A/N: I do not own the rights to RWBY, those belong to the late Monty Oum and Roosterteeth. This is a fanfic written for /r/RWBY's february 2016 MonCon.
It has been a month since the tragic events at Vale and Beacon. The threat has been defeated and peace and quiet has somewhat returned. It was not what it used to be but in light of what happened, it could have been a lot worse. Many people were lost, many families lost their children or their parents so naturally, most people were not having a great time but it was part of a life in Remnant so they could not but accept it. One of the deceased was Penny Polendina, student at Atlas academy and secretly a robot affiliated with the Atlas military; she was the first synthetic entity capable of generating Aura. She did not really die during the Grimm attack that killed most people; rather, she died right before it and was indirectly the cause of the attack. Penny got destroyed by Pyrrha whilst she was defending herself against about 100 swords extra than there actually were, which was rumoured to be caused by a baddie's perception altering semblance.
Penny's death caused a silent outcry and disbelief big enough to attract all the Grimm in a large area around Vale. Soon thereafter, hundreds of Grimm started flowing into the city and caused widespread panic between civilians and hunters alike. For the first time in many years, there was no longer peace and it was likely that this event would be remembered for years to come, but right now, that wasn't important. What was important on that very moment was Penny, and remembering her pointless death. The one suffering most from her passing would probably be Ruby. She had only quite recently met Penny but became good friends with her over the previous few months. She wished she could help with the funeral arrangements but unfortunately that was something for her father and Ironwood to do. Luckily, the funeral would be a public, militaristic one, so she always had that to look out for.
She had attempted multiple times to try getting involved with the funeral but she was dismissed by Ironwood every single time for reasons she was never told about. This time was no different and she was actually getting depressed with not being allowed to. When she reached her dorm room, she immediately flopped into her bed face down and tried not to make the tears noticeable. Of course due to the state she was in and having an attentive sister, she failed horribly and immediately attracted Yang's attention.
"Ruby, what's wrong?" she asked.
A long and uncomfortable silence fell as Yang was waiting for an answer from her sister and Ruby didn't have the breath to answer. Yang decided to give her a little bit of time so she could regain her breath and calm down a little bit. It took quite a while but eventually Ruby managed to do so, much to the relief of her sister and seeing as how Yang was still waiting for an answer, it was clear the red-hooded girl wasn't going to be able to ignore the question.
"I-I don't know if I want to talk about it." Ruby barely managed to avoid bursting out into tears again.
"Ruby, I'm your sister. You can easily talk to me and you will feel a lot better if you do so, trust me. Talking helps in these kinds of situations."
"I-It's just… I want to help them out… but they won't let me! Do they think I'm too young, that I can't handle it?"
Ruby saw that Yang was trying to keep her face as straight as possible and for the most part, it worked. But Ruby was her sister and she saw straight through it. She could feel Yang's concern as she figured out what Ruby was talking about.
"Look… Ruby, I totally understand where you are coming from. She was your friend and you want to get involved in putting her to rest. But I can also see where they are coming from. You need to understand them too. They are sort of correct about you being too young for something like this and it seems like they are also concerned about you; that you'd get too obsessed about it."
"BUT I'M NOT!" Ruby screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Ruby calm down, there's nothing you can do about it. They're not going to let you help them no matter how much you scream or cry about it so there's no point in doing that. Now please stop asking them because it's only causing you hurt. I'm sure you can still honor penny by giving a eulogy, I feel like they'd allow you that much."
Ruby seemed to accept those points and visibly relaxed quite a bit. Yang was right in many ways, it was kind of pointless to get depressed about it, it was doing more harm than good. She was also correct about the eulogy part so it would be better to focus her attention on that and not trying to get Ironwood to allow her to help them. She was going to make it the nicest eulogy during the funeral, a eulogy that would amaze everyone, a eulogy that captures how awesome Penny really was and she truly deserves. Ruby immediately got up and bolted through the door again.
Yang tried to stop her. "Ruby, wait!..."
