RWBY Pizza Delivery

The kitchen in Atlas Pizza was dark as the night outside. The lights flickered, casting dim shadows upon the four girls who waited for one of their boss's famous grand announcements. The dark-bearded man wore his dirty white uniform with pride as he paced in front of the four, feet squeaking against the just-washed tiled floor.

"Alright, team RWBY. Today I grant you the greatest honor ever given to someone at this restaurant. You four have worked together since you became part-timers, fighting your way through check-in, cleanup, and finally, pizza baking. Today at Atlas Pizza, I will grant you the position of delivery." Ironwood finished walking past the team, face stoic and emotionless.

For the most part, the four girls named Team RWBY were unimpressed. Ironwood had a tendency to play up any kind of achievement, and he handled promotions in the restaurant like promotions in the military.

It was ironic, because Ruby Rose, the youngest of Team RWBY, also treated these achievements like military promotions. She was actually vibrating next to the other three, a smile glowing on her face. Yang looked at her sister with barely disguised irritation.

Like the rest of the four, Yang had originally applied to Beacon Sandwiches, until it fell out of business thanks to the Grimm Gourmet food chain. Yang had a severe gambling addiction, and had lived off of her dad's income for years until one day when she was busted and lost everything. There weren't a lot of jobs that let juvies work for them, and Beacon Sandwiches was, well, a shining beacon.

To her right, Weiss Schnee was picking at her dirty skirt with disgust. She used to be the heiress of her father's electronic development company until recently, when she was thrown out after a fight with her father. She met Ruby and Yang at a bar the night she was kicked out, and Ruby was nice enough to let her crash at the sisters' apartment. From there, she applied with Ruby and Yang at Beacon Sandwiches.

Blake rolled her eyes at Ironwood's antics. She was the one who had been with Beacon for the longest time. She lived on the poorer side of St. Remnant, and Ozpin, the old owner of Beacon, took her in as a young girl to help her family out. Ozpin had ended up being a second father to her.

Ruby was perhaps the only one who wanted to work in the restaurant setting. Everyone else was only a broke teenager. Ruby was a broke teenager who was constantly on a caffeine high. That made all the difference. Ever since she heard the term "sandwich artist" on a subway commercial, she knew what she was destined to do.

But when Beacon went out of business, everything changed. It happened almost overnight. Grimm Gourmet was a fast food chain that offered every kind of meal. Pizza. Chicken. Sandwiches. And their sweeping influence crippled the small, independant Beacon. Within weeks of Grimm's arrival, Beacon had fallen.

Ozpin had disappeared from the face of the earth, but before he did, he told them about Atlas Pizza. Apparently he and the owner, Ironwood, had been in contact about the battle against Grimm. Ozpin gave them one final task before he left: Destroy Salem. Salem—the owner of the entire Grimm Gourmet chain. Her nickname was given to her because she was described as a witch in the kitchen and in business.

All of RWBY hated Salem for taking Ozpin away from them, and vowed to defend Atlas against the Pizza branch of Grimm Gourmet. It is for this reason that RWBY stayed together in the fast food and restaurant industry.

"Alright. Are you four ready for your first assignments as a delivery team?"

"YES!"

"Calm down, sis…"

"Yang, let her be."

"Oh, well…"

Ironwood shook his head at the girls' antics. "Good to know that at least Ruby is ready for this. Honestly, I don't know why the rest of you aren't taking this as seriously as your youngest colleague is."

"With all due respect, Mr. Ironwood," began Weiss, "is it appropriate to take pizza delivery that seriously?"

Weiss immediately regretted those words the second they left her mouth. Ironwood had practically teleported in front of the blonde, dark green eyes drilling into her light blues. "Do not forget who we are fighting, Miss Schnee. We face an adversary who seeks to destroy honest restaurant culture. A monster who took away your beloved Beacon Sandwiches. And you dare suggest that we should not take this seriously?" he spat.

The whole of team RWBY went silent. And the silence continued for three painful seconds until the order phone rang.

Ironwood marched over too it, clomping boots the only noise in the silent restaurant. Picking it up, he answered briskly, "Welcome to Atlas Pizza, may I take your order?"

The girls watched quietly as the man nodded to whatever the caller was saying. Ironwood pulled out his notepad, jotting down the order.

"Thank you, sir. We'll be there in a flash." Ironwood said. After he put down the phone, he turned to RWBY. "Alright, girls. You have your first assignment."

