Before I start, this is my first story ever, and this is based from the RWBY alt universe by Jerry Freeman (although he stepped away from it now) which I am going to take a LOT of liberties with, as the RWBY alt universe is incomplete, and I'm working my own way through it with this whole thing. Also, updates will be slow, as I do have a life. Thanks for reading.
His head won't stop pounding. It hurt so much. Like a titan just flicked him across a room. Opening his eyes, he found that he was on the floor. But it wasn't the floor, it was his titan's main display. Once putting his mind into some kind of order, he lifted himself up, albeit with quite a struggle, hissing in pain. Turning around behind him, he found that the cockpit was flooded with red light. Moving up to the seat then trying a few buttons and switches, it seemed that there wasn't enough power to start the boot sequence. His hearing came back, making him aware to dull alarms coming through from outside the cockpit. Moving to the left side of the seat, he found a field medkit within one of the capartments. Opening it and finding a bottle of painkillers and a spare stim injector. He opened the bottle and took some of the pills to dull the pain throughout his body, while putting the stim into a pocket on the side of his uniform. Taking his B3 wingman from his right leg holster, he opened the top hatch of his titan, assuming that it was face-down on the floor. He came out, the throbbing in his head dulling from the painkillers, but not going away due to the alarms sounding off throughout the ship, red lights coming from what was left of the lights. He looked around, finding that most of the blood strewn around the floor and walls came from the underside of other titans, containers, or other debris from around the ship. Just to confirm that no hostiles had come into the ship while he was unconscious, he threw a pulse blade down to the floor, only to realize his HUD was offline.
Stepping off the titan with a groan, he made his way to the front of the ship, careful to not step on any of the bodies, or what's left of them. The ship was listing to the left quite a bit, making the trek up the stairs and to the command deck more difficult than it already was. The bridge was a mess, wires and pieces of metal and glass strewn about everywhere. Most importantly though, the occupants were all dead. He looked to his commander, missing an eye, and having many pieces of metal and glass stuck throughout his body. He then came to a realization, if anyone else was alive, chances were that they would be under his rank, making him shudder a bit, and very apprehensive. He went to the security panel, looking for the function to disable the alarms. After a few moments of searching, he found it and turned them off. He went back towards the armory, as pretty much the whole crew was in the hanger, gun deck, or engineering, so he could check for survivors, checking the few bodies that weren't torn apart. None. Not one person remained from the crew. Once he reached the armory, he found an R-201 carbine laying on the floor near the weapon rack. While it wasn't a CAR, he would make due. He picked up as much ammunition that he could carry, and looked for any explosives. Just some firestars, nothing else. Sighing, then going back to the bridge and looking out the window, well, what was left of it, didn't reveal much, just some rock. He assumed they had crashed onto either, a mountain, or some kind of stone clearing. Climbing out the bridge and walking just a bit around a corner, he was rewarded with the view of a city in the distance, and the fact that it was dusk. The city certainly didn't look Militia, far too big. But, it didn't look like IMC either. Not many high rise buildings, plus there weren't lights everywhere from massive billboards on the side of buildings or from lights from every building. Turning back and climbing into the bridge rewarded him with seeing a pair of binoculars in the back corner. But they weren't spared from the destruction around them. One side was shattered, completely dead. The other side was cracked, and was probably damaged. Still, he could probably fix it with the equipment here. Testing the cracked side revealed that it still worked, but the HUD for it was dead. Which is fine, he just needs to see the city a bit more. Making his way back outside and around the corner, he took his helmet off, and clipped it onto his belt, then raised the binoculars to his face. Right as he was getting a better look at the city, the sound of a ship's engines snagged his attention away, quickly putting the binoculars away on a clip to his side and bringing his rifle up, sprinting back to the bridge, ready for a potential fight behind a console. The ship came closer and closer, the thunder of it's engines becoming louder and louder, bringing his headache back up a bit. He put his helmet back on, booting up the HUD. He hoped they didn't see him, then he could get the element of surprise. He heard the ship land, making him flex around the rifle. The engines began to die down, the jets slowly cooling down from the trip. A figure came around the corner, sporting a pilot helmet mostly grey with patterns of green, the Vanguard visor having a blue hue. Their armour matched the helmet, mostly grey but having a pattern of green stripes. Then, on the shoulder pads, the emblem of the marauder corps. As the rest of the group came around, the pilot in hiding sighed in relief as the others sported the same emblem on their shoulders to the one leading. The pilot to the left of the first had a uniform with a green base and grey stripes, and the one on the left having a grey base with black stripes. The pilot in hiding decided to make himself known to them. As he did, they immediately pointed their weapons at him, the lead one holding a mastiff, the left one an R-201, and the right one having an alternator. Once the new group recognized the first pilot's emblem of the marauder corps on his shoulder, they lowered their weapons.
