Ancient Grudge
I don't own RWBY or Zombie Land Saga, from which the premise of this was derived. This Episode is related to Episode 13 and is therefore part of the Undead 'Verse.
Oscar was disappointed, but not surprised when he woke up earlier than he had planned. The sound of steel clashing against steel was familiar from the countless memories that had built up in the back of his mind by this point, and he could almost hear his predecessor's voice saying that he should have seen this coming, but he was somewhat curious as to how the fight had led to the living room. Grabbing the cane, he headed down the stairs to figure out what he needed to do and how he would go about it.
There was a sudden slicing sound that happened twice, followed by a sickening wet sound, which was concluded with the sound of Ruby saying, "And you can stay like that until you learn to behave yourselves."
Wondering why he'd thought sleeping on the second floor of the building was a good idea with the limp he'd been developing, he finally got to the living room and was left speechless at the sight of the two soldiers missing their arms, shouting obscenities at one another while pinned together by means of the spike on a massive, rusted scythe going through both of their bodies.
"Give me back my arms!" the redhead demanded of Penny, who was standing by Ruby with a blank expression on her face, though her left eye had been repaired, or at least replaced with a believable facsimile, and the right eye wasn't flickering anymore In her hands were the pair's arms duct taped together at the elbows, wrists, and hands.
"Please don't listen to her, Penny," Ruby requested.
Penny turned slightly towards Ruby before nodding.
"Thank you, Penny," Ruby smiled, before noticing Oscar. "Sorry about that, Oscar. These two just started going at it while I was in the middle of rewiring Penny's eye. I don't think it's as good a piece as her real eye, but the one I set up should work for a while. I was going to run a few scans of her processor, but…"
"Valean coward!"
"Mistralian fanatic!"
"I think I can take a guess," he noted dryly.
"Fate was kind enough to bring us here, that I may finally put my spear through you," Nikos glared, "Finally, we'll receive the fates we were denied."
"Wait, you didn't kill me?" he asked, sounding like a man who felt as if he'd been cheated, "But Oz said…"
"I'm going to stop you right there, Jaune…" Oscar interrupted, drawing their attention to him, "I lied. You were dying, the war was over, and I was trying to figure out a way to avoid being called a god or the king of everything. I panicked, so when you asked if it was Paladin Nikos that killed you, I agreed. To this day, I'm not sure where she was, but she was not on that battlefield that day."
"Given that I was executed the day after Jaune Arc's escape, I suspect that I had been dead for months," Nikos said.
"But… I died three days after my escape," Jaune replied.
"The war couldn't have ended that quickly!" she protested.
"That was me, too," Oscar chimed in again, "Oscar Pine's my current name. Before that, Ozpin, and before that? Ozymandias."
"You died twice already?" Jaune asked, "How many years have passed? It must've been at least a century and a half…"
"Just barely over eighty years," he confessed, clearly embarrassed by the admission.
"Dear gods, Oz…" Jaune sighed in exasperation, "I took all the common sense when I died. Is that why you brought me back?"
"Wait," Nikos interrupted, "How is that Ozymandias?"
"I'm vaguely immortal, but that's not the real question," Oscar replied, "Why were you executed?"
"They assumed I had freed him because I wanted him to die on the battlefield at the tip of my spear."
"Oh gods…" Jaune said, "I didn't think they'd do that… I have… had a record of breaking out of any prison people put me in."
"Yes, that is how we found you," Oscar agreed, as if reminiscing before there was a sharp rapping on the door, "Ruby, please take care of this?"
With that, he opened the door, only for the rest of the undead to swarm out of the basement.
"We've gotta see what made everyone go so… Uncle Qrow?" Yang asked in confusion as she examined one of the figures at the door, who looked as if he were seeing a ghost, which one would have not been wholly inaccurate to say that he was.
"Yang?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"Penny?" asked another figure, this one a man in a general's uniform, causing the robot girl to tilt her head slowly, as if vaguely recalling something.
"I believe you have some explaining to do," a blond woman with glasses said firmly as the three of them entered the building.
"I'll let him explain," Oscar said, before a faint flash of flickering energy engulfed him, and his mannerisms changed and his voice took on a different cadence, "Oscar and I had agreed that our cause would be-be-be…" Another flicker of green light and he was clearly once again himself, speaking in the voice hat Ruby recognized. "Ruby, please take the others back downstairs and explain everything. I'll be doing the same up here."
"Now, wait just one second…!" Weiss protested, only for Ruby to interrupt.
"Weiss, take the arms from Penny and go downstairs," she ordered, pulling her scythe out of Jaune and Pyrrha with one hand, "Everyone who isn't Penny, downstairs. Now."
When the others were clamoring in protest, she converted her scythe to its warscythe form and said, "You can go downstairs mostly intact, or you can go without your bodies, with me sending you there like soccer balls, until I bring them downstairs. I'm tired, and I've been undead and aware for hours, now. Don't test me!"
Once she and Penny were the only undead in the room, Ruby went up to the military one and said, "Give me the blueprints."
