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War Machines
is a RWBY fanfic written by AhsokaTheBrave and hosted on Archive of Our Own.The story follows Penny, an amnesiac android living at Beacon Academy who becomes a member of Team BSYP (Battleship) alongside Blake Belladonna, Weiss Schnee, and Yang Xiao Long. Meanwhile, a girl in Atlas named Ruby is trained to become the perfect warrior and her kingdom's greatest weapon against what threatens the world.
The fic is a reboot of the author's previous version of War Machines, which was deleted from the internet, but can be found here via the wayback machine.
War Machines provides examples of:
- Adaptational Angst Downgrade: Downplayed with Penny. While she's horrified of the idea of someone figuring out she's a Robot Girl and helping whoever commissioned her creation find her and take her away, she has a much stronger sense of self than in canon. She also doesn't question whether or not she's a real person at any point, thanks to being raised by Ozpin instead of Ironwood.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
- Zig-zagged with Yang, who's more or less as well-adjusted as her canon counterpart was by the time of the present day but Ruby's abduction has left her with more trauma than her canon counterpart had at the equivalent point in the timeline. Namely, the way it happened convinced her and her family that her baby "brother" was eaten by Grimm, before said sibling could even be named, and is completely unaware that said sibling is alive and well in the Kingdom of Atlas. This also lead to Yang losing her own arm when she tried to find the Grimm responsible, forcing her to go through the traumatic experience that left her recovering for months in canon at a MUCH younger age. Additionally, while her canon counterpart wanted to be a Huntress because she didn't want a "safe" life, Yang wants to be a Huntress in this continuity so nobody else will ever have to worry about their baby getting eaten by Grimm.
- Played straight with Taiyang, who genuinely believes his child with Summer is dead and is implicitly still aching from the back-to-back loss of his "son" and Summer Rose.
- Summer Rose, prior to her disappearance was left with the belief that she had caused the death of her own child due to her parental fretting attracting the Creatures of Grimm.
- While Ruby Rose had a good deal of emotional baggage in canon, Ruby Karyatis was raised to be a weapon by General Ironwood, has little-to-no idea how to interact with her fellow human beings, and in her first interaction with Team BYSP, expresses a desire to be a weapon instead of a person so someone else can do all the thinking for her.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Ilia Amitola first appears during the battle at the docks in the V1 portion of the plot, contrasting the series, where she wouldn't appear until near the end of the 4th volume.
- Adaptational Gender Identity:
- Ruby is reimagined as a trans woman, contrasting canon where she was a cis woman.
- Jaune and Nora are both implied to be transgender.
- Adaptational Hairstyle Change: In contrast to her canon counterpart's short hair, Ruby's hair in this story is done up in a long, single braid that reaches her waist.
- Adaptational Jerkass: While Ironwood was controlling of Penny in canon and implicitly did not see her as human, here he is explicitly transphobic towards Ruby in the first chapter, thinking of her as a confused boy the second he learns she's transgender, and mentally misgendering her in his perspective. While he does reluctantly default to she/her pronouns in a couple of paragraphs, he still does not consider her to be a "real" girl.
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: Where they were only casual acquaintances in canon, here Yang and Penny are close friends.
- Adaptational Weapon Swap: As both were raised under very different circumstances, what led to them having their canon weaponry no longer exists. As such, Penny and Ruby's arsenals differ in this story.
- Penny's Floating Array is replaced with Luminous Electra: a double-edged sword that can transform into a massive zweihander.
- A downplayed, but notable case with Ruby. Her Crescent Rose is changed to Lunar Enforcer: a dual-bladed war scythe. It's still a scythe and its alternate mode is still a sniper rifle, but it does reflect how she's been shaped by her new circumstances. Additionally, it can separate into two separate war scythes.
- Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade:
- Due to Penny accidentally outing her, Blake's teammates learn that she's a Faunus earlier than in canon, but she doesn't share that information with anyone outside of her team.
