The four of them were exhausted. The Grimm they just killed had been the toughest fight they had in a long while, and not just because it was stronger than them. With Qrow still suffering from his own fight with that crazy scorpion Faunus they'd needed to care for him as best they could until they could find medicine for his wound, and it was only sheer dumb luck that he hadn't gotten injured any further, leaving them more drained than they otherwise would have been.
In short, Team RNJR was pooped.
"So…," Ruby panted, "...is anyone else tired, or is it just me?"
Jaune responded by groaning as he fell to his knees. "I feel like I just survived playing dress up with my sisters…!" He allowed himself to fall back on the ground, "Except with fewer bows in my hair."
"Heh, yeah…," she agreed, giving a weak chuckle. Throughout their travels across Mistral Jaune had regaled them with stories from his childhood, which often ended with him as his sisters' plaything. Seeing the scraggly boy would be fine she turned to Ren and Nora; the pair were both sat against the nearest building, leaning against each other. "How about you guys!"
"We're fine," Nora called back, Ren nodding in agreement, "it was nothing!...wish I had some pancakes, though…."
"Nora, when I get my hands on the proper ingredients I'll make you guys the fluffiest pancakes imaginable," the dark haired man promised, giving his partner an appreciative squeeze around her shoulders.
Ruby smiled, finally allowing herself to join her friends on the ground. She glanced over at her uncle and frowned; he hadn't been touched by the fight, but he still looked worse for wear, and if he didn't get proper treatment soon she wasn't sure how much longer he would make it. Using Crescent Rose for support she climbed back to her feet. "OK guys," she addressed the group, "we should get moving as soon as we can; Haven can't be that much farther if we're already in Kuroyuri, so we should-"
"It's not," Ren spoke up abruptly, "if this place were that close to Haven we would have had Huntsmen to help us when that...thing attacked originally." His eyes took on a hard edge when he mentioned the Grimm he just killed. "Besides," he continued, "I don't think any of us have the energy to travel anymore today."
"Plus it'll be night soon," Jaune added. "I didn't notice until just now, but the sun looks like it won't be up for much longer." He pointed to the horizon where the sun appeared like it was just about touch the earth.
"But…!" What her friend's were saying was true, even though Ruby sort of wished they weren't. She glanced between them and her Uncle Qrow, torn on what she should do; on one hand she had a ton of faith in her uncle and his prowess, but in the other hand it was clear that Qrow needed medicine that that they didn't have if he was to have the best chance of surviving his wound. She didn't like seeing him in so much pain, especially after everything that happened in the past year….
"Let's make camp here," Ren suggested, picking himself up, "we'll take a good look around in case there are any supplies that haven't been looted." He offered Nora a hand up, which the ginger girl gladly accepted. "After we get a good night's rest we can leave first thing in the morning."
"Are you sure about that?" Jaune wondered, "Didn't you want to skip over this place?"
Ren nodded once. "We've dealt with the reason why that was-" he glanced over to the spot where the Grimm met its last, "-I think we should be fine now." Nora put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
Ruby didn't feel the same way, unfortunately, and not just because she was anxious to get her uncle help. She couldn't quite explain it, but ever since they first set foot in Kuroyuri she'd had this steady feeling of otherworldly dread hanging about. She thought it was the Grimm once it showed up, but the the feeling persisted even with the creature slain, which meant it was something else, and that uncertainty was eating at her nerves.
"Well…," she bopped her fingers together, "maybe we can just go for a little bit longer-"
"Ruby."
Immediately Ruby holstered her weapon and rushed over to her uncle's side, kneeling down. "What is it, Uncle Qrow? Does anything hurt? Do you need your dressings changed? Are you out of whisky? Do you think we should- mmmff!" A finger prevented her lips from being used properly.
"I know you're worried about me," the veteran Huntsman said, not removing his finger, "but it'll take more than this to do me in. I can survive at least one more night, and you four need to get some rest if you want to survive your next fight." He removed his finger from his niece's lips and gestures for Ren's attention. "I may have been out of it for a while, but you said you used to live here, right?"
"I did," Ren affirmed.
"Great, then go take your girlfriend and see if you can find anything we could use right now: food, medicine, booze, or any combination of the three. I'm honestly not very picky at the moment…." He tried to chuckle, but it instead came out as a coughing fit, causing Ruby to fret more.
"A-actually," Nora stammered, "we're not-" Her protest was cut off as Ren took her hand and started leading her through the village.
Qrow's coughing fit ended almost as quickly as it started, and once it did he turned his attention to Jaune. "Get a fire going, would ya?"
"With what?" he asked, "There's only, like, one tree."
Qrow rolled his eyes, "The buildings, you dunce! No one's coming back to this place, so we might as well put the houses to some use."
Jaune eyes the older Huntsman warily but didn't complain, heading off to gather kindling.
"...what about me?" wondered Ruby. She felt somewhat useless when there wasn't a Grimm to fight, and running really, really fast didn't help her uncle in his condition. She didn't really want to leave him unattended either, even if that meant she'd basically just be sitting around. "Is there something I can do?"
"Yeah, there is," he said, "keep an eye out for Grimm while I take a little nap."
Ruby nodded; at least it was something, even if it amounted to basically sitting around. "OK." She took out Crescent Rose again and shifted it to its rifle form, resting it against her shoulder as she settled in next to her uncle.
Man, I wish Zwei were here…
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
It turned out there was a lot of loose wood just lying around in the abandoned village. Not that it didn't make sense, Jaune had realized early on, considering the pattern of destruction kept in line with the one or two other villages they'd seen that suffered attack from the Creatures of Grimm. Many of the pieces of wood he found looked like they really did use to be part of the structures around here, which meant a few times he needed to use Crocea Mors to chop them up into a size he could carry.
