Don't Fear the Reaper
I don't own RWBY. This Episode is unrelated to the previous Episode. I've just always wanted to write something like this.
"That was pretty close," Weiss heard a cheerful voice say, "Lucky you."
"Who are you?" Weiss demanded, turning to see a girl whose face was hidden in the shadows of a tattered, red-hooded cape. In her hand, meanwhile, was a weapon that looked like a cross between a scythe and some sort of heavily mechanized gun.
"The outfit, the scythe, and the fact that you barely managed to avoid that Ursa's attack didn't give it away, Weiss Schnee?" the girl asked.
"Should I know you?" Weiss asked.
"Everyone does," she replied cheerfully, "I've been everywhere. I'm in the barb of a Death Stalker's tail, the fangs of a Manticore, the caress of a bullet, and, my personal favorite, the edge of a blade."
"Why don't you give me a name, instead of pointless metaphors," Weiss asked dryly.
"Come on!" the girl sighed, "You know who I am. It's on the tip of your tongue and in the back of your mind every time you hunt."
"Excuse me?" a familiar voice called out, catching Weiss and the girl's attention. Turning, they saw Penny Polendina, Weiss's assigned partner for this mission, approaching, "Who are you?"
"An admirer of yours, Penny Polendina," the girl replied freely, before a silver gleam became apparent where her eyes were hidden in shadows, "You are the most elegantly crafted work of art I've ever seen, and yet you're also a real person! You have a soul and everything! Do you have any idea how amazing that is?!"
"That's the closest thing she's given to an answer, Penny," Weiss noted.
"That's not true!" the girl protested, "I told you exactly who I was. You just keep ignoring the answer!"
"You are not on any database," Penny noted carefully, "Yet you seem to possess knowledge that only a select few possess."
"I was in the minds of the people when you were conceived," she replied, "They had such beautiful plans, and you are the most beautiful person I've ever seen, but I don't think I'll be getting you anytime soon. I wish I could hang out with you two more, but I'm hunting, too."
"Who or what is your quarry?" Penny asked.
"The undying," she replied freely, "One to judge, and one to punish. Not you. You've got time. The two I'm looking for? They aren't exactly alive. They were gods, once. Well, a god and a goddess. They caused a big mess, so I was called in. They ran, and I've been chasing them ever since."
"What are you even talking about?" Weiss demanded, only to pause, "You… You think you're Death, don't you?"
"Who else could I be?" she shrugged, "Right now, in a hospital in Atlas, the Nicholas Schnee Memorial Hospital, to be precise, there are seventeen people dying of sickness, age, and wounds that couldn't be treated. One of them was gored by a Boarbatusk. His ancestors are proudly waiting for him in the Lordless Hall."
Penny stared blankly ahead for a few seconds, reminding Weiss of the fact that Penny was neither human nor faunus, before she said, "The reports were filed ten seconds after the end of her statement., Save the Lordless Hall comment. I have no solid context for that, outside of some religious texts."
"Elaborate," Weiss said, her patience already being tested by this strange girl.
"According to a religion in Anima and certain sections of the island of Patch," Penny explained, "There is a Feast Hall, where the righteous dead who fell in combat. The Lord of the Hall, an unnamed entity, does not sit there any longer, and the chair upon which he sat is eternally empty."
"That's the guy I'm here to judge," the girl said, running a pale hand along the flat of the blade of her scythe, "I've got my sister and her love searching, as well, but, I can't be everywhere physically, even if I am omnipresent. I only have the one body."
"If we were to believe you, who exactly are these two people, and where are they?" Weiss asked.
"The Lord of the Hall is wandering," she replied, "Every single time I almost catch him, but then he dies before I can get him, and I have to find the remaining bits from wherever he wound up after that. The Other One, though? She's hiding herself somewhere that there's no deaths occurring."
"Who is the Other One?" Weiss demanded.
"There were two beings, once," Penny said, clearly pulling up information as she spoke, "Twins of Light and Darkness. Together, they created two races, humans, and faunus. The being of light adored their creations, and sought to teach them. The being of darkness, however, grew to disdain them. And so the creatures of Grimm were created. In turn, he taught humans to unlock their Aura."
"Eventually, you discovered Dust," the mysterious girl said, pulling back her hood to reveal a youthful face and glowing silver eyes, "Everything seemed to be reaching a balance. The others all thought that things were going to calm down Then he banned her from entering the Hall. At that point, there was no denying there was a war coming. The Hall of the Valiant Dead was supposed to be free to all gods. They began to gather gods and goddesses to their sides. The only neutral parties were me, since I'm supposed to be an impartial judge, my sister, the sun, and the goddess of the night sky. Gods and the souls of so many heroes and heroines fought, until there was so little left. We all knew it wouldn't be fixed when they killed the Moon. I was supposed to judge. I did judge the Other One, but she fled, and he followed her before we could stop them. I've been looking for them ever since…"
"And you expect us to believe that?" Weiss asked.