- Inverted with Ruby's Silver Eyes. Thanks to knowing about her status as a Silver Eyed Warrior early on, coupled with her conditioning under Ironwood, she now wears colored contacts in order to hide them so that Salem won't find/target her.
- Adaptational Superpower Change:
- Downplayed. Ruby's Semblance has her dissolve into silver dust instead of rose petals, due to her personality being shaped by her status as a Silver-Eyed Warrior, instead of her deliberately trying to emulate Summer.
- Even earlier, Penny uses built-in wings disguised as a jetpack to fly, in place of the rocket legs she used in the Atlas Arc.
- Adaptation Name Change: Penny Polendina and Ruby Rose have different last names here, instead going by Pallas and Karyatis respectively.
- Amnesiac Hero: Penny remembers nothing of her life in Atlas. A conversation with Ozpin reveals that she actually subjected herself to this as her Pietro's request so as to keep her safe.
- All-Loving Hero: Penny has a soft spot for animals, acting extremely gentle with a butterfly that lands on her while she's waiting for Initiation to start, and is horrified when she accidentally hits a bird. Additionally, she is unendingly polite to machines in case any of them, like her, have a soul and are either hiding the fact out of fear or don't know how to express it.
- Artificial Human: Subverted. Ironwood and Pietro think Ruby's an artificially gestated Silver Eyed Warrior on account of the fact that they found her in Watts' lab and her having no recollection of anything outside of it. In actuality, she's a natural born human abducted by Grimm on Salem's command, with her having been given to Watts.
- Ascended Extra: Penny goes from a major supporting character to the main protagonist and primary POV character.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Ironwood. He throws out several explanations for why they "need" to raise Ruby as a weapon ("She needs to be able to protect herself!", "Her silver eyes put a target on her back." etc) to justify denying her a normal childhood, in an attempt to convince both himself and Pietro that it is the right course of action.
- Cerebus Retcon: Canonically, Blake's fear of Zwei, and dogs by extension, was just a gag and treated as just a cat-like attribute of hers. In this fic, however, she reveals in Chapter 10 that she was attacked and mauled by a police dog during a White Fang protest rally.
- Change the Uncomfortable Subject: When asked about her parents, Penny panics and claims they're dead so she doesn't have to explain her actual backstory. She feels guilty about this afterwards, and so does come clean about her amnesia when Yang offers her emotional support over the grief of losing her parents.
- Character Exaggeration: Played for Drama with Ruby. Her canonical love and admiration of weapons is pushed to a downright disturbing degree, as it's to the point where she desires to become a weapon with no will of her own and who's only purpose is to kill/be pointed at enemies. Team BYSP is suitably unnerved by this.
- Children Are Innocent: As a child, Yang tried to find the Grimm that supposedly ate her baby "brother", thinking that she could save the baby by doing so.
- Darker and Edgier: Come Chapter 10, and the story becomes FAR more upfront about the brutal nature of anti-Faunus racism than canon ever did (outside of Japan-only light novel RWBY: The Session).
- Weiss, upon learning that Blake is a former member of the White Fang, attempts to attack her with a Glyph, only failing because Blake activated her Semblance.
- Blake mentions police and the Atlesian Military violently breaking up peaceful protests, using attack dogs and murdering protestors in her motive rant.
- The Dreaded:
- Played for laughs with Nora, who completely terrifies Penny in their first meeting.
- Played for drama with the people who comissioned Penny's creation. Penny doesn't remember who they are, but is terrified by the idea of them finding her and taking her back. In case of Dramatic Irony, anyone who watched the show or read the first chapter will know that the people in question are the Atlesian Military, General Ironwood more specifically, and that her fears are completely justified, as Ironwood does not see her as a person, and even if he did, had no problem raising a human being as his personal weapon.
- Eating Machine: Penny has a furnace that lets her burn food as fuel. She doesn't actually taste anything, but it helps her keep her secret.
