A/N – Volume 3's finale was pretty much the final nail in the coffin for me.

Not in a bad way. I think I was just in denial on the new direction that Miles and Kerry have decided to take the series in. After two volumes of mostly going 'good guys win, Ra! Ra!', I really didn't expect much different, and was even enjoying it. And when shit hit the fan in the Vytal Festival, I kept thinking that the series had hit its emotional rock bottom and the next episode would contain something that would bring it back to 'happy' times.

I'm probably going to get a few yells for this, but Episode 12 was amazing; much richer than the finisher to Volume 2 at least. The animation, the sound, the voice acting, and the story, all mixed together to tie the bow on RWBY's most successful Volume yet. But holy shit if it didn't hit like a ton of bricks; again, probably because I was in denial.

Rooster Teeth, you've done an incredible job continuing what Monty has started. The level of dedication you put into this Volume, from the tribute in the first scene to Jen Taylor's monologue in the finale far outstripped anything you had done before in this series. And us writers, from the lowly underlings like me to the giants like Coeur and Phantom, will wait, typing away at our computers in the lead-up to Volume 4. We'll keep the fandom alive and thriving, and we eagerly await what you will bring us next.

Disclaimer: RWBY is the creation and property of Monty Oum (may he forever live on in our memories) and Rooster Teeth.


Rain let out a grunt of surprise as he collapsed onto the grass beneath him.

"Son, I don't even want to know what you call that, but it sure as hell ain't a push up."

"Arm…malfunction…" he ground out, rolling his body so that he was now lying on his back, free to look up at the clear blue sky and its bright yellow sun. He was dimly aware of a slight breeze passing over his face, cooling the immense amount of perspiration that had formed on the skin.

"Grimm ain't gonna let you call a time out if your servos lock up." A set of footfalls, muffled by the pastoral landscape thumped over to him until Rain saw a tall figure, slightly silhouetted as he stood in front of the light, looming over him. He crouched beside the boy, hands examining the shorted out limb. "Looks like one of the circuit breakers kicked in. You must have been putting too much of a strain on it."

Rain groaned. That was the third time this week. "Remind me why I can't get a set of limbs that's above minimal civilian-grade? One that won't give out on me when I try to do something?"

The man didn't stop in his ministrations, stripping off an outer panel to reveal the arm's main power junction. "Because these things don't come cheap, doubly so for people like you living off of just taxpayer money." He flipped a few switches, continuing his mantra, the contents of it memorised through repetition. "You want a better arm?" The arm jerked to life as dust began to flow through it again. "You're gonna have to have a special recommendation submitted to the Hunter Board of Studies." He stepped back, as Rain gave a few experimental hand clenches. "A recommendation that I'll be sorely tempted to not give if you don't get back to your push ups in the next three seconds."

With a roll of his eyes, Rain returned to facing the grass, bracing flesh and metal hands against the verdant ground.

"Down!"

He bent his arms and lowered himself, feeling the pressure building up in his elbows as they bore his centre of mass. He stopped a few centimetres from the ground, grass tickling his face.

"Up!"

Letting out a breath of exertion, he straightened his arms, keeping his head parallel to surface.

It had been just over three months since Rain had first regained consciousness and looked down at his battered body. For the past few weeks, he had been delegated to a training regime dedicated to making him fit enough to be considered for a spot in one of the preparatory combat schools. At first it was tough, still was if he was being completely honest, but Rain would have liked to think that he was now making steady progress with his physique.

It also helped that his personal trainer had been in a similar situation to him too.

Marcus Teach Kelly, a former Vale Army Infantryman who had received a medical discharge after having both of his legs blown off in an operation four years prior. Grizzled, experienced and approaching his fifties, he was a self-proclaimed grumpy old man, who just happened to be stubborn enough to not bleed out when he should have. Not the most encouraging fit for Rain…at first glance at least.