But it was too late, Ruby was already out of hearing range, off to wherever it was that she was going. She got there quite fast thanks to her new-found energy and motivation. She found herself looking for Ironwood once again. But not to ask him whether she could help him with preparations. No, this was for something entirely different she needed to ask him. She had a decently difficult time finding him but eventually she did, inside the cafeteria, catching up on lunch because he didn't manage to get any during the noon. She approached him carefully because as soon as he saw her, he got an annoyed look on his face, most likely because he assumed Ruby was going to ask the exact same thing he had to deny her several times now, which hurt him as much as it did her, but Atlas policies go first.
Ruby kind of enjoyed the surprised look on general Ironwood's face when she asked him a totally different question.
"Excuse me, general Ironwood, I realise that I will not be allowed to help the funeral preparation but I have a different question. Would I be able to bring a eulogy for her instead during the funeral? It would actually mean a whole lot to me if you could allow me to do that." Ruby said in a fast pace.
The General looked at her and pondered for a few second before picking up his scroll and dialing a certain number. After a brief conversation of nods and yeahs and various other tidbits, he ended the call, put the phone in his pocket and turned to Ruby again.
"Miss Rose, seeing as you seemed to be one of miss Polendina's best friends, we will allow you to bring a eulogy to her on her funeral, if you so desire. If you need any help with it, I can probably free up a little bit of time if necessary.
"I don't think it will be needed but thank you nevertheless, general Ironwood" she said while squeeing and promptly running away back to her dorm.
Once there, she immediately grabbed a pen and some paper, sat down at a desk and started writing, completely ignoring the prying eyes of her teammates who were wondering what she was doing. She wrote for what seemed to have been mere minutes but was actually hours. Her teammates got worried about her because she didn't drink, didn't eat and did not respond to them at all. Ruby was simply too focussed on writing the eulogy that she completely forgot the concept of time and taking care of herself, after all, it did require a lot of focus. She wanted it to be absolutely perfect. She often had to strike through certain sentences and write them in a different way, only to find that the original ended up being better. On top of that, the tears that welled up while writing fell on the paper and messed up the ink several times, so she had to be careful and rewrite a lot of things and it was overall just a very tedious process but to her, it was definitely worth it. Ruby being a very energetic girl did not help her stay awake and she eventually fell asleep at the desk and woke up the following morning due to the bright sun shining on her young and beautiful face.
The day of the funeral had arrived, Penny was going to be buried today, after her creator and general Ironwood decided it would be best to just simply drop the project, because they felt ashamed of themselves for trying to involve huntsman schools in one of their military projects. Ruby groaned as she got up, her sleep was not very comfortable, it's practically impossible to have comfortable sleep behind a desk. She only barely managed to stand up and right when she did, she saw Weiss, Blake and Yang enter the room with their nicest black clothing on. Weiss looked rather displeased and it didn't seem to be caused by the fact she was going to a funeral.
"Weiss, what's wrong? you seem to be a little bit displeased." Ruby asked her
"yes, I noticed that too. And don't say that it's because of Penny's upcoming funeral, this seems to be different." Yang added
Weiss sighed heavily and started explaining her uncomfort. "I… it's just… I really don't like black clothes, they don't fit me. I'm the Schnee heiress so I should wear my family's colour, which is white and when I wear black, it's pretty much the opposite and I feel like I'm betraying my family."
"Weiss… this is really important to me. Penny was a good friend and we're laying her to rest today so could you please just go with it? Just for today, I would greatly appreciate it."
"Ok, but…"
This was where yang interjected, she was actually worried a little bit about Ruby and didn't want this pointless argument to continue much longer. "Anyway, Ruby, are you ok? The funeral was going to start fairly soon, you should fresh up, maybe eat some breakfast and definitely put on some nicer clothes."