- Entertainingly Wrong:
- General Ironwood and Pietro Polendina come to the conclusion that Dr. Watts had genetically engineered Ruby to use as a weapon against the Creatures of Grimm, seeing as she doesn't have any memory of her life before arriving in Watts' lab, and the lab equipment she was being kept in. In actuality, Ruby was abducted from her home as an infant by Salem's Grimm, but Ironwood at this point does not have any reason to believe that the Grimm would kidnap someone without killing them, and Ruby being transgender means they have no way of connecting the girl they found with the presumed dead infant "son" of Summer Rose.
- Penny at first assumes Yang is a criminal due to walking in on her at the tail end of the "Yellow" Trailer, completely missing the context of Junior being a crime boss who Yang was interrogating.
- Foil: Ruby and Penny are this to each other. Ruby was taken from her home against her will, while Penny was sent away from her home in pursuit of freedom. Ruby can't remember her actual home because she was taken so young, while Penny can't remember her home or family because her memory was erased. Ruby feels no emotional connection to Yang when they first meet because she's never known her, while Penny still misses her father even if she can't remember him. Ruby's incorrectly believed to be an Artificial Human by her caretakers, while Penny's caretakers are aware of her nature. Ironwood raises Ruby to be a weapon, while Penny chooses to be a Huntress. Lastly, Ruby wishes nothing more than to be a mindless weapon in spite of being human, while Penny desires to be seen as a person in spite of her mechanical body.
- From Bad to Worse: After accidentally triggering an explosion, Penny ends up accidentally triggering a SECOND explosion by bumping into Weiss while trying to avoid Nora.
- The Ghost: In the second chapter, Penny mentions having two friends. The first was someone who she could "covertly sneak around campus with", while the other is revealed to be Yang. The identity of the first friend has yet to be revealed, and they have not appeared or been mentioned since.
- Heel Realization:
- Ironwood accidentally inspires one in Pietro when he uses the PENNY Project to justify raising Ruby as a weapon in the first chapter.
- Come Chapter 10, and Weiss' anger at Blake for hiding that she was a former member of the White Fang slowly and visibly gives way to horror at her father's depravity as Blake's Motive Rant goes on.
- Hope Spot: Penny stops Weiss from spreading highly explosive Dust before an explosion can be triggered, only to clap her hands in excitement at having made a friend a few minutes later and blowing herself and Weiss up anyway.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: Penny's brain is wired in such a way that she can find entertainment in things as mundane as watching a Dust Crystal glow. Unlike most examples of this trope, however, Penny is aware that other people aren't as easily entertained, and instead turns down her own processing power so she can "Play" with her teammates by solving a puzzle with them.
- Innocently Insensitive: Penny accidentally outs Blake as a Faunus, due to not realizing that she was covering her ears with a bow in order to conceal her Faunus heritage.
- Insane Troll Logic: During Team BYSP's game of Truth or Dare, Penny briefly worries that her teammates will ask her if she's a robot, fearing that they are on to her. From her perspective, it's incredibly obvious, but from anyone else's perspective, concluding that her odd behavior is the result of being a robot would look completely and utterly insane.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Penny and Yang's first meeting was during the tail end of the "Yellow" Trailer, and Penny assumes that Yang is a criminal assaulting a business owner, resulting in the two getting into a fight prior up until Junior takes out the rocket launcher and tries to kill Yang instead of calling the authorities.
- Meaningful Name: Karyatis was the priestess of Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, who is associated with the moon. Ruby Karyatis turns into silver moon dust when she uses her Semblance and is training to be a Huntress. Additionally, Artemis Karyatis was the namesake of caryatids, a type of Greek statue depicting a female figure acting as a column, the feminine counterpart to an atlas.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Penny is horrified when she realizes Blake had been trying to keep the fact that she's a Faunus a secret, due to keeping her own nature as a Robot Girl a secret.
