A/N: I wanted to explore a bit of how Team JNPR's Semblances would work in a modern urban area, as well as introduce the Maidens in a way that made sense. Their lore so far is going to be fairly similar to the Green Lantern Corps, allowing for differences like the lack of Aura. Enjoy!
This was supposed to be a training run, not a battle to the death against a fifty-foot mechanical centipede. But giant robot bugs tend to show up when you least expect them, so this is a battle to the death.
Pyrrha ducks (falls, really) into an alleyway. A leg the size of a telephone pole rips through the rooftops on either side of her.
"Team, what's the situation on your end?" she asks, raising a hand to her earpiece.
"Bad," Ren says. "Our bullets are bouncing off, and Jaune is dead weight."
"We can still win this!" Nora shouts, punctuating the sentence with a hammer blow.
Pyrrha steps out into the street, then has to dive for a nearby shopfront as the creature lands, thrashing, in the street, pavement cracking underneath it.
They aren't going to win like this.
The creature's mandible stabs down toward Ren and Pyrrha throws her spear, using the electromagnets embedded in her wrists to guide it, because this is a desperate situation and the havoc she just wreaked with every electronic device in a fifty-foot radius is relatively inconsequential.
The creature lunges up at the last moment to bat the spear away from its eye, and Ren jumps to his feet and dodges away, but he's slower than he should be. Another injury means weeks of recovery time, and Ren's their stealth operative.
Pyrrha's glance at Ren is all it takes for the creature to turn to her and start attacking. Pyrrha ducks, but feels its mandibles scrape across her breastplate. She rolls to what she thinks is a safe distance, then comes up, swinging the shield around to block the next attack.
She blocks the next attack, at least, but the creature bats her across the street and straight into a concrete wall. That's three ribs gone, probably a concussion, and her leg is a mess, but she can still fight. Maybe.
Pyrrha blinks away the haze and struggles to stand as the creature's head whips around to focus on her again. Pyrrha stabs desperately at exposed joints, issuing a quiet prayer to whatever god might hear her. Can we get a miracle? Please?
Nora swings at the legs of the creature, running towards the head. A few legs stab downward faster than Nora can block.
Shit. Pyrrha swings her shield into the creature's head, wincing at the snap of bones in her hand. Nora's down too. The best she can hope for is backup from the other team, which isn't likely to come soon enough to make a difference. They're dead.
There's an earsplitting crack, so loud that Pyrrha initially thinks it must be a gas main bursting, then a series of quieter popping noises. Pyrrha vaults over the next strike of the mandibles and glances outward.
That's my girl. Nora's a tough one to kill.
A power line is wrapped around Nora's hammer. Small bolts of electricity are running across the metal of her jacket and mask, sinking into the skin just below her eyes where the mask ends. Nora raises the hammer, and Pyrrha ducks instinctively.
The resulting sonic boom flattens what's left of the wall behind her and sends her tumbling into the warehouse space beyond. The lower half of the centipede is neatly separated from the upper half, both halves jerking and twitching as the electricity takes effect.
"Yeah! Victory!" Nora shouts, punching the air. Then her grin slips. "Everyone okay?"
"Never been better," Jaune comments shakily, approaching her. Ren is leaning against his shoulder, limping heavily.
"Pyrrha?"
"I'm all right," Pyrrha calls, standing up in a way that looks effortless, from years of practice. No matter how bad the injury is, if you get up like it's nothing, your enemy loses heart. "Nice job, team. Nora, good call to use your abilities then."
Her armor is heavily scratched. It's designed to harmlessly deflect small arms fire, and barely warp from anything smaller than a minigun, so this is a little worrisome. The robots her team has been facing are increasingly dangerous and destructive, although this is the first one they've seen without a villain controlling it –
Pyrrha swears under her breath.
"This was a distraction," she says. "There's something worse happening. Spread out and search."
"What could be happening, though? This is the suburbs; there aren't many crimes worth a robot of this scale," Nora points out. "Maybe this villain was just kind of crazy. We get a lot of those, after all."
"We're searching anyway," Pyrrha repeats. "Team RWBY, that goes for you too."
"Ten four," Ruby responds. "We're on our way; currently in Sector 37."
Pyrrha would vault up to the rooftops, but her leg isn't really up to that task, so she takes the road. Nora's right; this isn't an area where that sort of robot makes sense just as a distraction. There are no banks or politicians or people rich enough to have enemies.
A twitch of a bush turns out to be a dog, a light just a house's motion sensor, and a twig crunching to be her own teammates. Pyrrha is on edge nevertheless, because whatever happened is big.
The periodic reports from her bored-sounding team of "Nothing on this block" turn into faint background noise. Pyrrha alternates between a jog and a fast walk, aware that she'd probably look ridiculous to anyone around to see her.
There's a small park ahead, darker than the surrounding landscape thanks to the trees. Pyrrha flicks down the infrared lenses of her mask.
One person, on the ground, not moving. This could be anything from a homeless person to a serial killer's latest victim, so Pyrrha balances at the top of the ten-foot wall around the park to peer around. No other warm bodies besides the faint pink blotches of squirrels, and no machinery producing significant heat. Should be safe.
The person on the ground is a young woman, maybe in her twenties, in brown. She doesn't look muscular, so odds are she isn't much of a fighter. Breathing faintly, but unconscious.
Pyrrha extends a hand to check her pulse. Her skin is cold and clammy, and her heartbeat is slow.
Before Pyrrha can pick the woman up and whisk her away to an ER, the woman's eyes open. They're orange-gold, although that might just be the effect of the low light.
"The Huntress," she rasps.
Pyrrha nods.
"Let's get you to a hospital," she says in her calculated-to-be-reassuring voice.
"No," the woman responds. "Listen to me."
"Ma'am, you're seriously injured and need medical care," Pyrrha says, preparing to toss the woman over her shoulder and carry her.
"It's too late for me, but you have to warn the other Maidens," the woman says, grabbing Pyrrha's wrist with surprising strength.
"Ma'am, you need medical care –"
The woman shakes her head.
"Of course you've forgotten the Maidens. They've been protecting Remnant for millennia; longer than you heroes. But someone needs to take up the post of the Fall Maiden now."
The woman's fingernails dig into her own arm before Pyrrha can stop her. She doesn't seem to notice the injuries to herself, instead peeling something out of the muscle of her forearm. It's about three inches long and cylindrical, with a metallic sheen. It's oddly clean, despite the blood dripping off of the woman's hand.
The woman's eyes fade back to brown.
"You don't have powers," she whispers, "so you can take this on. It's the only way to stop Cinder."
"Who is Cinder?" Pyrrha asks.
The woman coughs, then her eyes flicker closed. The glowing object falls into the grass.
Pyrrha cautiously extends a hand and touches the object. Nothing happens. She picks it up and examines it more closely. The underside is darker and jagged, as if it's been broken. As Pyrrha watches, drips of golden light fall from it, dissipating when they hit the ground.
It's nothing like a human creation, which worries Pyrrha. She pushes it into her pocket.
It might be powerful, but I don't trust it, especially if it's broken like that.
She leaves the woman's body for the police to find and rejoins her team. Her priority right now is just to make sure that Remnant survives, and she has no time for Maidens or Cinder and their alien problems.