Tall Tales
I don't own RWBY. I have returned after a fanfiction hiatus. Long story. To those who read my multi-chaptered fanfics like The Intriguing Case of Ruby and Red and The Psychic, The Swordsman and The Sorcerer, you can rest assured that their updates are in the works. My initial goal had been for the end of July, but that will likely not happen for various reasons. With luck, they will be completed by August 31st. This is my way to get back into the swing of thing.
Pyrrha Nikos woke up, clutching her chest and gasping for air. She looked around and examined the surrounding area.
"The Emerald Forest?" she murmured in shock, "How did I get here?"
"All forests have narrative magic," a cheerful voice said, "You're the Invincible Girl. Everyone knows that. There's not much left of magic in the world, but a story like yours during the perfect moment of magical imbalance? The only thing more powerful is a rumor born from fear. Speaking of..."
Pyrrha could have sworn she saw a flash of red in the corner of her eyes.
"Come on!" the voice said, "Time for you to wake up, too!"
"Where am I?" asked a voice that filled Pyrrha with shock to hear. That was a voice that should she should have never heard. Not if Pyrrha herself...
"Penny...?" she asked cautiously.
"Pyrrha Nikos!" Penny exclaimed, emerging from behind a tree, "Salutations! Were we both sent to the same afterlife? I am glad to see that I have a friend here, though I wish that it were not soon, given that you do not look any older than you were when we last met..."
"Neither of you are dead," said the cheerful voice as a girl in a red hooded cape emerged from behind the same tree as Penny, silver eyes shining under the hood as she approached, a massive cross between a scythe and a rifle in her hands, "But you're not alive in the normal sense."
"Who are you?" Pyrrha asked, "Are you... Death?"
"Nope," the girl replied, "I'm Ruby Rose! I've outrun Death, The Brothers, and the Devil, herself! But seriously, you're not dead. You're Legends."
"What?" Pyrrha asked.
"Well, you're a Legendary Heroine," Ruby noted, "And Penny is an Urban Legend. I've got to say, I've never seen one come to life so quickly, though. Mass communication existing, then being destroyed... It paved the way for rumors to fly and the soul to come back to life. Not sure how much you'll like the legend, though..."
"What are you talking about?" Pyrrha asked in confusion, "the last thing I recall is being shot in the chest with..."
She looked down and found no injury. A glance at her leg revealed it to be undamaged as well.
"What's going on?" Penny asked, "And who precisely are you? You've told us your name, but I do not understand your claims following it."
Ruby shut her eyes and sighed, "The quick way it is..." Shutting her eyes, she collapsed her scythe into a more manageable rifle. "This is going to sting." So saying, she shot herself in the chest, falling to the ground bleeding to the pair's horror.
"I am programmed with first aid..." Penny began, only for Ruby to get up without any injuries.
"I'm the stories that you were told as a kid," Ruby said, "Every unnamed Huntress, every mysterious heroine, every fairy tale about killing monsters. Now, we need to move. You two gave the magic just the kick it needed to get things going."
"What?" Penny asked.
"Basically, there have been a few Legendary Heroes and Heroines since the world came back from the dead. Some of them were barely half formed, ghosts more or less, shaped by the alterations to their stories. We're going to need them in the fights to come."
"What about...?"
"Cinder Fall is not getting up for a while and the dragon," she glanced at the petrified Grimm perched atop the ruins of Beacon, "It won't be a problem."
"How do we know you're not lying and just have an illusory or healing Semblance?" Pyrrha pressed, "I'm sorry, but we've been deceived be—"
Two shots rang out.
"We don't have time for this!" Ruby shouted, as if she hadn't fired a round apiece into the two girls, "We have a long trip ahead of us thanks to Atlas being run by a paranoid idiot. Do you believe me now?"
Pyrrha was about to shout at Ruby in response before she realized that she wasn't feeling any pain. Looking down, she saw the bullet had clearly gone through, but the wound and the damage to her armor suddenly vanished before she coughed and a spent bullet came out. Beside her, however, Penny went completely stiff and toppled over. Before she could even say anything about that, however, there was a rumbling sound as a metal coffin appeared, opening to reveal what could have easily been Penny's twin, save for the empty eyes. It was at that moment, however, that the body's eyes seemed to light up as she spoke in Penny's exact voice, with the same mannerisms.
"What just happened?" she asked.
