AN
I don't own this stuff man, lay off.
He awoke to the smell of fire and smoke bypassing the already thoroughly destroyed filter of his suit's helmet. Struggling for a moment to get up, the man wiped the soot and grime from his visor and took a look around the burning ship. Burning ship? Yes, that's right, the UES Safe Travels. They had been on a rescue mission to that damn planet, Petrichor Five. Just remembering it's name made his skin crawl and adrenaline flood his system.
Pushing himself into a sitting position was all he could manage, though not due to any particular injury. It was going to take a lot more than crashing onto a planet from space to bypass his repulsor plating and teddy bears. Teddy bears? Shit that's right. Giving himself a once over he spotted the many trinkets and artifacts he had found during his search for survivors of the Contact Light. Twisted by the strange, seemingly magic effects of the planet, mundane items like ukuleles and teddy bears granted strange and powerful effects. From chaining lightning between enemies to completely negating any incoming damage, his repertoire was as diverse as they came. He heaved the debris blocking his escape from the ruins of the ship away and rose to his feet. Immediately he spotted and retrieved his sword. If this new planet was anything like Petrichor he was going to need it.
He was going to look for survivors, maybe the Captain of the ship, but he quickly disregarded this as futile, there were no survivors. No survivors? His head felt like it was splitting. Maybe the crash did him in harder than he thought. But he remembered a strange humanoid being with black skin and a red shawl. It tore through the security drones with help from it's massive blue energy blade and shadowy doppelganger. A snap of it's fingers summoned those awful crab-like entities. The logs he found on the planet called them void reavers. They sent the entire crew to the Void Fields, a prison dimension he had the displeasure of visiting on Petrichor. After that was a blur. No, wait, he had crashed the ship on an uncharted world to destroy the reavers. His head hurt again. He crashed the ship? Nice.
"Take that, demon-crabs" he smirked triumphantly under his helmet.
He regarded the crash site again. Clearly it had broken up on reentry, as fire and scrap were scattered for a good distance across the… he swiveled on his feet. Beach. He was on a beach quite reminiscent of the few jobs he had taken on Earth when he was just a budding mercenary.
"Excuse me? Are you alright?" was what the man behind him had attempted to say. He got no further than the first syllable when he found an energy blade uncomfortably close to his throat. Just as fast as the blade came up it went down.
"Ah, sorry." The mercenary spoke slowly. He was still adjusting to being around things that weren't trying to tear him to pieces for existing. Gave some of his crewmates the same scare after escaping the destruction of Petrichor Five's moon.
The man he was talking to was… unique clearly. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and dark khaki shorts. More strikingly however he appeared to be human, yet his hair was a brilliant blue, like the lightning from his royal capacitor. Even still, he appeared to have animal ears in addition to his human ones. What were those, cat? Small dog perhaps? This train of thought eventually led to an observation on his own appearance. His armor was torn off from the knees and elbows out on his limbs, and you couldn't even tell it was originally blue under all the dried blood and dirt. That wasn't even taking into account his own animal trait, namely the great green deer antlers on his head that denoted the presence of the rejuvenation rack. In conclusion, calling out somebody on their appearance was currently out of the question.
The mercenary's internal deliberation about appearances, to the faunus man, was approximately thirty seconds (going on a minute) of silence after this strange stranger's apology. Unable to bear the silence any longer, and unwilling to leave this man to whatever injuries he might have, he spoke again.
"Are you, ah, injured?"
"Nah, I'm alright."
Right then. Turns out making contact with an unknown peaceful species on a backwater planet after a spaceship crash was pretty fucking awkward. Or he was in shock. Was it shock? Should he be panicking right now? The mercenary's heart started to beat faster. Okay, there's the panic. He turned from the blue haired stranger and started to dig through the site for anything to jog his memory. The ship was attacked by a strange being after leaving Petrichor's moon. The crew was taken, not killed. What did the being need? Slaves? Information? Information! Shit, but for what?
"Are you looking for something mister? Maybe we should clear away from your..." the faunus man trailed off for a moment, "UFO?"
The man went unheard. The merc knew what he needed now, the ship logs, a black box. It was a damn long shot considering the thing was probably a literal black, highly durable metal box no bigger than his fist, but if what little he remembered of the crash was true, he should be somewhere near the bridge, and hopefully the box.
In a stroke of extreme luck, he shifted away some metal sheets to reveal a dented and slightly melted black cube. He was about to thank whatever old gods were watching over him, but he remembered something else. A beautiful, terrific, fantastic little clover with far too many leaves stuck to his helmet. He gave it an affectionate pat. He struggled to find an empty spot on his belt, but eventually found space in between the alien head and will-o'-the-wisp to clip it.
Peeking out of the mildly impressive hole he had dug in the wreckage, he spotted a newly congregated mob of people, with and without animal bits. What seemed like the local authorities were attempting to stop them from getting a closer look at what remained of the Safe Travels. One of the police, he guessed, had spotted him peeking out at the crowd and immediately called out to several other similarly uniformed men and women. They had him partially surrounded in a semi-circle formation with surprising quickness, and clear training despite the quite literally out of this world situation. Definitely some kind of police. He supposed that the various firearms pointed at him also gave it away.
The woman in the middle of the formation was probably in charge, he guessed. The fact her eyes weren't shifting between her colleagues like a nervous prey animal was telling of experience and likely a leadership role. She had short brown hair under a uniform cap, and her face was sort of pointed and cold. Slight laugh lines around her hazel eyes told of somewhere around middle age, if age worked the same on this world.