Yang almost dropped the pies in the seat next to her as she got into the truck. "What kind of pig orders seven stuffed crusts on a Tuesday night?" She growled. The flour was still splotched all over her hands.

"Nothing like a big first assignment to kick off our promotion!" Ruby cheered, pressing on the horn. "Heh—whoops…"

Yang's eyes widened as she saw Ruby was the one behind the wheel. "Wait a minute, you are not driving, sis." Yang jumped over the beat-up console to the passenger's seat. "Move over, Ruby Rose."

The younger girl's cheerful demeanor left her. Ruby puffed out her cheeks. "Whaat? No way, Yang! I got my license. I can drive!"

"No-way-Jose. Give me the wheel."

"NO!"

"Ruby." Yang's voice was cold. "The last time I was in a car you drove I almost had a heart attack. Give. Me. The. Wheel."

Ruby whined. "I was so young, then, Yang! Can you trust me just this once, please?"

Yang placed her hands on Ruby's shoulders. "Ruby, answer me honestly. Between now and when you got your license again, how much have you driven?"

"I—" Ruby began loudly, until she looked down with her cheeks tinged pink. "I don't know."

Yang smiled. "Ruby, if it was any other time, I'd be happy to help you get used to the wheel again. But right now is not the time. Ironwood has given us a task and we need to prove ourselves. So can I take the wheel?"

Ruby sighed. "Finnnne…" and with that, she climbed into a hug with Yang before promptly falling into the passenger set with an oomph. Her silver eyes peered at the wheel wistfully for a moment after.

"Hey, we exist too!" Weiss's cry filled the back of the truck as she gestured to Blake, who was completely zoned out while she listened to her ipod.

"Let's get this show on the road, team RWBY!" Yang pumped her fist, completely ignoring Weiss's complaints.

Blake was the first to notice the black van following them. "Uh, guys?" She pulled out her earbuds. "We've got company."

The other three looked back at the vehicle. Yang was the first to react. "The hell? Is that actually Neo?" Her voice was incredulous.

The driver was grinning smugly, making eye-contact with Yang. Her hair was dyed most strangely—pink falling past her left shoulder and brown falling past her right. Her eyes were heterochromatic—pink and brown like her hair. It was a strange beauty indeed.

"It is!" Yang yelled. She pressed her foot on the pedal,

Ruby explained for the rest of the team who this Neo character was. "Back in Yang's gambling days, Neo was the one who cheated her out of a huge load of money. She still hasn't gotten over it, either."

"Welp, now she works for Grimm, apparently." Weiss thumbed the logo on the side of the van.

"WHAT!" The car lurched forward with new speed. Visible steam was rising from where Yang was sitting. "That bitch is such a sellout!"

"It is possible that she's tailing us." Blake chimed in. "Didn't Ironwood say something about Grimm finding people who ordered from other restaurants and like, targeting them with advertisements and coupons?"

"So I gotta lose her, is what you're saying." Yang smiled wildly beside Ruby. "Girls, strap in. We're taking a detour"

"Yang, no!—" Ruby shouted, but was cut off when Yang took a sharp right turn into a boulevard.

In the back, Weiss was holding on to the pizzas like her life depended on it. "Yang, please! Can you just—"

"Nope, Princess, I got a job to do." and the car swerved left, nearly hitting some yelling teenagers playing street hockey.

"I really should have kept the wheel…" Ruby moaned, face green.

Within minutes Yang had driven the four girls back onto the freeway again. "Is she still following us?" she asked the back.

"Fuck! Yeah, she is." Blake said, clutching her stomach. Yang started weaving back and forth through the highway, dodging cars like bullets as they honked at her. "One more detour!" And suddenly, RWBY was in the city.

"The pizzas are cold now." Weiss reported dully from the backseat an hour later. The four of them were staked out in a parking lot for a strip mall, keeping a close eye on the Grimm Gourmet van. Neo was making no move to leave, either. She was patiently staring their truck down, that smug smile having never left her face.

"Hafta tell the schmuck who ordered them to heat em' up, then." Yang weezed. It hadn't taken long before she pulled out some liquor from beneath the seat.

"How long did you have that?" Weiss asked incredulously.

Ignoring her, Yang declared "Y'know what? I'm gonna talk to Neo. See if I can throw her off our scent or somethin'."

