Undead Hunters

I don't own RWBY or Zombie Land Saga, from which I have taken the general shape of the premise.

The girl in the hooded cloak blinked in confusion as she sat seemingly alone in the dark room. Silver eyes tried to focus to find any movement, but she could only see a faint green glow flickering in one corner of the room. It was at that moment that there was the sound of metal scraping against stone. Acting on instinct that she didn't really understand, she reached behind her and drew what seemed to be a rifle. Outside the building, the light of a broken moon was revealed as the clouds passed it. It was then that she learned that she was not alone in the room. In point of fact, there were eight others in there.

A white-haired girl was loosely gripping a colossal rapier, which seemed to be the source of the scraping. A golden-haired girl was lurching with staggering steps aimlessly, occasionally bumping into a similarly aimless girl with cat ears and what looked like a hilt attached to a massive sheath and ribbon on her back. Two more, an orange-haired girl and a boy with black hair with pink highlights, were both walking into the same corner repeatedly, with the girl's massive hammer hanging by her side while the boy's hand remained in hers. There were three others, a redheaded girl in dull grey armor that kept aggressively slamming into a blond in blood-stained white armor that had a sheathed sword on his hip. The final one was another orange-haired girl who had a pair of swords in her hand.

Those were the parts that made sense to her. The terrifying part, however, was the fact that she could tell that they were not alive, and not just by the greying skin that all but one of the people she was currently sharing a room with had. The white-haired girl had stitches along the side of her face and was missing an eye where the stitches were. The golden-blond girl was practically a patchwork of grey and black when it came to her skin, and looked as if she had died fighting something big that had not been merciful. The catgirl, in contrast, was noticeable as her black coat was riddled with bullet holes.

The two in the corner, when they finally turned and were staggering away from it, revealed jagged tears on the stomach sections of their shirts, through which, she could make out equally jagged stitch-work, clearly meant to hold whatever was left in there inside. When the two armored figures turned towards her, the blond boy showed a huge, piercing wound where his heart would have been beneath his armor that revealed more stitched-together flesh. The girl, meanwhile, was sporting a lot of stitching around the center of her neck, which she suspected was all that was holding it together.

The final member, however, was the more terrifying sight. One eye flickering faintly, the other cracked with fragments of practically powdered glass spilling out. A massive hole could be seen in the torso, revealing all manners of mechanical components that were clicking, whirring, and otherwise moving in a locked manner that resembled a clock with a broken cog. Her arms were being held in place by steel wire that acted more as a means of keeping them there than actually allowing the arm to move. The lower half of her body wasn't even actually attached to her.

And then all of them had begun to move towards her.

At this den of horror's approach, her only reaction was to instinctively convert the rifle into a massive scythe. Just as she got into a combat stance she somehow knew, she heard the sound of someone clearing his voice as the lights in the room turned on suddenly.

"Well, someone's awake earlier than expected…" a tanned boy with oddly-colored eyes noted as he walked into the room with a slight limp, using a cane that was clearly too large for him. In his other hand, there was what looked to be a pitcher of ice water. "You probably have questions. Put that scythe down, please."

"Who are you? Who am I? Where am I? Who are they? What are they? What is she?!" That last question was emphasized with a point towards the one that was full of mechanical components.

"In order?" he said, "I'm Oscar Pine, except for the times that I'm not. You're Ruby Rose. We're in the remains of Beacon Academy. I'll get back to who they are in a moment. All of you except for the one you pointed at are zombies, and she's a robot."

"Wait," she said, lowering the scythe, "What do you mean I'm a zombie?"

"It's easier to show you. Pull back your hood, please."

When she did so, he threw the contents of the pitcher at her face before putting a mirror in her hand and raising it to her face. Before she could question anything, she realized her natural skin color was washing away like makeup, revealing scars over her eyes. Her scythe, meanwhile, was revealed to be rusted along the blades. Glancing at the other undead, she realized that the only two with relatively uncorroded weapons were the golden-haired girl and the robot, though the former had the golden paint chipped and the latter had burns along the tips of the blades.

"Now, I'd rather we all go downstairs for this, so you handle her and I'll get the rest of the crowd gathered. The door's that way."

Carefully, Ruby grabbed the robot by the arm and led her towards the door he indicated, heading towards some sort of basement.


After a few minutes, Oscar came in, the zombies following him as he carried a plate of raw meat, before he placed it on the table.