"If you can understand me," she spoke loudly and with an infectious confidence that hardened her more understandably skittish comrades, "walk out of the wreck with your hands raised!"
His hands went up. He had no qualms with these people, and on top of that he had just crashed a decently sized ship into their planet. Though, he needed to review the information on the black box to help his memory. There was a mystery desperately needing solving and a crew desperately needing saving. Arrest was probably not an option. As he was thinking, he began a slow walk towards the half-circle of authorities.
"Stop there, that's close enough." The woman spoke again. Despite her obvious experience, an uncertainty with how to proceed made itself present. The crashed ship from the sky was already crazy enough, but a living, breathing alien to boot?
"What now Ma'am?" A young male officer to her right inquired nervously.
"I believe the best course of action would be to await the arrival of back up in the form of a hunter or huntress before proceeding." Her confidence was coming back now with the formation of a plan. A pretty sound one at that. A fully fledged hunter or huntress, while being just as ready for an alien visit as the VPD would at least be able to handle combat if things got hostile.
The mercenary's arms were getting tired, and the rest of his half-remembered fiasco was starting to take a toll on him with the adrenaline dying down. Reasonably confident that if falling from space couldn't kill him a bullet couldn't either, he flopped into a seating position in the sand in one quick movement. Unfortunately for everybody involved, the movement may have been too sudden. A particularly on edge officer seemed to have reached his boiling point a minute or two ago, and the mercenary's sudden sitting was the last straw. He flinched and pulled the trigger a bit too tight.
The loud bang was followed by deafening silence. A policeman just shot the alien! Was the mob's reaction. Making themselves known again by shouting and gasping, their efforts to get a better look, photo, or video doubled as they writhed like an overly hyped moshpit of curiosity and fear. The officer that squeezed off the round was white as a sheet and looked about to drop his weapon. All the officers were tense now, and it was by a miracle and the shouts of 'hold your fire' from their commanding officer that another few shots weren't let off. The mercenary was coming down from a massive dose of adrenaline. Obviously he was completely unharmed, but if the officer that shot him had been a step closer the razorwire would have shot that damage straight back where it came from. He really didn't need an innocent body or a hostile world on his conscience right now.
Further down the beach, a few shadowy beasts began to lumber out of the brush. They vaguely resemble canines in the same way lemurians vaguely resembled salamanders, that being more of a humanoid like form. The air of hostility about them was immediately evident, as they snarled and growled, flexing impressive muscle and baring deadly teeth.
The police force that was surrounding him quickly switched to corralling a panicking mob back towards a dock up the opposite side of the beach from the monsters. Shouts of 'Grimm!' and 'Hunters!' could be heard above the terrified yelling. The merc wasn't entirely certain why the well enough armed police would abscond from battle in exchange for a hunter. Seemed sort of silly, truthfully. He drew the energy blade from his belt and in a small flourish ignited it to his side. Well he would have if it actually activated, unfortunately the blade's mechanism seemed to have been busted in the crash. This was not the first time he needed to replace his trusty weapon, as it had broken many times on Petrichor Five. Replacing it would be easy enough with Command; a supernatural ability he had picked up during his misadventures. All he needed was a weapon that was akin to a sword. For now the Royal Capacitor would do nicely.
Facing down the strange beasts, he tapped the mechanism on his shoulder, which started to crackle with a brilliant blue current. The machine itself looked vaguely like three tesla coils stuck to a sphere of some kind, but it's appearance did it's power no justice. Almost immediately after he had activated it, a bolt of lightning slammed into the leading 'grimm' as he heard them called, vaporizing it instantly. The death of the leading beast was followed by simultaneous explosions of ice and fire, along with a blazing vortex which decimated the remaining few shadow-things that remained.
All in all, the encounter lasted maybe a second or two. The only thing that betrayed the fact combat had ever happened was a patch of beach that had been glassed by the massive firepower. A fuel cell at his hip beeped as it emptied its power into the royal capacitor. Nice thing about these bad boys is that they refilled over time. Something to do with fusion reactions or something, he was no engineer. Well, the grimm-whatevers seemed to have scared the civilians and police to a range where they would be no issue any time soon. He did feel a bit guilty about the ship crash and everything though, and the commotion he made probably attracted those things too. It was justified to a certain extent, anything from Petrichor was very bad news, and there was no doubt that one-eyed being was still lurking around, either here on the planet or back in the Void Fields. His top priority was killing and destroying anything to do with Petrichor when he came across it. Second was figuring out what the hell happened before and during his crash landing.
Having finally sorted himself out, the first steps of a plan started to form. First, head further up the beach and circle back to the area near the docks to avoid attention, next, use Metamorphosis, yet another seemingly magic artifact from the planet, to hide his augments and generally change his appearance. The denizens of the planet seemed to be human enough despite the animal traits, so maybe keep the rejuvenation rack? Finally, once in civilization, find a computer to access the black box. Hopefully the plan would go off without a hitch.
Spoiler alert, the plan didn't make it past step fucking one.
AN
Gonna come clean right now, I haven't watched a single fucking episode of RWBY. Everything I know comes from other fanfics so yeah, this is pretty odd. Probably not the only person to have ever done this but there you are. That would be the reason as to the distinct lack of RWBY characters in this so far, I'm not confident enough to whip up their personalities from second hand characterizations (not to diss any other fics of course). I plan on watching some soon to top off my knowledge.
Played the shit out of RoR and RoR2 though, so no problems there.
Just thought RoR needed more stories, and from what I've read, RWBY seems pretty damn compatible with a surprising amount of stories. So here we are.
Thanks for reading,
DeadManDreaming