"Nope!" she replied, "But he's close and I'm going to get him before he manages to get away again. I just thought you were close, but you barely managed to get that Ursa at the last minute. Well, I'll see you, eventually, friends!"
With that, the girl pulled up her hood and vanished in a stream of blood-red rose petals.
"Follow her," Weiss said, forming a glyph to allow her to speed ahead, "We need to protect whoever she's deluded herself into killing."
Rocket wings sprouted out of Penny's back as she wordlessly followed, clearly trying to figure something out.
"What are you thinking?" Weiss asked as they raced behind the trail of petals, barely able to keep up.
"She had no means of knowing who had died in Atlas," Penny said, "Nor should she have known about me."
"She's probably just some hacker," Weiss replied, "Right now, we need to focus on saving whoever she's planning on killing."
Penny was silent at that, but she continued down her path, that calculating gleam still in her eyes.
When they finally caught up to the trail of petals, they saw that the girl had her scythe in a configuration that looked like a war-scythe as she lightly held the tip under the chin of what looked like a farm boy.
"I've finally caught up to you, old friend," the girl said, and Weiss had the strangest feeling that she was grinning behind the shadows of her hood, yet all she could see was the gleam of silver in her eyes, "You had me chasing you all across the continent. There've been so many incarnations, I'm not even sure that you're even remotely the same. But, let's check."
"Death?" the boy asked, staring at her in shock, before freezing, "Why did I call you that?"
"You've been breaking pieces off yourself…" she noted in what sounded like a concerned tone, not moving her blade a millimeter.
"Lower your weapon!" Weiss ordered, drawing Myrtenaster.
"I have my job to do," she said.
"Lower. Your weapon," Weiss ordered flatly, "Or we will treat you as a threat."
"Stand down," Penny ordered, her swords rising out of her back, "Or we will be forced to engage in combat."
The girl stared blankly at them, from what they could tell from the glow of her eyes, before she collapsed her scythe into a rifle. Once she had done so, she placed it within her cloak, causing it to seemingly vanish.
"I'm still going to judge him," she said plainly, her eyes pinning the boy in place.
Slowly, she reached for her hood, drawing it back to reveal, not the face that they had seen before, but nothing, save two glowing silver lights that Weiss could barely stand to look at. Beside her, Penny seemed unconcerned, and the boy flinched but seemed otherwise unchanged.
Eventually, Death pulled her hood back up, the glow in her eyes fading back to what they had seen previously. After a moment, she pulled her hood back again, revealing the same face from before.
"You're… too broken, old friend," she said, "Even if we were to find everything you cut off and put it back, you'd still be too far gone. This is your last go-around."
"She's still out there," the boy protested, "I have to stop her. Who do I have to stop?"
"The Other One," she said, "You, Oscar Pine, are not quite who you used to be. So, you'll get the rest of your time here, however long it lasts, before you're done. But, you're coming with me. You're going to help me find her, and I will finish what I've needed to do all this time…"
"The… Maidens…" he murmured, "Something about Maidens. Four of them… What is it?"
"We'll find them, in time," she replied, "All six of us."
"Six?" Weiss asked.
"Me, you three, my sister, and the night," she said, "We're meeting them at a tavern in a nearby village."
"We didn't volunteer for this," Weiss protested.
"Well, it's either that, or let the world end," she replied cheerfully, "Because she wants to kill off humanity and faunuskind."
"I was designed to save the world!" Penny said, "I am combat ready!"
"I wish I didn't believe you," Weiss said, "But I saw… Whatever it is that you did to your head, so I know something's up… I guess we don't have much of a choice."
"That's the spirit!" Death said, "Let's move!"
It was some time later when the group finally arrived at the tavern, only to see a purple-eyed girl with long blond hair standing beside a black-haired, amber-eyed faunus with catlike ears, who was reading a book despite the sun having already gone down.
"Sister!" Death greeted, cheerfully, "Yin! I'm so happy to see you!"
"It's Blake, this time," the black-haired one said, "I see you've found him."
"He's going to help us find her," Death replied.
"Are you sure we can trust him?" her sister asked.
"He's only got some of the remains," she replied, "He's tattered, and broken off pieces of himself. This is the last time he'll incarnate at all, Yang."
"If you say so," she replied, "And who are these two?"
"Weiss Schnee, heiress to the Schnee Dust Corporation and a Huntress," she replied, "And Penny Polendina, a beautiful girl who has as much soul as any other person," Death replied freely, "They tried to stop me when they thought I was just a crazy lady who was going to kill someone, so I'm trusting them to work with us. He's called, Oscar, by the way."
"Fair enough," Yang replied, "I'm Yang, the sun goddess, and that's my other half, Blake, who's the goddess of the Night."
"Nice to meet you all," Blake said, glancing at them over the cover of her book before returning her attention to the page she was on.
"So, the sun goddess is called 'Yang,'" Penny said, turning towards Death, "And the night goddess is called 'Blake.' This means that you all have names that you identify by. What do we call you?"
"You can call me Ruby," she replied, "Ruby Rose. Sounds nice, right?"