"YANG, NO!" the other three yelled, but it was too late. She had already begun the trek over to Neo's van. Ruby didn't wait a second before she followed suit in a rush.

"Yang, wait!"

"Ruby, not you too!" Weiss cried. But like Yang, she was already gone.

Looking at Blake, they both nodded, sighed, and got up to chase after their partners. Feeling strangely sorry that it would go to waste, Weiss grabbed a slice of pizza and crammed it in her mouth, careful that her teammates didn't see.

Catching up to the rest of RWBY, she made it to Neo's van just in time to see the window get pulled down, and to hear what sounded like a radio transmission.

"Great job, Neo. thanks to you, we were able to successfully deliver the pizzas before Atlas could. Salem would be proud."

Neo's eyes shone with mocking laughter while she watched them. For a minute, the girls just stood there in shocked silence. Yang's eyes thundered into a deep red, her thoughts broiling with anger.

"You snake, Neopolitan. Is there really no low you would sink to? What's stopping me from wrecking your stupid face right now—"

Blake and Ruby panicked, grabbing onto their teammate's arms to hold her back. "Yang, please not now! We're already gonna be in loads of trouble with Ironwood when we get back, so can you hold it—"

"Ruby, let me go!" Yang yelled, ripping her fist away from her sister's grip to bring it down to Neo's head—

Only to meet the glass car window that Neo had pulled up in defense. The Grimm employee was still smirking as she pulled out of the parking lot and drove away as her van hummed.

Weiss brought her hands to her face. "Oh, what did we do?"

"What did you do." Ironwood's voice was frigid. The delivery team was silent with shame until Ruby spoke meekly.

"Sir, we tried our best to—"

"WELL YOUR BEST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH!" The 'general' roared. "I thought you were better than this. But it's because of failures like these that are costing us everything. I have a world of restaurants to protect. Was I wrong to trust Ozpin? If you just delivered the damn pizzas, we would have—"

Weiss stood up angrily. "Mr. Ironwood. We had run into a complication with—"

"Complication?" Ironwood laughed hysterically. "It's pizza delivery. What possible complication would stop you from doing your job?"

"Grimm, sir." Blake spoke quietly.

That got Ironwood to stop. "What?"

Yang growled. "Yeah, this chick I had been...aquanticed with in my gambling days works for Grimm now, and she was tailing us to our delivery spot, so I tried to lose her on the road."

"You what?"

"Mr Ironwood, I—"

Ironwood rubbed his temples. "I know what you did, Yang. But did you consider maybe delivering the pizzas and cutting or losses was the better option? Sure, if you delivered them while Grimm was following you, they would have spread their influence more. But at least then, we wouldn't have walked away with nothing!"

"Mr. Ironwood, aren't we trying to stop the Grimm's spread? With the information we had at hand, didn't we do the right thing?" Ruby asked.

"We must stop them at all costs. I don't care if it's one customer or a thousand. And on the information you had you shouldn't have done anything different, because you didn't have any information! I should fire—"

"Ironwood, if I may, it seems like our team RWBY here made only a tiny mistake." a calm voice spoke firmly from the kitchen's doors, carrying into the baking room that Ironwood was scolding RWBY in.

It was Clover. His hazel locks were somehow untouched despite how dirty his apron was. The young man grinned at the girls, trying to put them at ease. "But I know why they did it. We can't win against Grimm unless we have every customer we can get. I know you view that as unrealistic, but it's something we have to strive for, General. And you know that these girls have been through a lot against the Grimm, when they lost Beacon and Oz. At Atlas, they really have improved upon their arrival! They are our most reliable kitchen mates, and will become our best delivery team if you just give them another chance. But if you stop them now, General, you are only helping Grimm and Salem."

Ironwood breathed in, and then out. "Okay. Go home and rest, girls. We lost tonight, but no more. Do I make myself clear?"

The melancholy that one blanketed the four was suddenly lifted. In a single, unanimous cry, they cheered.

"YES SIR!"

Thanks for reading again, folks. I gotta thank my beta reader for, well, beta'ing this story right here. I feel really confident about this piece! That said, please don't hold back with criticism. There are definitely a few places in this story I feel that are way too weak and really didn't know how to fix. So, let me know what you think!

And finally, stay safe out there, guys. The world's pretty scary right now, but we'l get through it.

DFTBA,

Nathan Dripps