The Castle in the Forest

I don't own RWBY. This Episode is unrelated to any other episode in the Series.

"Alright. We've got the pieces," Yang said, "Let's move, people. Before the Grimm kill us would be good, but if you've got any other suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them!"

It was, of course, in that moment that the Death Stalker that had been chasing Nora and Ren arrived, followed by the Nevermore that had been stalking Blake and Yang.

"Any ideas?" Blake asked, causing Yang to look around, before noticing something.

"Those ruins!" she called out, pointing at what looked vaguely like a marginally solid castle that would someday remember to collapse upon itself, "We can regroup there!"

Once the others had gotten inside, Yang quickly followed them in and shut the crooked door behind her.

"Oh, thank goodness!" a voice said as a boy covered from head to foot in body-concealing armor, "I didn't think anyone would come this way, let alone anyone dressed with such bright colors! Who are you?"

"I'm Yang, this is Blake, and they're Nora and Ren," Yang said, gesturing at them one by one.

"Jaune Arc," he replied cheerfully, "I was starting to worry that I wasn't ever going to see another person again!"

"I'm sure Ozpin'd go looking for you," Yang assured him.

"Probably," he acknowledged, "He's never been one for leaving a man behind."

"Speaking of," Yang said, "I don't suppose you've got your partner handy?"

The armored head tilted before realization seemed to strike him.

"Oh!" he said, "Penny!"

"Upstairs!" a voice seemed to say from everywhere, "I got stuck again."

"I've told you that we can't get it open so many times now!" he called out, before turning towards the group, "Can you guys help me?"

"Sure!" Nora said as they all began to follow him up the stairs.

"Are you alright?" Blake asked.

"Yeah," Jaune replied, "Why do you ask?"

"You're limping…"

"Oh. Yeah," he said, "My left leg's a bit banged up. It's not too bad, though."

"If you say so," Blake said, before they finally arrived at a door, where a red-haired girl with almost glowing green eyes stood with her arm stuck in a door.

"Salutations!" the girl greeted them all cheerfully.

"I told you not to try to break it open," Jaune said, "Alright. I'll pull. Hopefully, it won't take too long this time…"

"Need a hand?" Yang asked.

"Oh… all I could get," Jaune replied tiredly, "Penny, these people are Yang, Blake, Ren, and Nora. They wandered in here."

Once each of them had grabbed her arm, which felt as cold and solid as steel, they all began to pull, only for the door, itself to open, revealing a hall with a chamber at the end.

"My god…" Jaune whispered, slowly walking into the room, "You guys actually opened it…"

"It is finally done!" the girl, Penny, most likely, cheered, "Sensational! It has been so troublesome having this one section cut off! Do you have any idea what it is like to be incomplete?"

"No," Jaune said dryly, tapping his chest to make the strangely off-putting clank, "I definitely don't know what that's like…"

"My apologies, Friend Jaune," Penny said, "I had forgotten."

"Not your fault," he shrugged, before turning towards the four students, "By the way, did the War finally end?"

"Which war?" Blake asked as Penny rushed towards the strange chamber.

"The War," he said, following Penny into the hall, "The one with Mantle and Mistral?"

"That was eighty years ago…" Nora said as the group followed them with concern on all of their faces, "Did you hit your head or something?"

"Wouldn't do much to me if I did," Jaune said, knocking on his helmet, which clanged in that same odd way that the rest of him did, "Not much to scramble in here."

"Insulting yourself only leads to you messing up on the battlefield," Ren noted, "Maybe you shouldn't call yourself empty-headed."

"But I'm literally empty-headed," Jaune said, grabbing his helmet, "See?"

"The chamber is open!" Penny shouted, causing him to pause before he could remove it.

"It what?" he asked.

"It's open!" she repeated, the double doors opening at her words.

At that, Jaune began to limp quickly towards the door, his left leg clanging much more noisily than the right.

The four who had just entered the castel, confused by the entire situation and worried for the clearly not all-there boy in the armor and his somewhat off-putting partner, followed them in.

It was there that they saw four dust-covered statues, one of which had a strange sense of familiarity to the group.

To the far right, sitting upon an ornate throne that looked to be made of diamond, was a girl in a dress, her eyes shut as if in concentration, with a single scar running along the left eye, a large, rusted rapier in her left hand. Beside her, to her left, stood what looked like a young woman dressed in a light-weight armor, wielding a javelin that looked to be similarly rusted steel. On the right hand of the throne, however, was the one that truly drew their eye. A friendly face beneath a hood attached to a cape that looked almost like it was in motion, while her wicked, rusted scythe somehow still gleamed in the light of candles that probably shouldn't have been burning in ruins like this. This one, unlike the other two, looked as if it's motionlessness was wholly unnatural, like the person it depicted was never supposed to be still.

While the other two looked to be at relative ease, that statue looked restless.

That, however, was less concerning that Jaune kneeling before the one to the left of the throne.

"What are you doing?" Yang asked.

"She's my patron," he replied simply as he rose to his feet, "And the reason I'm here in the first place."

"Who are these three?" Blake asked curiously.

"This is Pyrrha, Goddess of War and Heroes and Heroines," Jaune said, "the one on the throne's Weiss, Goddess of Wisdom and Magic, She of Countless Names."