"Now, I'd been hoping that you would all be awake for this, but you can just fill the others in afterwards," he said.

"Will you just tell me what's going on?" she asked crossly as she adjusted the robot's position so that she wasn't about to topple over.

"Alright," he replied, "So, all of you died. So did I, but I'm a special case. Since we've been losing Huntsmen and Huntresses left and right, I talked him into letting me use some of our magic to bring some back from the dead. We need to keep the Grimm from overtaking everything. So, I chose to go for a few legends."

"Legends?" she asked, looking at the corpses that were helping themselves to the meat.

"Weiss Schnee," he said, gesturing at the white-haired girl, "The legendary sister of the famous Nicholas Schnee, she left behind a record number of dead Grimm in her path, rivaled only by the Grimm Reaper, who was a close second. Died in combat with a swordswoman who was working for Salem, but she managed to kill her as well."

"Who's…?"

"The iconic duo of Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie!" he pressed onward, gesturing at the black-haired boy and the orange-haired girl leaning against one another, "Champions of the village of Kuroyuri, this pair had managed to protect their village from both Grimm and bandit clans for three years before their untimely deaths at the hand of the Nuckelavee Grimm, but not before the villagers managed to flee from that place, causing there to only be two casualties, who took out a Grimm that had killed Huntsmen and Huntresses for decades.

"One of the top-tier assassins of the Faunus military during the Faunus Rights Revolution, Blake Belladonna could finish off even a room full of Beowolves in a matter of minutes," he continued with a gesture towards the cat girl, as if he were advertising her, "She was given bad intel and found herself captured by an entire military base's worth of soldiers and was executed by a firing squad.

"Clad in his white, shining armor, Jaune Arc's entire military career in Vale during the Great War consisted of finding his troops in impossible situations and pulling through no matter the odds," he said, gesturing at the blond boy before then gesturing towards the redhaired girl, "While clad in her grey armor, Miss Nikos was the victorious champion of Mistral. They quickly became the symbol of each side, and both died in battle, him being speared through the heart, her by being decapitated."

"And the last two?" she asked.

"Yang Xiao Long is the one with the golden hair and she had what might have been the most impressive ending of this group, amongst the former humans, at least," he said, "During the Fall of Beacon, which is when the previous me died, incidentally, she died after quite literally punching three of a Wyvern Grimm's eyes into bleeding pulps before it caught her between its teeth. I suspect you can guess what happened after that point. Penny Polendina, meanwhile, was the one that killed the Wyvern. They had both done significant damage to one another, but she knew that she would be unable to last for much longer, so she flew into its mouth and down its throat before activating her self-destruct sequence, taking the monster with her."

"What about me?" she asked.

"Died in an ambush, from what the reports said," he replied, "The damage was mostly on your back, except for the eyes, which were posthumous. It was a pretty quiet funeral. Not that great of a turnout, all things considered. I think one of me was there. For the record, the me before me thought this was a good idea, though I disagreed with me on who to bring back."

"What?" she asked in confusion, "Please explain that last sentence."

"Well, I'm part of a long line of people who got tagged by one of two Gods to have this one guy's soul shoved into mine. After we took a bad hit in numbers, we wound up needing to come up with a new strategy. So, I talked with what was left of the previous me. We agreed that it would be best to use some of the magic we had left to revive people who could take up the fight again. I figured that legends would be the best choice. He thought it could be a problem later down the line, but I pointed out that we were already in a bad place and we needed to be at least a little picky. So, here we are. Other than that, we don't exactly have much to go with."

"Um… I have one more question…"

"Go ahead," he replied, "But please make it quick. I've got someone I need to talk to first thing tomorrow morning, and trust me, me not being on time for that will not end well for anyone involved. I'm already basically dead on my feet from doing this…"

"How do you resurrect a robot?" she asked, "And why is she… like that?"

"She had a soul," he replied, "And I'm not a skilled engineer who can fix an exploded robot perfectly. I managed to fix up some internal systems and get her running, but I'm not that good at fixing things. But, you're awake, and you built that scythe of yours. This should be nothing. Goodnight."

With that, he left without a word, leaving her with the small zombie horde and the busted-up robot.

"Well," Ruby sighed, helping the robot girl up and steering her towards a toolkit in the corner of the room, "I guess it's nice to meet you, Penny. Let's see what I can do to help you…"