The two of them turned out to click quite nicely. When he had first seen the man, Rain had been more than a little intimidated. Marcus had been saddled with helping the stiff and timid child's body develop to the point where he could be cleared for combat school. And while he had to admit that their early interactions were rather awkward, with Marcus giving instructions most of the time and Rain just nodding along in compliance, over time Rain had warmed up to him, even taking on board some of the veteran's snark.

But not even camaraderie would stop him from literally working the wannabe Hunter into the ground.

"Hold it! Hold it! Aaaaaaaand…break!"

With a fascinating expel of air and obscenities, Rain flopped onto his stomach, voluntarily this time at least, and nestled his head into one of the small trenches his hands had dug in during the push ups.

"Not bad. Give it a few centuries and you'll be rocking it with the rest of those Hunter hot shots!" Marcus grinned.

"Rrrgh dnnn hphh a phew tsendurees Mrrgusf."

"What was that son? I'm afraid you'll have to speak up."

Rain raised his head, lacking the resolve to move anything below the neck, and spat out a mix of crushed dirt and shredded grass. "I don't have a few centuries Marcus." Even when being projected through a 'toy Adam's Apple', as the former soldier liked to put it, he could still hear the irritation seeping out of Rain's mouth.

"Oooooh, that's right, you're a human! Forgot about that. Oh well, looks like I'll have to ramp up your conditioning even further. How does cramming a thousand hours worth of suicide runs in the next thirty minutes sound to you?"

"Like an act of child abuse?"

Marcus clapped his hands once. "Good! Now, break's gonna be over in the next-" he lifted his bare wrist to look at the face of a watch that wasn't there, "-seven seconds. If I were you, I'd start getting up."

Rain didn't have the heart to protest any further.


"Alright, that's enough for today! Let's bring it in!"

With a stumble of movement akin to a zombie, Rain took a few steps before fully succumbing to gravity and wordlessly face planting into the dirt. Marcus smirked as he closed the distance between the two of them. He poked the boy in the side with one of his metal toes.

"You alright there, son?"

"That hurts."

"So does laying down after sprinting. Up you get!" With a token grunt of effort, he lifted the boy by the armpits and propped him into a standing position. Holding him steady for the next few seconds, Marcus reached into the portable cooler he had brought earlier and took out a bottle of water. He passed it to Rain, who barely gave a nod of thanks before uncapping and downing it in one go.

"Better?" he asked.

"Yes." Rain replied, taking a few deep breaths as his heart rate stabilised. He made to hand the bottle back to Marcus, but stopped midway. Glancing down at the plastic material, then at the cooler, he tossed the bottle with his prosthetic arm, watching as it went in with a crunch of hitting the ice inside.

"Good shot." Marcus said.

"Yeah…good."

The ex-soldier raised a brow. "Something on your mind?"

Rain hesitated, shifting his weight from one leg to another. "Sort of."

"Hmm." Marcus picked up the cooler and motioned for him to follow. "Come on. We'll walk and talk on the way back to main building."

The two began to walk out of the field. Around them, they could see other patients from the hospital. Some were on one of the many benches, conversing with one another, or having a moment of peace with the outdoors. Others were exercising, although with nowhere near the intensity that Rain had been going at; just a fast walk at most to keep the body's inner workings healthy in a way that no amount of modern medicine could achieve. They remained in silence until they were about halfway from the field's edge.

"How did you handle losing your legs?"

Marcus blinked. Rain had, until now, maintained a tactful, almost fearful, distance when it came to discussing his past. To see the boy blurt out such a personal question was…new.

Rain must have come to a similar conclusion, judging from how quickly he was backtracking. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"

"No," he interjected. Considering the circumstances, he supposed that it would only have been a matter of time before such questions were thrown. "It's okay, 'bout time we had this discussion anyway."

