable territory in the Wilderness with the necessary features and resources for a self-sustaining agricultural and residential town, and secure it with an initial population of Hunters, soldiers and civilians screened for mental fortitude, so that they could hold down the level of panic that attracted Grimm. It was, in the face of it, a sensible plan, and with the proper support, one that had a very good chance of succeeding.

Many of that year's Beacon graduates were tapped for the project. Team RWBY, team JNPR, team XRLT, team AQWH, team BLGM and many more had volunteered for the project, a chance to take advantage of their familiarity of the area and Grimm surrounding Vale while pursuing their careers as Hunters.

Then reality had set in.

Really, the upcoming disaster was not likely to be 100 percent Ruby's fault, Weiss felt.

---

Ruby Rose held up on hand for silence. “Sisters! Friends! Hunters! Huntresses! Weiss!” "Hey!”

"On behalf of the Vale Reclamation initiative, I, your new Governor-Huntress, would like to thank you for your participation in our noble endeavor!“ Ruby said, smiling widely. “Together, I'm sure we can see to I that this project succeeds, opening the door to other expansion projects! So let's all work together for the good of mankind!”

There was a pregnant pause. It gave birth to a bunch of small mutant pauses, each armed to the teeth and looking for someone to kill.

"And faunus kind!” Ruby belatedly added. “Wow, this is awkward.”

Despite themselves, there was much nodding in agreement from the audience.

“Uh, anyway, I see many familiar faces here,” Ruby continued, not letting a little thing like being embarrassing in public slow her down. Being embarrassing in public was a Ruby feature, not a bug. “Good and and trusted friends. Familiar acquaintances. Weiss.”

“Hey!”

“In fact, I'm very familiar with many of the people here. I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for beating the snot out of you, as I wasn't able to last time. Though in my defense, many of you were trying to kill me and my friends and Weiss– ”

“Okay, three in a row is uncalled for!”

Ruby, feeling like a real leader, smoothly ignored the interruption. “ – and would have killed a lot of people besides, but we all lived through it, so I think we should all put it behind us and move on with our lives.”

“In your dreams, Red!” a vaguely familiar voice yelled from deep in the crowd.

If anything, Ruby smiled brighter. “Yes, Torchwick, in my dreams. Because my dream is to make New Glenn the most awesome settlement in all of Vale with the best ice-cream cookies in the world, and starting today, we're all going to be working towards making that dream a reality! Because if we don't, our funding is going to get cut and we're all going to starve here and die as the Grimm eat us.”

There was dead silence.

“But we're all too awesome for that to happen, so it's the best ice-cream cookies in the world for everyone!” Ruby declared, victoriously thrusting her fist into the air.

There was, understandably, a slight lack of enthusiasm on the part of the assembled freshly graduated Hunters, ex-cons, suspected White Fang, ex-con White Fang, ex-military, ex-con ex-military, ex-con ex-military White Fang, and scared shitless civilians in the crowd.

Blake had her face buried in her hands as Yang patted her on the shoulder reassuringly. “Good work. This is a lot better than the speech Ruby started out with.”

"Well, that went well,” Ruby said, leaving the stage and turning towards the tent that compromised her office. There were in fact several tents, all set up on fire-blackened ground. Very fire-blackened ground.

As an intended permanent settlement, New Glenn wasn't anything to write home about just yet. It was mostly standard issue military tents, with several larger tents standing in for buildings, such as the cafeteria, her office, the communications hub and the local Schnee Dust Corporation Exchange (although prefab panels were already going up around that one). The only permanent structures already in place were the automated gun turrets.

Ruby watched the nearest one, feeling a little warm and fuzzy as she watched the surplus Vacuo-made automated Anti-Grimm turret turning as it scanned for targets. It was currently set to 'harass', meant to drive off the larger Grimm like Goliaths by sending deterrent flares in front of them to make them change course. Smaller Grimm like Beowolves and Ursa that got within range were shot at until they reached the middle perimeter, where it was too dangerous for the turrets to fire, so they'd need to be turned back the hard way. The statistics of the weapons danced through her mind. Range, caliber, accuracy, reaction time, likelihood of developing sentience and killing them all… it was such a beauty really…

Shaking her head to remove any intention of adultery against her dear Crescent Rose, Ruby continued towards her office. The large tent double as her own residence, but only after work hours. The slightly used military-issue tent had seen better days, but it didn't have any holes and was supposedly fireproof. Plus, she got to live in it! Who wouldn't want to live in a tent? It was almost as cool as bunk beds!

Stepping inside, she delighted to find her staff were already there. “Hey Blake! Thanks for helping me with the speech. It turned out great!”

For some strange reason, Blake had a hand over her eyes. Maybe the lamp was too bright for her eyes? Ruby really wasn't too sure about how faunus night vision worked. “No problem. Don't mention it. Like, ever. Please.”

Ah, Blake was so humble! She was just like a revolver, dark, simple, not at all flashy, but got the job done.

