Author's note:

Hey everyone, it's been quite a ride, uh? So, as you guessed, I wrapped up RWBY Volume 1. This is only the beginning, though, so don't worry. Please don't hesitate to review and say what you thought about this story so far. As for the only questions I received, well, spoiler alert:

Yes, Remnant is Earth, millennia after the Edelweiss left it.

The Kashgar was ambushed by something linked to the Grimm, but not quite Grimm itself. Think of it as a more advanced version.

Also, as you probably guessed, part of the story revolves around finding the Kashgar. It won't happen anytime soon, but it will happen. And it won't be abandoned. If you want to suggest an OC to be part of the surviving crew, don't hesitate to PM me.

Four years ago, city of New Calypso, planet Maia

Roy was lying in bed, playing The Last War. It was a global strategy game in VR, where you incarnate leaders of the Resistance against the Swarm, an alien race bent on exterminating human life. Of course, you wouldn't really see what it looked like since most of the game was spent in a Combat Information Center, so the action was mostly blue and red blips shooting each other. The essence of the game is cooperation, as each player in this MMO commanded his or her own ship and troops. He commanded a small Peterson-class frigate, with a crew of 126 people, all bots. He only started playing the game for about a month and recently upgraded his ship from the starter corvette to his frigate. It'd be years before he could get a carrier of a dreadnought, and even longer to get the leviathan from the new DLC.

Roy was in the middle of an operation, guiding his squad of marines throughout a derelict wreck to salvage. As he sent a man towards the machine shop, an alarm took his attention elsewhere. It wasn't coming from the game, but from his VR set. It was 8 o'clock, time for dinner. Roy recalled his troops and logged out, leaving his VR set on the bed.

His room was a twelve square meters box with grey walls and a window. Inside was a regular bed, a desk with his computer and some closets filled with clothes and random stuff. He got out of his room and walked down the stairs. In the living room, his younger brother and his little sister waited while his parents finished the meal. Soon, his older sister would come down, too, and they would share they regular family dinner like every day. His older sister, Amelia, was studying to become an engineer and spent a lot of time in her room for that. His younger siblings, Josh and Jessica, were still in middle school. His father, Michael, was one of the town's councilman while his mother, Diane, was a doctor. They watched the news as they cleaned up after eating. Something about taxes, angry people, poverty lines… Roy didn't really care about politics, he was just a regular fifteen-year-old kid, playing video games and chasing girls. Well, mostly playing video games, actually.

His father's phone rang, the ringtone breaking the silence in the living room. It was his work phone.

"Hello? Anderson here. Rémi? What's going on?"

Before Roy could hear anything more, his father retreated in his office, leaving the rest of the family as clueless as him. When his father's work phone rang at this hour of the day, it was never a good thing. After a few moments, he stormed out of his room, grabbed his coat and reached the front door. He turned to face his mom and said something. It was too far for him and his siblings to hear, but given his mom's face, it wasn't good. A car honked outside, and his father left. So, there was already a government car waiting outside? What could be possibly happening? Before he could ask any question, his mom joined them in the living room.

"Listen kids, we're going to stay a little while at aunty Graham's place, pack up your things and bring them down here."

"Mommy? What's going on? Why did daddy go?" asked Jessica.

"He's just gone to work, sweetie, nothing to worry about. Go get your plushies, and don't forget your toothbrush!"