His thoughts once again turned to Pyrrha while he searched, like they usually did when he was by himself. Specifically they returned to that moment during the fall of Beacon when she kissed him, the moment when he finally realized how she felt about him. It was so ironic: he'd been basically oblivious to her affections, and when he finally got a damn clue about her feelings towards him it was too late, and he'd never get another chance to do things differently.
"Damn it…," he cursed, striking a particularly stubborn plank with greater than necessary force and lodging the blade into the stiff wood. Pulling back on it only served to highlight just how stuck it was. He braces his leg against the board and yanked with all his might, successfully freeing his weapon at the cost of losing his balance, the uneven ground doing his back no favors as he landed.
He laid there, silently cursing...whatever as tears started to gather in the corner of his eyes.
"Why…?" he asked the heavens, hoping for an answer he knew deep down he would never receive, "Why did Pyrrha have to die?"
As expected, nothing answered back.
He'd been an idiot, a stupid, lovesick boy who spent so much time pursuing an impossible dream that he failed to notice how close another was. While they eventually became friends, Weiss made it very clear that she never held any romantic intentions for him, whereas Pyrrha….
He wiped away the tears and got back to his feet, resuming his deconstruction work; it was better to push those thought away for the moment. Team JNRR (or was it RNJR…?) needed a campfire, and moping around like a baby wasn't going to help with that.
A short while later he added the new wood to his already sizable pile, looking back at the house he's taken it from one last time. Considering the state the surrounding buildings were in this one seemed comparatively well off; it was still mostly intact, albeit looking like it had definitely seen better days. It didn't look like it was about to collapse, and he hadn't crossed paths with Ren and Nora in their search yet, so they likely hadn't been by here yet. Maybe it was worth checking the place out? He set the bundle of wood by the door so he could grab it in his way out and stepped inside, pushing aside the remains of the front door.
Inside the house was about as well preserved as the outside, though somehow even more eerie. There was still a couple pieces of artwork on the walls, faded and tattered, there were bits of pottery and other detritus scattered on the floor, and the furniture around the place was usually somewhere between "unusable" to "utterly wrecked".
It was a far cry from the state of near perpetual mess his family's home was usually in.
He made his way through the house, opening any drawers or cabinets he came across that somehow managed to stay intact. Suprisingly, they also contained what were most likely their original contents, though mostly it was knickknacks or other things not on Qrow's short list he gave. The kitchen area was ultimately the most fruitful place he searched, even though all he found there were a can of brussel sprouts and a mostly empty bottle of saké that had probably been used for cooking.
There wasn't much of a second floor to this place, and what did remain amounted to a linen closet and what was probably someone's bedroom. In the spirit of being thorough he checked the bedroom, which came up empty.
He was about to check the linen closet when he heard a rattling noise from inside. It might have only been his already on edge nerves that caused him to draw Crocea Mors as fast as he did, but given how it was the only sound since the Grimm fight that he or one of his friends didn't make, it didn't really matter. He crept forward, sword held in front of him, until he reached the door. Cautiously, he reached for the handle, grasping it gingerly and giving it a gentle tug-
He yelped and jumped backwards as a pack of rats burst from the open door, scurrying off to who knows where. Jaune certainly didn't, he was too busy trying to keep his heart from bursting through his ribcage.
"It was...just rats…," he panted, "...yeah, just some harmless little rats. Heh heh…!" He continued talking to no one as he reattached Crocea Mors to his belt, "I mean, it's not there's anything here anymore that could really hurt me; what kind of Grimm could fit in there, anyway? ...oh right, Rapier Wasps." Upon that realization he stopped and pressed his ear to the door, listening for a moment. When he couldn't make out any other sounds he let out a sigh of relief and opened the door the rest of the way.
He wasn't prepared for the rotting, mangled corpse of Pyrrha Nikos to suddenly reach out and grab him by the throat, he blank, dead eyes somehow staring at him with a very uncharacteristic, burning rage.
It shouted in a raspy voice "Why did you let me die?!"
In light of this, no one could really blame Jaune for screaming like a little girl, could they?
to be continued…
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Hello everyone, and welcome to my newest RWBY story. As you can no doubt tell, this is going to be a much more Horror focused tale than what I usually write in the fandom, and is something I haven't really done in a long while.
If you look back in the list of stories I've published you'll see that I used to write Horror a lot more, but as far as RWBY is concerned I've mostly stuck to more lighthearted subject matter, notable exceptions being "Stages" and "Melt", With Horror like elements only popping up briefly in certain Fics to serve the greater narrative. This is because, for a while, I didn't feel comfortable writing darker stories so soon after Monty Oum's untimely passing, and I was still relatively new to the Fandom, and this only had a basic understanding of all the characters.
Now though, I feel I've grown enough as a writer and RWBY fan to attempt something like this and still do justice to the Almighty Creator's passion project. Considering this is supposed to be set right after the Nuckelavee Grimm fight at the end of Volume 4 I'm taking a couple creative liberties to make the premise work, but they're relatively minor changes (RNJR and Qrow are rescued immediately following the battle) in the grand scheme of the show's plot, so very little in regard to character personalities and behaviors should stray terribly out of character.
But yeah, dat ending doh. Stay tuned to find out what happens next!
Also, check out my YouTube channel "The Layman" for nerdy stuff, sub to my Twitch "the layman" for video games, support me in P a treon "/ thelayman" to help get more content quicker, and follow me on Twitter "(a) the_layman215" for updates on everything and lotsa RWBY fanart.