Resisting the urge to go all Nora and chant 'I'm queen of the castle', Ruby took her seat behind her desk. It doubled as her dining table at night, and in a pinch you could press a button that turned it into a serviceable riot shield with a port for the gun of your choice. Basic military surplus furniture. She picked up a random stack of papers and lined up the sides to make it look like she was doing something. “Right. Weiss, update on the Dust situation?”

Weiss held up her rapier and a box marked with the Schnee Dust Company logo. To separate it from the rest of the boxes in camp with the Schnee company logo, it was white plastic, one of those things that could be a lady's purse or for fishing tackle. “You're looking at all the Dust in the Settlement. While I understand the government not supplying us with Dust, since they stuck us with many undesirables whose latest conviction included acts of terrorism using explosive Dust, I believe I wish to lodge a formal protest over the fact they did not see fit to inform anyone else about it. Like the Hunters who actually need Dust.”

Ruby grabbed a pencil and note pad. “All right-y. Yang?” Huh. Why did she always have an urge to call Yang 'onee-chan'?

“The Schnee-Ex doens't carry the right brand of conditioner,” Yang said.

“I thought I asked you to find out how everyone was doing?” Ruby said, confused.

“If we don't have conditioner, we're ding badly,” Yang said with older-sister assured-ness. “They also don't have ice-cream, by the way, so no ice-cream cookies any time soon,” she told Weiss.

“I'm not your personal supermarket,” Weiss said.

Yang gave her a level look.

“Fine, but it'll all be strawberry ice-cream!” Weiss said, taking out her scroll to send a message.

"Fine, but it'll all be strawberry ice-cream!” Weiss said, taking out her scroll to send a message.

“As long as it's not adulterated with chocolate and vanilla, that's fine,” Yang said. “Ooh, can it have whole strawberries added in?”

“You realize you'll actually have to buy this at the Schnee-Ex to eat it, right?”

“What, no friends and teammates discount?” Yang pouted.

“I'm deleting this message… ” Weiss said.

“Er, so Blake!” Ruby said, smoothly getting the conversation back on track. “How'd you do with that thing I asked you?”

“You already gave your speech Ruby, and I thought we agreed we weren't going to ever talk about it again?” Blake said.

“Oh, right,” Ruby said. “Uh, did I happen to ask you to do anything else?”

“The military doesn't have any bunk beds available.”

“Aw!” Ruby groaned. Weiss reached over to pat her on the shoulder in commiseration.

“We finally found your propellant ammo though,” Blake said. “It got mixed up with Nora's propellant grenades. ”

“How can you possibly mix those up?” Weiss said, astonished. She gestured with her hands. “Nora's ammo is this thick!”

“Oh, someone must have missed a decimal point,” Ruby said “Nora's caliber is ten times what I use, so if you miss seeing the decimal point you can get the boxes confused. It's not the size though, it's how you use it.”

Weiss and Blake's faces became very smooth as they tried to decide whether that was an innuendo. Yang just grinned.

“So Yang,” Ruby said. “Is everyone getting along?”

Yang slumped slightly. “I was hoping the ice-cream would distract you.”

“I'm not 17 anymore Yang,” Ruby said. “Strawberry ice-cream has no power over me anymore.”

“I told you, you should have used chocolate,” Blake said.

“Yang?” Ruby said in her best 'I'm governor, do as I say' voice. Since it sounded exactly like her usual voice, it wasn't very effective.

“It's a mess Ruby,” Yang said with blunt honesty. “Honestly, it's like no one bothered to consider whether anyone would be able to work together when they rounded up people for this crazy plan. There aren't any serial killers in the group of ex-convicts they sent us, thank goodness for small favors, but we've got three murders out for good behavior and their references, a bunch of assault charges, and everything from tax evasion to… well, it's disgusting.”

“Please tell me they didn't saddle us with pedophiles,” Weiss said, making a face.

“Let's just say farm animals were involved,” Yang said neutrally. Blake shared the disgusted face.

Ruby tapped her lips thoughtfully. “Oh, you mean the butcher who sold double-dead meat?”

Yang blinked. “Wait, you actually understood what that charge meant? I thought it was some weird thing.”

“Well, it's unhygienic, but if I remember the roster, we're not having her handle food,” Ruby said. “She's on logging team.”

“Oh,” Yang said. “Well, anyway, the ex-cons were bad enough, but we also got a bunch of White Fang. Not all of them were convicted of terrorism charges, but being charged at all meant they'd probably never be able to find work again. I know signing up for this means they get that charge expunged from their record, but honestly, no one seems to be happy about it. And the ex-military who volunteered don't like them at all. The civilians are just scared of everyone on general principle.” Yang shrugged. “Off-hand, I'd say the most stable group are us Hunters. We'll follow your lead Ruby, and while they fought the White Fang too, it wasn't anything personal. Everyone's just mostly annoyed we don't have showers yet.”