Following this, no one asked any questions about it. They all knew something went wrong, something they probably wouldn't understand, so they just focused on packing their things up. They loaded everything in the family's SUV and took the road. Aunt Graham lived in Belisar, a dome city just a couple thousand kilometers to the east. The only way there is either the maglev or the spaceport, and apparently mom opted for the latter. It was late, and no one was on the streets, absolutely no one. As they reached the spaceport, Roy saw one of the largest crowd he ever saw. They reached the terminal for flights to Belisar and bought their tickets. They waited for three hours in the middle of the night before they could check in their luggage. Josh and Jessica fell asleep once they reached the boarding area. The spaceport had never been this crowded before, it was like half the city was trying to leave. Luckily for them, mom bought first class seats, so they got to board first. Or they would have, if it all went well. Amelia was well ahead with Josh and Jessica, but Roy needed to go to the bathroom and was lagging behind when it all went to shit. An explosion in the main dock left a burning wreckage instead of a commercial passenger ship, and everyone panicked. It wasn't everything, either. There were gunshots, too. Everyone rushed to board the ship they were waiting for. The crew tried to make it into an orderly queue but quickly gave up and prepared for launch. Looking far into the crowd, Roy saw his siblings getting in. Reassured, he looked around, looking for his mother. She was trying to reach him, fighting against the crowd. Suddenly, gunshots stopped everyone. They were close, very close. Roy looked in the direction everyone was looking and understood. A dozen armed men were standing there, their faces hidden beneath balaclavas.

"In the name of the Maian Liberation Front, we are taking control of this spaceport and all flights are to be inspected by Liberation Fighters."

"Screw you! You don't own shit!" yelled a man in a business suit. He was promptly shot in the head, the red and pink mist slowly raining back on the floor as the terrorist leader resumed his speech.

"Lack of cooperation will be interpreted as collaboration with our corrupt government. Now, all of you sit down and shut up."

As the crowd obeyed, they realized that the ship they were trying to seize closed its airlock.

"Scheisse! Ficko, Riley, get that door opened!"

Two of his goons ran toward the door, but it was too late. The ship ripped itself off the boarding tube, small black impacts appearing on its side as the rebels tried to shoot it, and flew away. The thrust sent the two goons flying back towards their leader, who swore again. Before Roy could think of anything, one of the goons dragged his mom out of the crowd.

"Well, look at that, we've got ourselves a nice, valuable hostage. I'm sure the council will keep the Feds out of the way now that we've got Ms. Anderson."

"My husband would never let you have it your way. We don't negotiate with terrorists."

"Oh, but we're not! We're the Liberation Front! Half of the planet is taking arms with us. This isn't about terror, it's about power, power to the people!"

Before the leader could add anything more, another goon ran into the group.

"Boss, boss! We've got company! They deployed the Guard faster than we expected, these merdeux are retaking the port!"

"That's okay, we've got a bargaining ship now."

Roy felt the rage boiling in his blood, but he knew he didn't stand a chance. Instead, he waited for an occasion to strike. The terrorists took hostages to defend themselves and waited for the Guard soldiers to arrive. It didn't take long. One of the soldiers yelled through his radio.

"Put down your weapon! Put them down, now!"

"Easy there, cowboy. Look what we found!" answered the rebel leader.

"Release the hostages or you will be fired upon!"

"Now, now, no need to be harsh. After all, in a few hours, WE will be your leaders."

"Keep dreaming, asshole!" yelled another soldier.

While both parties were arguing, Roy sneaked his way to one of the goons, waiting for an occasion to do something. No one was looking at the crowd, both parties locked with each other. Someone grabbed Roy by his arm. The young boy looked back and realized that it was a woman, one of the would-be passengers. Her eyes were wet, she was on the verge of crying, and her arm was trembling. She was afraid, everyone was, and yet she tried to stop him from doing something very stupid.

"That's enough! Drop your weapons now!"

"Make me."

As the rebel leader said those words, he and his goons aimed their guns at the soldiers instead of their hostages. The memories of the following chaos became rather fuzzy in Roy's mind after all these years, but he could still remember very clearly the outcome. Somehow, his mother had been hit, with the dead rebel leader lying next to her. Roy remembered perfectly her last words.

I'm just glad to see you're okay.

In the following hours, the news came to finish him. The planetary administration building, home to the Maian council, and thus his father, has been blown up by saboteurs. The government was now in shambles, with the Guard over its head trying to keep control of the cities. The planet was now officially in a state of civil war, and to make it worse, the quantum relay, the only way to communicate in real time with the rest of human civilization, was under the control of the Maian Liberation Front. This meant that they could feed false information to the rest of the Federation, and it'd take months for any ship to tell what truly happened. That is, if anyone would believe them. The only good news he got is that the ship carrying his siblings escaped to orbit relatively safely and was heading for Zenith Rise, the nearest human colony. Amelia could probably get help there, figure something out. In the meantime, he'd need a way to get back to them, and do it fast.