"Cool! And who's the one with the scythe?" Nora asked.

"That would be Ruby, the Huntress," he said, "She Who Commands the Great Hunt."

"I'm guessing she's the Goddess of Huntsmen and Huntresses?" Blake asked.

"Don't say that!" Jaune said in a whispered hiss, "No one calls her that."

"Isn't it all just superstition anyway?" Blake asked.

"I don't know. Are ghosts superstition?" Jaune asked.

"Yes," Blake said.

"If you say so," Jaune shrugged, before his left leg fell off, causing him to crash to the ground, falling entirely to pieces.

"Oh dear!" Penny exclaimed, rushing to gather the pieces together, "Not again!"

"I really need to get another one of those one of these days…" Jaune's helmet noted, "Just hand me Crocea Mors…"

Penny rushed to the corner of the room with one of the gauntlets, where a dust-covered sword and sheath were lying, cobwebs clinging to it. Wordlessly, she placed the sword's hilt in the gauntlet's hand, causing the pieces of the armor to fly back together, now looking much more solidly put-together once they had reunited.

"Still don't believe in ghosts?" Jaune asked.

"Technically, Jaune," a polite voice noted, "You're a Heroic Spirit…"

Everyone turned towards the source of the voice, seeing color return to the visage of the one he called Pyrrha. Jaune, for his part, returned to a kneeling position as she dusted herself off, stretching her arms and legs as she stepped forward.

"Hello!" she greeted, the rust fading from her spear as it shifted to a short sword, then a rifle, then back to a javelin, "It has been some time since we were free. Jaune, please stand up. I've told you that you don't need to kneel before me."

"So, what exactly are you?" Nora asked, "What's the difference between a ghost and a heroic spirit?"

"Heroic Spirits are called before they die," Pyrrha explained, "I chose Jaune Arc because, despite having little training, he was capable of surviving in battle, and managed to survive on luck and his wits, no mean feat during the Great War. He was meant to be blessed, but the wretch, Salem, had arranged for one faction in what you call the Great War to bind the castle shut, with us trapped within its walls. Without being released, Jaune was bound to his armor while his sword, that which was blessed to keep his body from being destroyed, was locked away from him."

As if on cue, Jaune removed his helmet, revealing a blond haired, blue-eyed young man.

"Welcome, Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna, Lie Ren, and Nora Valkyrie," a commanding voice said from the throne, drawing everyone's attention to the pale girl with the scar on her eye, her rapier shining silver, with six chambers that looked like they held different varieties of Dust, "You have all of our thanks for freeing us from this chamber. As none of you were chosen, you were not trapped by the binding as we were."

"Who bound you, and how?" Yang asked, deciding to question how she knew their full names later.

"An army that will never do battle in this land again," the one known as Weiss replied with a dismissive wave of her hand, "And the ritual can never be repeated."

"Why not?" Yang asked.

"Because I know it, now," Weiss replied, her scarred eye looking like pale moonlight as she approached the group.

"Friend Ruby!" Penny's voice called out from all over the room. It was only at that moment that they realized that the space to Weiss's right was unoccupied, and that Penny had stopped moving at all the moment that Jaune had been brought back together.

"Penny!" a chipper voice responded as rose petals seemed to flow throughout the room, "You're whole again!"

"You're free!" Penny returned, before she began moving again. The rose petals, in turn, looped around her before forming the shape of a young woman in a red hood and a black outfit, holding a mechanical scythe, which she collapsed into a rifle before making it vanish as she leapt at Penny, unintentionally knocking her head off with a loud clang.

"Oh, darn!" Penny said as her body broke the hug and began to fumble around for the head. Ruby, for her part, gently picked up the head, then returned it to Penny's body, straightening it out before smiling at the girl.

"We'll have to modify you later, Penny," Ruby said with a fond smile, "I'm sure they've got a lot of advancements by now."

When her eyes finally fell upon the group, Ruby's silver eyes sparkled as she vanished in a swirl of rose petals, only to appear before the group, examining their weapons as she began to gush over them, somehow able to figure out exactly how they worked.

"You guys are great!" she exclaimed, "Truly excellent Hunters! The world will remember you guys in so many ballads!"

Feathers from the Nevermore pierced the hall outside of the chamber.

"A Nevermore?!" she asked excitedly, "I'm so lucky! I get to fight a Nevermore! Come on, Penny!"

When she grabbed the metal girl and raced out in a stream of rose petals, Weiss said, "Penny was a Huntress before she died. When she had perished, Ruby built the body you saw to house her, and blessed it to connect to any system she desired. When we were sealed within here, Penny had been possessing the castle, and the sealing bound a part of her with Ruby. They are… enthusiastic about the Hunt, which is why Ruby is so eager to battle the Nevermore and the Death Stalker."

Explosions could be heard outside of the castle.

"I'll go join them before they decide to seriously battle the creatures," Pyrrha said, heading for the door, "I haven't had a battle in some time."

"Neither have I," Weiss sighed after a moment.

Jaune, for his part, had immediately followed Pyrrha out the door as Weiss rose from her throne.

"Come along," Weiss said, "After this, we'll need to speak with your Headmaster. We need to discuss a duty of his that he has yet to accomplish."