"Thank god, a survivor. Anyone else in there?" a distinctly feminine voice came from the lead pilot, putting her mastiff on her back.
"Just me." The first pilot's voice was quite hoarse, and talking only made him hurt more. The others climbed up to the command deck, assessing the damage done.
"Well, it sure is nice to know that all our superior officers are dead now." The lead pilot laced her words with quite a bit of sarcasm. Everyone present had been in the marauder corps for at least a couple of years, so having people die wasn't a new experience. Not having any kind of superior was though. After a moment to grieve the dead, the female pilot with the mastiff turned to the others.
"Well, let's see if we can get anything from here, and hopefully survivors. Split up, cover more ground. You."
She turned to the first pilot, as the other two nodded and left to carry out her orders.
"I won't take the liberty to order you around, so if you can help that would be great."
He cleared his throat and licked his lips a bit before replying.
"I have my own job to do."
She just nodded, then left to help the others. The first pilot made his way back to the hanger, and to his titan. A monarch class, modified with better armour, advanced targeting systems and AI, a cloak module and some other smaller upgrades. But that's probably all gone now, and he was afraid of that. Looking over the body revealed that the limbs were badly damaged, and main power was offline. While the battery compartment was fine, the battery itself was damaged. So there was still some hope. He went looking for a spare battery, going through other titans, finding one in a Scorch. He took it out, went back to his titan and placed it within the compartment. Before he wanted to try booting her up though, he wanted to make sure the AI module was undamaged. There was quite a lot of protection around it so it would take some time, but he had a lot of it to spare. While most titans had their AI in the same module as the optics, he had decided to change the main AI location within the chassis, having an AI within the normal module as a backup. Only a few minutes passed once he got into the main compartment for the AI module, along with one of the other pilots to come up to watch. It was the one with the blue uniform, with an unusual helmet, having very small sensory slits where their eyes would be.
He kept working on disconnecting the last protective piece from the case.
"So, what are you doing?"
A distinctly feminine voice came from inside the helmet, but it sounded like someone put it through a synthesizer, which meant she was a machine or her helmet distorted her voice. He didn't bother to stop what he was doing to answer.
"Working."
She crossed her arms, clearly not liking his short answer.
He removed the last piece of protection from the core. He finally got it separated from the rest of the titan, pulling the piece out.
"So, is this your titan? Or are you stealing parts from a dead pilot?"
He stopped his tinkering, and looked right at her, doing his best to pierce at her through his helmet. "This titan is mine, I built her."
She moved slightly forward at this, and put her arms behind her back, seeming to miss his flash of anger, and spoke with awe. "So, you really are him. Echo. I've seen you in action before, but I didn't get to see much. Your pretty good."
She sounded genuinely awed at him.
"I tried to make up for what I lacked in combat skills with my hobby."
"Tinkering?"
"Yes"
He went back to his work, pulling out the core of the module, careful to not damage it.
"I've heard stories. That barely anyone knows your real name, and that you know no one else's, and when anyone tries to tell you their name you would cut them off. Is that true?"
He didn't look up from his work to respond this time. "yes."
"Alright then. You can just call me Apollo."
He put the core to the side, relieved that it was intact. So he went to check the casing and other components around it.
"Alright."
He let his annoyance with her show through his voice this time.
She kept the same pose, not showing if his tone affected her.
He sighed, then after making sure that the casing for the core was safe, he went to the power feeds.
He had to reroute the power feeds through an axillary line, as the main ones were damaged, so he had to be careful when booting her up to not put too much power through them.
"So, how's your titan looking so far?"
"Fine, as long as you don't distract me."
He let some of his annoyance out to make sure she stopped bothering him.
"Alright, sorry."
Apollo backed off a bit, her head looking down, clearly he had made his point.
He put the core back into place, alone with the main cover, not bothering with the rest as it wasn't needed to boot her up.
He moved to the open hatch at the top, and went into the cockpit to start the boot sequence, the red light illuminating his actions. First to kickstart the power relays, then get the power moving through all the systems, taking special care to slowly power the AI module. The hum of power went through the titan's body as a dozen different functions came online. Then, his helmet display for his link came online, going through it's boot sequence. "Thank god" he slumped to the floor, which at the moment was the main view screen, sighing in relief that his titan was still alive.
"Hello Hanson. It's nice to see you still alive after all that commotion."