Several months later, Resistance outpost, somewhere in New Calypso

Somehow, Roy ended up in charge of a small Resistance outpost near the administrative district. It was a small team, only seven people, using a maintenance room in the underground transport network. The situation was at a stalemate, but they retook the quantum relay faster than expected. As a result, a liberation fleet was scheduled to arrive in the coming days. Roy and his team, pretty much all teenagers, were only tasked with recon and intelligence gathering. They were actually pretty decent at it, too. Unfortunately, they couldn't understand why the Liberation Front didn't fight like crazed fanatics after they lost the quantum relay. They knew that a fleet was coming, their excuse for quarantine didn't hold for long and too much time had passed. And yet, they didn't surrender, they dug in, waiting for something. Maybe they thought that they could actually win this. If they did, then they had some cards to play, and right now, no one really knew what it was. The Federation's response did not change. The fleet would land a few divisions outside of the cities and they would then try to retake them one by one. Maia was in the habitable zone, but her atmosphere wasn't breathable for humans. Not enough oxygen, too much nitrogen. Without any breathing apparatus, someone could breath for about three minutes before passing out.

The military didn't want to compromise the dome cities, even if regulations made sure that there were contingencies in this case. As a result, the plan was to take control of the city's airlocks to get the military inside. If airlocks couldn't be secured, then they'd be breached.

D-Day, main airlock 3, New Calypso

The Resistance, made up of both Guard reservists and militiamen, would coordinate simultaneous strikes on the city's largest airlocks. If even one of them was secured, the military could bring in heavy armor. Roy's cell, being a recon unit, wandered around airlock A-3 for a little while as part of the operation. They gathered any information they could and relayed it to the frontline units. To avoid unnecessary risks, they retreated deeper into the city prior to the operation to relay information about MLF reinforcements while the others secured the airlock. The battle didn't go as planned. The airlock was sabotaged, and the door only opened high enough for people to duck through. The MLF had them pinned without armor support. The two tanks in the airlock could blow up the door, but that meant no further reinforcements. Roy didn't want to stay idle while others died. He did that once, and he promised himself that he'd never let it happen again.

"Let's give them a hand, if we can break their lines here, the military can break through!"

"But we're not soldiers! How do we do anything about that?!"

"Send a car ? We could rig the controls with some bricks and stuff, I don't know."

"Oh sure! And when they figure out that we did this, we'll be dead meat!"

"Like they didn't know already! We're the only ones out there, everyone else ran away."

"Fine… we should help. But none of us know how to drive anything, how are we going to do that hijack?"

Back at the airlock, Resistance members and soldiers alike were pinned down, taking cover behind the barricades the MLF used to defend it in the first place. Half the Resistance team was dead, and the few soldiers that arrived weren't enough. The MLF was raining fire on them with a mix of laser, LENR and ballistic weapons. Most of them were huddled behind a large barricade about fifty meters in front of the airlock. That is, until a cargo truck rammed into them. Some rebels noticed it and dodged it, but a few were utterly crushed by it. As with nearly all vehicles in the Federation, the full-electric propulsion made it hard to hear them coming. Combined with a firefight, the result was quite… effective. The barricade was gone and the MLF lines were broken. To make things better, a second wave emerged from the airlock, some of them were engineers to repair the airlock's inner door. One of the soldiers, a team leader, probably, walked up to the truck wreck to inspect the result. Roy's team approached carefully to regroup with the friendly forces. It was a mop up now, anyway. The soldier noticed them and signaled them to join him.

"Who's in charge of you kids?"

"I am, why?"

"And you did this?" he asked, pointing to the truck.

"Umh… yeah?"

"That was a nice trick, these fuckers really weren't expecting it. What's your name?"