"The short version is that you got both lucky and unlucky with legends. An urban legend spread about Atlas having an army of robot girls lying in wait for the General's orders. All that disinformation and fear combined to make a story of you being able to transfer your soul, and you do have a soul since you couldn't become a legend without one, into a new body that arrives at the moment of your death. Thanks to the fact that the CCT went down, no one was able to correct the disinformation and rumors spread faster than smoke. Honestly, yours is the weirdest immortality of a Legend... Strike that. I just remembered a weirder one."
"But I am..." Penny began, seeming on the verge of an existential crisis.
"Breathe," Ruby interrupted gently, "You're still unique. You're still the only you that there is. The magic just made your means of being unable to be destroyed a bit different. Pyrrha, for example, is invincible, so she's not going to ever be taken out. I'm the world's memory, the first and last story of the world that was simultaneously. I couldn't be undone, even if the stories stopped being told. Now, we've got a country to break into. Atlas is sealed off, but I'd love to see them try to stop me from getting past Mantle. Don't squirm."
"What?" Pyrrha asked, only to be grabbed by an arm and dragged at impossible speeds, rose petals blocking everything from her sight before she saw that they were somehow in the middle of the tundra surrounding Mantle, "This can't be real. We'd be freezing."
"Nope!" Ruby said cheerfully, "Now, where on earth would she be..."
A sound of something massive howling in pain could be heard echoing.
"Perfect!" she smiled, "Let's move!"
She raced ahead of them, disintegrating into rose petals as she did so, leaving Pyrrha and Penny to rush behind her to keep up.
They arrived just in time to see a Goliath fall to its knees and disintegrate before a girl with white hair and majestic antlers atop her head.
"Weiss Schnee..." Ruby greeted, "Welcome to the modern day."
"I'm glad to see you're still as charming as ever," the reindeer Faunus greeted dryly, "Would you mind explaining the antlers?"
"You two know each other?" Pyrrha asked in confusion.
"We'd fought in the past," Weiss noted, "Where's my brother, by the way? And, again, why do I have antlers?"
"Nick's now running a magical workshop where toys are made," Ruby said with a wave of her hand, "As for the antlers... Penny, do you know anyhing about Weiss Schnee and antlers?"
Penny closed her eye and said, "Weiss Schnee: Sister of Nicholas Schnee. Believed by many Atlesian historians to have been Nicholas Schnee's illegitimate half-sister and the true identity of his reindeer Faunus Huntsman partner, Blitzen. Pop cultural references to her all place her as the more active fighter of the two siblings."
"Blitzen was real," Weiss snapped, "His sister Vixen married my brother." She paused and began examining Pyrrha and her weapons. "I see weapons technology has improved, champion." She turned towards Penny and smiled softly, "And you're just a miracle, aren't you? Your father must be proud."
"How do you...?" Pyrrha began, only for Ruby to develop a wide grin as she interrupted her.
"Got another one nearby," she said, "And there's a legend in the making near there. Let's move."
Robyn Hill was not sure what to make of the blond that had interjected himself into her standoff with the Ace-Ops regarding the sudden disappearance of materials meant for the wall protecting Mantle. There was a hole that was already forming and she wanted to stop it from growing before anything big could make its way in, but the area had been getting the runaround this whole time. As the standoff continued, the boy had stepped out of practically thin air as he approached the scene, causing the whole thing to come to a stop.
"I've got to admit, you people have gotten better at working with colors," he noted, his sword within a shield that he was holding in front of him, "I remember the last time you guys went for people. All black and white, not even a hint of color. The red and midnight blue looks so much better, and you know I'm right, since I'm the guy who you Iconoclasts gouged out the eyes of for daring to paint."
"Stand down," Clover ordered, "We don't need to escalate things."
"I mean, I'm just holding up a shield," the blond said as May covered the Happy Huntresses with her Semblance, "Not exactly an offensive weapon... Course, that didn't stop you all from hanging me, Iconoclast Captain."
"There haven't been Iconoclasts since the Great War ended," Clover said calmly, though Harriet seemed to be bracing herself to lunge. That was when a swarm of rose petals began to encircle the group.
"Why is it that I always find you antagonizing people, Jaune?" a girl clad in a red hooded cloak said flatly.
"I guess it's because I hate Iconoclasts," the blond said, "Even when they change the name of what they are. Then again, I'm a painter. You know how we artistic types get."
"At any rate, you five can go, "We'll be sending these supplies to their appropriate destination."
"These supplies have been requisitioned for a top secret military project," Harriet said flatly.