"You're right Yang, I'll get on that right now"
The crimson girl stood up and went into the small bathroom adjacent to their dorm room. She let some water flow into the sink and used it to get the fatigued look removed from her face. She then continued with washing other parts of her body, drying it off and brushing her teeth. When she finished up inside the bathroom, she made her way downstairs to the cafeteria for a quick, simple breakfast. She had some full-grain bread with fresh butter and some juicy strawberries, her favourite food. Her drink was also her favourite, a glass of full milk. She was going to need the strength she could receive from her favourite food for today because it was going to be rather emotional and draining. Eventually, she made her way back upstairs and started dressing. She really liked the clothes she picked; they were rather similar to her normal attire but it was more like a dress and without the red accents. She then grabbed the eulogy she had been working on all night and gathered with the rest of her team.
Ironwood got permission to bury Penny close to where she died, it happened to be in a field that's near Beacon Academy. It's an idyllic field with beautiful flowers that look even more beautiful when the sun shines and the wind blows softly. It was beautiful weather on a grimm day, pretty damn ironic but it would make the funeral a little bit more enjoyable. It's certainly better than having some moody rain on yourself. Many people had already arrived, including Ruby's uncle Qrow, teacher and acting headmaster Glynda, team SSSN, Penny's own team from Atlas and of course Jaune, Ren and Nora. Looking at Pyrrha's absence was still very painful to Ruby. Pyrrha got shot in the chest. Cinder was responsible and Ruby watched it with her own eyes. It shook her up quite badly but not as much as when Penny died, and now she's attending her funeral. She was amazed, and also a little bit nervous, at the amount of people that have showed up to the funeral. Seems like they wanted to honour her pointless death.
The funeral seemed like a rather traditional military one. Penny's remains were carried inside a coffin that had the flag of Atlas spread on top of it. The coffin itself was carried underneath an arch of Atlas soldiers in formal attire and was put on the ground beside it. The flag was then folded into a triangle and handed to Penny's father. Rather than a minister, it was Ironwood himself doing the service, which Ruby found rather weird but she didn't know Atlas' military customs. A lot of people were crying or had at least some minor tears rolling down their eyes during the service, even the ones that presumably weren't very attached to her. This truly was a moment for people to remember their fallen comrade. After a few more minutes, Ironwood mentioned that Ruby had prepared a eulogy for her and beckoned her to come to the microphone.
Ruby approached with pearls of sweat dripping of her forehead. Her hands were clammy and she had trouble actually placing the paper in place. She looked at the crowd for a second and was stunned when she actually took in the size of it. For a second she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to say what she wanted to say. She then however looked at Penny's coffin and was found with the strongest motivation imaginable. She was going to honour her friend one last time and she was not going to chicken out of it! With a trembling voice, she started speaking.
"A-as you know all know, my dear friend, Penny Polendina, was killed for one of the worst reasons one could imagine. Her death was the enemy's instrument to cause chaos and disbelief. She was used to lure the Grimm into the great city of Vale. I cannot believe that someone this great died for such a silly reason. I-I-it's…"
Ruby had to pause for a second. She felt a sudden bout of sadness and despair welling up. Silver tears were making their way down her fragile face from her watery eyes, she wanted to contain them but she couldn't. Her sadness caused much of the audience to relapse in crying as well and this continued for quite a while. After the necessary bout of grief, Ruby regained herself and she continued.
"It's simply so unfair. Why must such a great girl be taken away from us for the stupid ideas of the enemy? There is something we can do to at least compensate for this a little bit. We have to keep her in our hearts. That's right, we have to remember her. We have to write about it and make sure we never forget the sacrifice she made. We must regain some strength from this. But equally as important, we need to keep moving forward. If we stand still and look at the past, we automatically make the enemy win. Because that's also partially what they want. If we do that, we basically give up, we surrender to them. And I assume that's not something any of us. Therefore I say, live your lives! Make it worthwhile but keep remembering this incident. That way, my friend's death will not be in vain, she will not have died just to progress the enemy's plans. May she rest in peace."
Ruby stepped down feeling good about herself in the end. She was still in grief for her friend, but she had come to terms with what had happened. She was following her own advice and hopefully many other would.
A/N: Thank you for taking the time to read my fanfiction. If you liked it, feel free to leave a favourite, I'm also open for constructive criticism, both on hereas on reddit.
EDIT: Fixed some inconsistencies with tenses