"Roy. Roy Anderson."

"Anderson, huh… Look, we're going to set up an FOB around here, know a good place?"

"Uh, sure, there's a parking lot south-east. Lots of cover and clear roads around. Sound pretty defensible."

"How old are you kid?"

"I'm turning sixteen next month, umh...sir?"

"Damn… they grow so fast… Okay, show us the way. You're doing fine work out there, kid."

And with the planetary capital secured, putting an end to the civil war took less than three weeks. With nothing left to keep him on this world, Roy decided to enroll in the Army. He had several letter of recommendation from several non-commissioned officers that he met in the previous months, and subsequently applied directly to a military academy to be trained as an officer. His three-year stay on the Federation's homeworld, Deoria, was far from vacations. With his pay remaining largely unnecessary, the military providing him food, shelter and education, most of his pay went straight to his sister. After his graduation, the young lieutenant was given the opportunity to join the Rangers, and spent half a year through the course. And thus began the story of Roy Anderson, 2nd Lieutenant of the Army Rangers.

Present day, Beacon Academy dorms

"And then you know how I ended up here."

Roy was sitting in front of team RWBY in the dorm's recreation room. The sofas were really nice, but the coffee was horrible. The lieutenant instead settled for some tea, which wasn't really any better.

"So after that you just became a Ranger? Does that mean you're like, super-good?"

Roy chuckled. Ruby certainly was the most attentive of the four girls. Like him, she was a couple years younger that she should be, given her current title.

"Well, I'm a Ranger, yes. The youngest one ever, probably. But I never said I was a good one. I was the second-to-last in the class. I did pass and got the badge, but it was a close call. The training was meant for experienced soldiers, not green recruits. Besides, Rangers aren't Special Forces. We're...umh… more like a counter-insurgency unit."

"Did you get to see your family again?"

"See them on a screen, sure. They're doing fine now. Amelia's not an engineer, but she likes what she's doing. Josh and Jessica are in highschool, they should be graduating this year."

"I hope you get to see them again."

"Yeah, I hope so too."

"Sooooo… you're a special soldier, right? Can you do anything cool? What are you trained for?"

Yang was more interested in the practical stuff it seemed. She did listen to all the emotional bits, but obviously she either didn't want to dig in or it was her weird way to redirect the conversation to something more… joyful.

"Well, as an officer, it's more about teamwork than fighting. As a Ranger though, I was trained for a shitload of things. I can fly a Raven, I can shoot a moving tin can half a kilometer away, I can drive a tank up Central Alley without ripping the flower pots…"

Weiss interrupted him, or rather, raised her hand and Roy stopped to let her speak.

"What's a tank? You talked about those before but I never heard of them."

"Seriously? You don't have those here? Damn… Well, put simply, it's a big truck, with a big gun and thick armor."

"Really? That's all? It doesn't sound that useful."

"Oh, believe me, they are. Maybe not against Grimm, sure, and even then, I still think they could put down a Deathstalker fairly easily... but against a human army? They're essential. They bring heavy firepower on a highly mobile platform that's immune to most weapons."

"How strong are we talking about?"

Of course Yang would ask that. Roy could feel her thoughts. Can I beat one.

"Well… a Grizzly's main gun can punch through half a meter of caniral up to six kilometers away."

"Uuh… what's caniral?" asked Ruby. She was confused, as a gun-nut she knew almost every alloy in the book.

"Ah, sorry. It's basically an alloy that's better than steel. We use it for pretty much everything. It's lighter, stronger and stainless."

"Ooohh, what is it made of? Can we make some? Crescent Rose could use an upgrade…"

"Look, I'm no metallurgist. I know it's made of carbon, nickel, iron and aluminium. And some chromium, too. But I also know it's some very precise manufacturing so I'm not sure it's replicable here."

"Aw" was all the little Grimm Reaper said. Roy resisted the urge to pat her on the head. Instead, he got up from the sofa.

"Well girls, I'm going back to my team. I hope you enjoyed that little story time."

"See you tomorrow!"

"See ya!"