"How did I handle my new legs? Not good," he admitted ruefully. "At first, I didn't wanna accept these," he tapped a knee joint, "things. For about half a year, I was in rehab, like you. Got diagnosed with a pretty bad case of depression. No PTSD, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had become an alcoholic, or something. But the hospital doesn't serve that kind of stuff."

They had reached the doors of the main building, standing aside to let an elderly woman in a wheelchair out first, he continued, a slight grin touching his face. "I keep in contact with some of my brothers back in the army when I can. They helped a lot. Stopped me from slipping down even further than I already had."

Reaching the lift that would take them to the permanent resident rooms, Marcus pressed the 'up' button, exchanging waves with one of the receptionists. "But it wasn't enough. My career was done. Sure, I could have lived on pensions and veteran benefits, but I couldn't see much point in life."

The lift doors opened and they stepped in. Marcus leant his frame on one of the handrails and blew out a sigh. "It got to the point where I would just lay in bed, all day, looking at the TV with a blank stare and occasionally opening my mouth for food. Therapy sessions didn't go over well either. Pretty hard to make progress with someone who doesn't want to help themself. Or maybe I just got paired with the wrong one."

As the lift ascended, he rotated his body, so that his lower back instead of his hip was touching the steel bar. "So yeah, like I said, not good."

Rain watched him curiously, hand occasionally moving to wipe the remaining beads of sweat from his face. "But you're not like that now?"

The veteran snorted. "'Course not." His eyes rose to the floor-counter, which was rapidly approaching Rain's floor. "Someone had to snap me out of it."

The lift dinged and the two stepped through the open doors. "I don't know who it was. I was stumbling back to my room after another session with my psychologist when I saw someone crying in the waiting room. It was a man, a father, bawling his eyes out without a care in the world who saw him."

As they moved through the various corridors, Rain could see the older man's eyes glaze over slightly, like he had been placed on autopilot and was speaking on reflex. "He looked so sad, so pitiful. I don't even know what he was crying about. But I think I have a pretty good idea."

Marcus turned to Rain, looking him dead in the eye. "He didn't just look miserable. He looked destroyed. Like his entire life had been torn apart and there was nothing he could do but watch. Think about it, what in the world can possibly make a man, a father break down like that?"

Not waiting to see if Rain knew, he gave the answer. "A child. Whether because of miscarriage or some other accident, he had just lost a son, or a daughter. Maybe the mother too."

"I stood there watching that poor sod for who knows how long." The older man grimaced, palming a hand to his forehead. "When I went to sleep that night, my dreams were full of his wails of anguish, the tears from his eyes drowning me as they fell like an endless waterfall."

"There was a time Rain," he said, "when us soldiers were meant to kill people. During the Great War, scenes like this were all too common, where a lone survivor would be found in the middle of a bombed out house, rocking back and forth, calling out the names of his loved ones. But nowadays, we're mostly relieved from having to shoot another person; a mercy that I'm always glad for."

He placed his hands behind his head, turning it side to side to loosen a kink in his neck. "But it's also disconnected us from the job our parents and grandparents took up in their own time, of what we have been spared. And seeing that man just shatter…it brought something down on me. Made me get my act together and push on."

He gave a smile to the boy, half-hearted as it was. "I'm too old and broken to be of any use on the front lines. But I can still do my part to help keep getting people there."

By the time he had finished his exposition, the two had reached the entrance to E-wing, where Rain's room would be. "You okay to make it from here?" Marcus asked, receiving a nod in the affirmative. "Alright then, I'll see you tomorrow, oh-seven hundred." He began to walk away.

"Marcus?"

The veteran turned to face Rain again, noting the boy's uncertain features. "Yeah?"

"Do you really think I'll get there? To combat school, and the front lines?"

He couldn't help but chuckle at the boy's attempt at using his jargon. "Well, I wouldn't be able to give you any guarantees." He saw shoulders slump in acceptance.

"Then again, you never can, when it comes to fighting. But I think you've got the potential for it." And with that, he strode off, not even having to look back to register the look of elation that had formed the boy's face.