"What?" he asked, clearly confused.
"You know Penny, you're clearly someone important, and you have cybernetics under your uniform," she said, "You'd have access to her blueprints. I want them. Oscar managed to get her motor functions running with a jerry-rigged mess, but it was just undirected movement. I managed to make a temporary patch to her neural interface that gives her limited motor control, but it's not something that can be used forever, and she isn't able to operate the swords and wires in her pack. More importantly, she can't do anything intricate."
Penny opened her mouth and whistles, beeps, and chirps came out.
"Thank you for reminding me, Penny," Ruby said with a mile, before turning towards the man and saying, "And her vocal processor is busted. Her eye, I'm still fixing up, but that's nothing a bit of soldering can't fix. The only reason I didn't was because Jaune and Nikos started trying to re-kill each other."
"That's…" he began, only for her to cut him off.
"There is a soul trapped in that full-body prosthetic, and I can't help her unless I have those blueprints. If the next words out of your mouth include the word classified or anything like that, I'll help you find out how much more of you can be replaced with metal."
"James, just give her the blueprints," Oscar said tiredly, "I already had to see her handiwork this morning, and I don't want to have to clean up the mess that you trying to fight her will cause. Besides, it would be good for Penny."
As if prompted by that statement, Penny stiltedly offered a salute, her movements catching every few inches before she opened her mouth and more noise came out.
"Do you have a scroll?" he asked tiredly.
"Why would I have a scroll?" Ruby asked, "Just attach whatever it is you have the blueprints on to my scythe."
He held out his scroll before pressing it to the spot she indicated on the weapon.
"Alright. There we go," she said, "I'll be downstairs telling the others what you've told me so far."
Once she was gone, Qrow and Ironwood turned towards Ozpin as one with a deliberately flat expression on Ironwood's face while Qrow simply poured liquor down his throat before he spoke.
"Care to explain what my niece, Tai's daughter…" he rose from his seat at those two words, "Is doing in this little corpse party of yours, Oz?"
"And why Penny was also chosen?" Ironwood asked in a cool tone, "Hasn't that poor girl been through enough?"
Oscar sighed, "Ozpin thought it would be a good idea to bring in Penny because she is a powerful fighter, when she's whole. I brought in Yang because both of me thought her life was taken too soon."
"And the others?" Glynda asked, "I can understand the two defenders of Kuroyuri, but the two that were armless and impaled when we got here? And who was the Faunus girl?"
"Blake Belladonna was the Faunus," he said, "And the two you were questioning me about were soldiers in the Great War. The one James was having a chat with was Ruby Rose. From my memories, she was Summer Rose's grandmother's sister."
The table was silent for a moment before Qrow broke the silence and said, "You're the one who's going to have to explain this to Tai. Summer was his partner, and Yang's his daughter."
Oscar winced. "Fair enough."
"But, the process was a success?" Glynda pressed.
"We're going to have to wait and see how well," Oscar agreed, "Ruby was the first success. She was fully cognizant in a matter of hours. The others took longer."
"Why?" Glynda asked.
"Were I to guess, and I have to since the other me's not exactly fully operational right now, I'd say that it could very well be her silver eyes. They had healed the moment I started applying magic to her to bring her back. Now, any news on your ends?"
"…And that's all I know about our being zombies," Ruby said, gathering up the tools as she headed to the workbench, Penny following close behind, before pausing at the sight of Jaune and Pyrrha, "For the gods' sake, would you please stop kissing each other! At least wait until your arms are back on, you weirdos!"
She turned around, only to almost bump into Penny, causing her to hop back in surprise.
"Whoa! You snuck up on me, Penny," Ruby said with a slight smile, "Ren, Nora, please get these back on the lovebirds." She tossed them the arms. "And try to keep the skin on them."
With that, she got to work on Penny, "I've gotta say, you guys are handling the whole 'undead' thing better than I did. For starters, I thought I was alive-alive."
"You're a decaying zombie…" Blake noted.
"I had makeup on," Ruby replied, "Now, I'm going to be patching up Penny."
"I'm sure she'll knock 'em dead when you're done with her!" Yang said encouragingly, before patting Penny on the shoulder, "You'll be 'combat ready' in no time!"
The arm fell off at that exact moment, the wires holding it in place coming loose.
"I can fix this," Ruby said quickly, picking up the arm before setting it on the work bench. "Alright, Penny, let's fix you up a bit more. We don't have all the pieces, but we can make do with some things."
"Well, Ren!" Nora said cheerfully as she popped Pyrrha's arms back into place, "Looks like I was right! Death didn't break us apart!"
Ren smiled fondly, if tiredly at that as he did the same for Jaune. "It does look like that, Nora."
"Hey, you two, Blake, Yang," Ruby said, "Mind helping Weiss find a fake eye. We could make a working one, but first we've got to get a bit more work done on Penny."
And with the events of that morning as the icebreaker, the group began to get to know one another better.
It was when everyone upstairs had finished discussing who was doing what and what groups were in play that Oscar had an abrupt realization.
"I forgot to explain who Salem was!"