- Mythology Gag: A very roundabout example, drawn from actual Greek Mythology, regarding Penny's new last name. Pallas, in Greek Mythology, was the daughter of King Triton, and a surrogate sister to Zeus' own daughter Athena. During a festival, the two goddesses had a mock battle, which Zeus interfered with so that Athena would accidentally kill Pallas, much to Athena's horror. In RWBY canon's own Beacon Arc, Pyrrha Nikos and Penny Polendina were both seemingly invincible fighters, chosen by Ozpin and Ironwood respectively to be the savior of Remnant. During the Vytal Festival Tournament, during what was supposed to be a friendly mock battle, Cinder Fall had Emerald interfere with the match so that Pyrrha would accidentally kill Penny. While that is unlikely to happen here, it does create a connection between Penny and Pallas.
- Named After Somebody Famous: In-Universe, Pallas is the name of a legendary warrior who saved a village from a legion of Grimm.
- Nice to the Waiter: Penny prefers to be gentle and kind to machines in case they, like her, are actually alive.
- Not so Dire:
- Penny is left very terrified by what "arm wrestling" entails, not helped by Nora hamming it up and the others refusing to explain how it works.
- At several points, when Penny acts in a way she realizes her other friends consider weird, one of her first concerns is that they've realized she's a gynoid instead of a human. At no point do they jump to this conclusion.
- Obliviously Evil: Well, "evil" is a tad strong for her, but Ruby's shown to be completely ignorant of the Atlas Military's many, many flaws and atrocities, openly advocating for them to take over almost everything without any awareness to how bad that would be.
- Old Friend, New Gender: Between Yang and Ruby. Yang remembers her younger sibling as a baby boy who's believed to have been eaten by Grimm before "he" could have been named. As such, Ruby visibly being a girl and wearing brown contacts to disguise her eye color means Yang can't recognize her as her missing sibling.
- One-Handed Zweihänder: Penny's main weapon, Luminous Electra, is a large sword that can transform into an even larger zweihander, which she wields with one hand like it's a sheet of paper. It's also a justified case, as her robotic Super-Strength means she has an easier time with the weapon's size and weight compared to what most others would accomplish with it.
- Percussive Maintenance: Penny has Weiss hit her wings when they malfunction during Initiation. While this does get them to start back up, they eventually break down and stop working entirely.
- Police Brutality: Blake is revealed in Chapter 10 to have been a victim of this, having been attacked by the cops' dogs when they assaulted a White Fang protest rally. To top it all off, the cops got off without repercussion, as the news framed the White Fang as having attacked and killed their "innocent" pets when they were only acting in self-defense.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: As a young child, Yang did not think her baby sibling was dead after supposedly getting eaten by a Grimm. While she's right (Ruby was abducted, not killed), her reasoning is based entirely in the fact that she didn't quite understand death at the time.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Having been trained from childhood by the Atlas Military to be the perfect warrior, Ruby's fighting skills are immense, easily blowing Team BSYP, the White Fang, and Roman Torchwick out of the water. However, it's also left her an indoctrinated, heavily stunted mess who can barely understand anything beyond weapons, fighting, and military protocol. She makes her canon counterpart look like a social butterfly by comparison.
- Tranquil Fury: After Weiss rants about how her father would take out his frustration with the White Fang out on her, Blake very briefly falls into this for the first few sentences of her own Motive Rant in response, getting angrier and less tranquil with every sentence.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Ruby's first encounter with Team BYSP is played more disturbingly than the equivalent scene in canon. Aside from interrogating and nearly attacking Team BYSP, she at one point expresses a desire to be a mindless weapon instead of a human.
- Tyke Bomb: Ruby was raised to be an anti-Grimm weapon by General Ironwood, and as such is unendingly loyal and obedient to him.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ironwood genuinely believes that everything he does is completely justified. For example, as horrified as he is at Watts' treatment of Ruby, he thinks nothing of raising her to be a weapon himself.
- Wistful Amnesia: While Penny doesn't remember her father, she still misses him.
As RWBY is no stranger to Nightmare Fuel, it shouldn't come as a shock that War Machines contains some nightmarish moments.
- During initiation, Penny and Weiss come across the wreckage of a Bullhead. Already eerie enough, but things rapidly get worse as a Geist possesses the wreckage and chases them down.