The distinct voice of his titan came through his helmets comm system. Thank god she was still alive.
"It's good to see you too Rose."
Hanson let out a small chuckle, glad that he and Rose were still alive. He just sat there, neither of them saying a word, just bathing in the light that they were both alive and well. Then, the sound of the other pilots talking outside brought Hanson back to the world.
"Hanson, are you able to fix me?"
Rose sounded a little scared that she might be without a functional body, so Hanson wanted to lay her worries to rest.
"Of course I can. Just give me some time."
"Thank you. I'll find replacement parts around the hanger."
"Alright. First though, I gotta talk to that squad of pilots outside."
She just hummed, beginning her search already. Hanson climbed out of the cockpit from the top hatch, and went over to the other pilots.
"Ah, welcome Echo. I see you have your titan again."
The lead pilot that Hanson presumed was the squad leader turned, and spoke to him first.
"My name is-"
He cut her off by raising his hand to her helmet before she could finish her sentience, and spoke instead.
"No names, let's use codenames. Just in case this is an IMC controlled planet, we should use new codenames. If I'm correct you are all part of Olympus squad, correct?"
"Yes, that's right. And I see what you mean. We are all famous among IMC forces."
The lead pilot of Olympus caught on fast, which was good. Don't want a dull leader in charge making all the wrong decisions. She thought for a moment, crossing her arms.
"In that case, my alias will be Charlie. Apollo, you'll be Raven. Ares, you'll be Jessy. Sound good?"
The now named Charlie looked at each of her squad members while she gave them their names. Apollo, now codenamed Raven, just enthusiastically said; "Alright! I'm Raven now."
Then Charlie went to Hanson, who spoke before she could get anything in.
"I'll be James."
Charlie just nodded. Then she said;
"Alright, onto the next piece of business, what happened, and where are we? Does anyone know?"
The first person to answer was Raven.
"I'm getting radio signals from the city, but connection is pretty bad here. I'll move to that cliff outside to get a better signal."
Charlie responded with a nod and a confirmation to do so, letting the blue pilot leave.
"If it is IMC, why aren't there any ships coming to investigate the ship? And if it's militia, well, we would know already."
It was Jessy who spoke now, another woman. She sounded like she had a few more decades on her than Hanson.
"Before you arrived I got a bit of a look at the city, it doesn't have many high rise buildings, there aren't any billboards anywhere, and the buildings on the edge aren't flooded with lights. Plus with what little I got to see through the binoculars the buildings seem to be made completely out of stone, with no metal on them at all."
Hanson took his time explaining what little information he had on the city. The conversation was bringing back his headache, making him take the stim out from his pocket, and injecting it into his right arm. Jessy and Charlie watched him do this, prompting Charlie to ask him;
"How badly were you injured? And, how did you survive?"
Hanson replied with truth.
"I got my titan mostly docked in the mechanisms when we jumped, wich let her move more freely while not smashing into anything else too hard, along with me being strapped into my seat, is what probably let me go with just a splitting headache, and a sore body."
She seemed satisfied with this, and decided to move onto the next order of business.
"Alright. It's already dusk, and with that city currently an unknown, we should get some rest. But away from the ship. We'll take the dropship around to another cliff nearby, and keep someone on watch in case anyone does come snooping around."
Hanson was the first to reply.
"I'm staying here."
Charlie was very surprised with this.
"What? why? "
"Because I'm not leaving Rose here alone. I'm going to start fixing her tonight."
As he spoke he turned towards another titan, the Scorch he had looted the battery from earlier and began to inspect it, looking for parts he could use.
"And what happens if there are IMC forces and they find you here?"
Charlie started to walk towards Hanson as she talked;
"Are you going to risk your life for a titan? A machine?"
Hanson stopped and turned very suddenly, making her stop. He pierced his eyes at her through both of their helmets.
"She's my titan. I won't leave her for the IMC to take."
Charlie slumped her shoulders, and walked back in defeat. She seemed to understand his relationship with Rose.
"Alright, we'll take the dropship, if you two come under attack, send us a signal."
Her voice became soft, and she made to meet with Raven. Jessy stayed for a moment, just to nod, then left with the others.
"Thank you."
Barely audible, he thanked them for letting him stay with her.
"Hanson, thank you."
Rose's voice was so reassuring to hear, Hanson shaked his head and went back to his task. As the dropships engines roared to life, then took off to a more secure location as Hanson began dismantling the arm of the Scorch he was at. As the night went on, Hanson kept working, having Rose talk to him once and awhile, keeping him going.