It's not often that you wish your enemy had been smarter. Especially when your main enemy is a soulless beast that could kill you in a single swipe. But we weren't fighting Grimm, not this time at least. We were fighting terrorists.

My platoon was being cycled out from its position on Vale's outer walls, near the commercial district. Our Peregrine transports were just taking off when we caught a small airship on radar bearing down on us. Our escort craft moved to intercept and instructed it to alter its course, but it kept on coming. Then, just as they were about to give it one final warning, the damn thing accelerated like nothing I'd ever seen before. The fighters and turrets on the walls tried to shoot it down, but I could see it was already going to reach our transport, no matter how much damage they did to it.

Our sergeant told us to brace as the pilot tried to move out of the craft's flight path. But it still managed to clip a wing and we went spinning out of the air and into Forever Fall. Made a nice little clearing in the trees with the metal chassis. Fortunately, our harnesses stopped us from getting too banged up, and we started climbing out of the wreckage as soon as we could.

That was when we heard them. Twenty people, wearing masks over their faces and screaming bloody murder as they came out of the trees.

The White Fang has always been a touchy subject. This was one of the first times they had struck out against society militarily, and definitely the first time they were so bold as to target the actual military. Personally, I can understand where they're coming from. All the discrimination and subjugation they've faced since whoever knows how long…it'd be enough to make a saint lash out. I can see that, at heart, they're a group of people, not animals, that just want some justice. And I can respect them for that.

Of Course, that doesn't mean they're not terrorists as well. And it sure as hell didn't stop me from putting a three-round burst into one of their chests as they were charging at my squad.

There were only three of us out of the Peregrine at that point, but we were able to drop four of them before they reached melee range.

They could have stayed back and shot at us, but that would have taken too long. They seemed to know that, between our superior weapons and armour, and our conditioned aura, they needed to overwhelm us quickly instead of slugging it out with the second-hand equipment they had.

They were barely trained, undisciplined and just as likely to hurt us, as they were themselves with the swords they were carrying, but goddam they look terrifying. The fight lasted for about a minute, and we took a few wounds, but we made them pay for every single one of them. About half the squad had hauled themselves out at that point and we could hear the other Peregrines and our escort craft flying in on our position.

Apparently, the White Fang heard it too, because they started breaking off into the trees. In an area with even just a little more open field, we would have been able to cut them down easily with our rifles. But because there was so much foliage around us, they only had to take a few steps to break line of sight. So we followed them, leaving another squad to jump in on our behalf and break out the pilot, who was trapped in the cockpit.

We moved quickly, but carefully, exchanging bullets and blades in the thicket of trees, constantly pinpointing the positions of the remaining White Fang with our Lieutenant, as he and the rest of the platoon circled about in the skies. Turned out that there were more groups of White Fang in the area, in case our Peregrine had crashed somewhere else.

Somewhere along the process of sweeping the area, we found one of those groups, about to scale the five metre high trees. Naturally, we opened fire on them. Some of them kept climbing, some of them jumped down. We shifted all of our fire to the latter, partly because our air elements still had a slim chance of tracking them, but also partly because one of the members of the group was aiming a missile launcher at us, specifically me.

A smart person would know that the launch of a missile results in an immense amount of exhaust, as it burns its fuel to reach whatever it needs to. A smart person would know that this means firing such a missile when one is in an enclosed space or against a surface makes for less than optimal results for the firer. A smart person would know that this is why newer shoulder-fired ordinance models use a soft launch or two-stage firing system to offset the majority of that back blast. A smart person would know that the launcher currently being aimed was NOT one of those newer models. And a smart person would most definitely have noticed that the launcher's rear was less than five centimetres from a tree trunk and would have refrained from firing and blowing out my legs.

That White Fang soldier…was not a smart person.

Pages 4-7 of 'The New Soldier' by Marcus Teach Kelly, published seven years after his medical discharge from the Vale Army.