- The two are able to flee, with Penny carrying Weiss to safety with her jet wings, but the damage taken from hitting the bird means that one of her thrusters is damage, and she might not be able to stay stable if it fails.
- As if all of that wasn't enough, the Bullhead had a built-in machine gun, which the Geist is able to use in order to further exasperate the existing damage to Penny's wing.
- Ruby Karyatis is far eerier than Penny Polendina was in canon.
- She's introduced stealthily stalking Team BYSP while they're staking out the docks in anticipation of a Dust heist. The only evidence they have of her presence prior to her making herself known is silver dust floating in the air as she uses her Semblance to dash away.
- Unlike Crescent Rose, which was designed with fighting hordes of Grimm in mind, Luminous Electra is a war scythe designed with hurting people in mind. There are very few ways for her to subdue someone without cutting them, unlike how Crescent Rose had a blunt edge for nonlethal force.
- Before departing in Chapter 9, Ruby admits that she'd like to talk weapon designs with a former member of the White Fang, and then cheerfully adds that she'd have to arrest them later. As Blake is a former member of the White Fang, this ultimately puts her in danger as well.
- Near the end of Chapter 10, Ruby's stealthier side shows yet again, as she overhears the tail end of the argument between Blake and Weiss, and learns that Blake is a former member of the White Fang, right as the rest of the organization shows up.
- After the battle with the White Fang in Chapter 11, she engages in a discussion with Blake that has her advocate for the Atlas Military running the SDC, and by extension, the monopoly on Dust throughout Remnant. Blake points out that she's advocating for literal fascism, with Ruby having no clue what that word even means. For such a simple exchange of conversation, it's also a frightening display of just how indoctrinated Ruby is.
- Unlike in canon, Weiss attempts to physically assault Blake when she learns the latter is a former member of the White Fang.
- Blake's expanded backstory further elaborates on how brutal anti-Faunus racism can get.
- She mentions getting mauled by an Atlesian police dog as a child, which nearly tore off her leg if she hadn't unlocked her Aura in the middle of the attack.
- It's mentioned that the Atlesian Military and police officers would regularly murder peaceful protestors.
- Ilia's parents deaths were bad enough in canon, but Blake brings up the possibility that they may have slowly suffocated to death in the collapsed mine over the course of several hours, as opposed to getting crushed.
As War Machines is focused on Penny and Ruby being separated from their respective families and growing up in a new environment, it's natural that there'd be some sadder moments.
- In the very first chapter, we have Ruby's situation. She's been abducted by her home at such a young age that she doesn't even remember Patch. All she's ever known is Dr. Watts' lab. As adorable as her antics are, the fact is that she's been deprived of her loving family. Ironwood and Pietro are both horrified by what Watts was doing for a reason.
- As much as Ironwood pities her, he's not above attempting to weaponize her when he sees her vaporize Grimm with her eyes. as soon as the idea that she might have been made in a lab enters his mind, he stops thinking of how to reunite her with her family and starts thinking of how to mold her into a weapon. He claims that he'll allow Ruby to leave if she wants to later, but only after she's been raised with the responsibility of saving the world on her shoulders. When Pietro asks if that's any different from what Watts was going to do with her, Ironwood offers a simple rebuttal:
- Notably, while Ironwood's words implicitly spark a Heel Realization in Pietro, he intended to use this statement as justification for his own actions, and has no such introspection.
- Ruby's Semblance in the first chapter is identical to her Semblance in canon, dispersing her body into flower petals. By the time she's reintroduced in Chapter 9, her Semblance instead dissolves her into silver dust, as her Silver Eyes now take precedence over her long forgotten family-ties in how she views herself.
- Ruby Karyatis in general is just close enough to her canon counterpart to make what she's become feel wrong. She wears the Atlas Academy uniform instead of her iconic outfit and cape. Her iconic silver eyes are covered by brown-colored contacts. Luminous Enforcer is a dual-bladed warscythe that can split in two or convert into a big gun, designed for fighting and hurting people instead of Grimm.
- Ruby admits outright that she wants to be a weapon so someone else can do all the thinking for her.