"Then I"m sure that you have the appropriate documentation," a white-haired reindeer Faunus snapped, walking in like a miniature, yet somehow more disciplined version of Ironwood's number two, "After all, it would hardly be a proper requisition without documentation explaining the allocated materials, particularly since doing otherwise would have quite the interesting implications for the military's political position. Theft from the people they're supposed to serve. Goodness knows how council would react to that..."
"We have our orders."
"Now that's a familiar saying," Jaune noted as Fiona, hidden by May's Semblance, took the trucks, "You guys really are Iconoclasts! So where do you do the mass hangings? Or have you guys found a more efficient way to get rid of the people who disagree with you?"
"Well, we've distracted these nice thugs long enough," the cloaked one remarked as the Ace-Ops realized that the trucks with the supplies were no longer there, "Now that the supplies are gone, we'll just be on our way. We've got an unlucky wizard to chat with. And the poor guy that's stuck with him. Before that, though, Menagerie and Patch have their own legends coming to life."
"You're under arrest!" Harriet snapped, the Ace-Ops assuming combat positions while the Huntresses readied themselves to move to their apparent allies' defense.
"And that must be it!" Jaune cheered as the girl tossed him a paintbrush, "Very subtle. So, what is it? Euphemisms or work camps?"
"Well, time to hunt," the girl in the hood grinned, and her eyes seemed to almost glow with a predatory gleam as she examined the Ace-Ops, "Who's going to be first?"
Before anyone could move, she rushed Marrow, striking him in the throat before she turned and dodged Harriet's speed-boosted punches. As Harriet tried to land a blow, the girl suddenly grabbed Kingfisher's hook as Clover tried to catch her off-guard, tangling it into Harriet's armor. In that moment, Vine tried to grab her, only for her to grab the arms and swing him at Elm's head too quickly for it to be natural talent, injuring and disorienting the pair long enough for her to move in on Clover, only to vanish in a stream of rose petals as he braced himself for impact. Before he could react, he found himself once again swarmed by the petals as Kingfisher was ripped from his hands, Gravity Bolas suddenly wrapped around his wrist.
With an abrupt swing, Harriet was suddenly being slammed into Elm, then Clover, and finally the recovering Marrow, before the five members of Atlas's elite fighting force were on the ground, bound by their own bolas, rose petals fading into nothing as the girl approached them and took the unconscious Marrow's scroll before pressing a few buttons.
"General Ironwood, you might want to pick up your soldiers. They'll be in their prisoner transport vehicle. I'll keep the heat on for them. I'm not a monster."
Once the Ace-Ops were secured in their vehicle, the doors shut and locked from the outside for good measure, the cloaked girl turned towards where the Happy Huntresses were and smiled.
"I am so happy to know that there are some actual Huntresses out here!" she said cheerfully, "I love this environment, but there are so few actual Huntresses and Huntsmen out here."
"The Ace-Ops were trained in the same manner as Huntresses and Huntsmen," a girl that Robyn had seen die on live television noted. Despite what both Ironwood and the rest of Atlas seemed to think, the girl did not seem all that concerned that the General's top enforcers were just taken out, as if she weren't particularly concerned by the attack on the institution that had created her.
"I still say they're Iconoclasts," Jaune noted, "My mom always said, 'if the shoe fits...' and all that..."
"I don't understand why we couldn't help you," a girl who looked like she could be related to the Schnee family, save for the antlers, noted.
"I haven't had a good hunt in a long time," the cloaked girl complained, "I needed the exercise."
"Surely it would have been easier if you had backup, though," the unmistakable Pyrrha Nikos said. Robyn had heard that the girl had disappeared after the Fall of Beacon, and it seemed that this was where she had been.
"As I was saying," the girl pressed on, "You four are the only Huntresses in the area. May your hunts be fruitful, and I'll be seeing you all again soon enough. Speaking of which, Jaune!"
"Uh... yes?"
"I can't transport all of us to where we need to go and you need some practice. We need a tunnel to Patch," she said, "So you're going to make one."
"And how do you expect me to do that, Ruby?" he asked dryly.
"Give us a door," Ruby replied, tossing him a paintbrush, "Pick a rock, and let's go."
"And the paint?"
"Just trust me."
"Alright," he sighed, before he began to mime painting, only for the boulder he was drawing on to show paint where he had started the first line. Glancing at the paintbrush, he smiled and began to paint an elaborate door in a matter of minutes, at which point Ruby approached and opened the door, revealing an eerie forest that none of the Happy Huntresses recognized.
"I'll explain later," she told the other girls, "More legendary magic things. Let's go."
With that, the group entered the door, which shut behind them and reverted to simple paint as they left.
