In a galaxy far, far away from Remnant, there was a planet of great beauty and fascinating secrets just waiting to be uncovered by curious minds. In a perfect world, after the planet was found, Remnant's best and brightest would gather their finest men and equipment and organise into a yet unseen conclave of learning and discovery, make their way onto this paradise of knowledge and advance humanity into the new era of prosperity and scientific development.
The world being what it was, the discovery of Pandora brought about the gathering of guns, ships, rockets, robots, cannons, lasers, bombs, fire, mercs, and guns.
"YOU MAY ASK, WHO WAS WEARING THE BOLO TIE? ME OR THE SHARK I SUPLEXED? ANSWER: YES."
It also brought Mister Torgue High-Five Flexington to Pandora.
"YOU'VE PROBABLY NOTICED THAT EVERYONE HERE IS TRYING TO EXPLODE YOU, TORGUE PERSONNEL INCLUDED. YOU'RE WELCOME."
Being the man of science and discovery that he was, Mr. Torgue had since enthusiastically facilitated the rapid release of energy and heat elevation all across Pandoran orbit, more commonly referred to as 'BLOWING SH*T UP.'
"SMILE, MOTHERF*CKERS! YOUR MUGS WILL LOOK AWESOME ON RADIO!"
He also hijacked local ECHO broadcasting, because other corporations were too busy shooting at everybody else to care about ECHOnet.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! GIVE IT UP FOR THE NEW CONTENDER! THE HYPERION CORPORATION HAVE ARRIVED! LET US SEE IF MR. TASSITER HAS AN EXPLOSIVE ENTRY!"
A few moments passed when nothing had happened.
"THEN LET ME HELP YOU WITH THAT, MR. TASSITER." Torgue hammered a few buttons on his console, and the space truck fired a gyrojet at the closest ship of the new fleet. It quickly sped up and smashed into the kinetic shield, blossoming into a nuclear fireball.
"WELCOME TO TORGUE LAND, MOTHERF*CKER. IF YOU AREN'T MADE OF GASOLINE, METAL, OR BACON, GET THE F*CK BACK OUT!"
The perfect citizen of Torgue land was quite busy at that moment and couldn't hear him. Invading your opponent's cruiser was serious business, after all.
Wilhelm ducked back under cover after his ECHO scroll pinged with an automated message. The meritocratic bank account had confirmed the latest killstreak and shuffled money accordingly; he now had enough to make his coveted purchase. A press of a button commenced the procedure.
Pain blossomed at the fingertips and crawled upwards, sending nerves into a frenzy that violently shook the whole hand. He grit his teeth as digistruct technology swapped previously fragile arm with a hydraulic cybernetic fist, agonisingly slowly replacing flesh with metal. Before, brittle bones condition meant he couldn't put his love of fights to good use and failed Hunter academy entrance exam a number of times; it led Wilhelm to a mediocre mercenary life until Handsome Jack set up this particular method of rewarding him for outstanding performance in the field. Now that the surgery have finished, however, he was that much closer to his coveted dream of becoming a robot, and was itching to test out the latest performance boost in the field.
Wilhelm jumped into the open, quickly sprinting across the open deck crisscrossed by a number of tracer rounds. Fortunately, the enemy was stupid enough to not focus on him while he run; the joke was on them, now.
"Welcome to robot punch city! Population - everyone's faces!"
The Lost Legion soldiers reacted quickly, transforming their guns into melee weaponry and circling around him. But the good news about a fist made of metal was that it didn't require much skill to whack people in the face with it. As the nearest soldier was bringing about his cumbersome weapon (seriously, who in their right mind uses a scythe?), Wilhelm threw the first punch, hydraulics extending it way beyond normal reach. It went through the shield and Aura both, launching his opponent to sail back through the air and into the wall. He did not get back up. The rest of the Lost Legion took a step back.
"This is better than therapy!" Wilhelm grinned and started on his new deposit.
"Aaaaaaand, OPEN!"
Roland sent a silent alarm to his squad, though he need not have bothered; that loud and cheery voice could have raised the dead and very clearly stated that the rogue Claptrap unit had disabled another door lock in the way of their mysterious attackers. He palmed a cylinder two inches wide that will deploy his turret once thrown, and held up a hand to hold his men from springing the ambush too quickly, waiting in silence for footsteps.
"Sarge, reinforcements coming up on your six, how copy?" A soldier he left back at the entrance reported over the comms.
Roland cursed his luck and motioned one of the men to take his position, before withdrawing further into the stacks of whatever equipment Crimson Lance decided was important enough to carry halfway across the galaxy.
"Not the time, Private. Whoever that is, tell them to hold position until shots are fired. Out," he whispered.
There was an explosion and a torrent of rapid fire. One of the Aura gauges from his squad went into the red and then black in a matter of seconds.
"All troops, engage," Roland shouted over a wide-band and sprinted back towards the battlefield, chucking the turret cylinder over the crates and (hopefully) cutting off the enemy from retreating. He glanced at the ECHO scroll map display, checking if promised new troops weren't walking right into the grinder he set up. They didn't, but the name-tags caught his eye. Or, rather, one name in particular.
He hesitated only for a moment before setting up a waypoint for the man, right in the middle of the killzone. There was no rest for the wicked, and some were deserving of eternal torment more than others. Let the fucker get one last assist by playing bait.
Roland quickly shuffled positions for the Crimson Lance under his command, closing the encirclement and further reinforcing all fronts with newcomers. The attack will be repelled here, if he had any say in it. A whole army will break its teeth trying to push through his defence.
Unfortunately, it was not an army that was attacking.
The jets cut off almost as soon as they fired, and then engaged again; the fuel that was designed to move the pod in space was too powerful for a short hop away from danger, and she calculated the precise timings and angles to prevent a hard landing. She took all systems under her direct command from the moment they entered; it would be embarrassing to let the rough AI onboard handle it when her own ability was that much greater and available for collaboration. All vital systems were showing adequate readings, and she turned her focus to the only thing in the pod that wasn't under her control.
"Gaige, are you uninjured?"
"Yeah, I'm okay. And you?"
She run a quick diagnostics on her main body, internal workings reporting once again acceptable results. She waited a beat before replying, marveling at how her heart could beat.
"I'm combat ready!"
"Pft, combat. We're running away!" Gaige smashed her cybernetic arm into the panel to her left in anger. Fortunately, the escape pod they were flying in had a redundant and heavily reinforced framework to preserve life onboard, so Penny simply re-routed all the damaged circuits.
"As we should, Gaige. Father said..."
"Father is not here! That's the whole reason we're doing this. Smash the system!" Gaige swung her hand again, but the broken panel was sparkling with constant electric discharge and she thought better of it. The ergonomic seat lost it's handrest, instead. "And besides, there's not much time left anyway. The fuel should run out any moment."
"Eight point three seconds until touchdown," Penny dutifully reported, gently guiding the pod to skip twice against local river surface and then to slide onto the sandy beach, decelerating all the while. A few warnings popped up, mostly superficial damage, but nothing unaccounted for beforehand. A satisfactory performance overall, even for someone with an excessive amount of processing power for the task.
The instructions stated that she was now to broadcast a distress signal and shift power to defensive systems. And yet, deep in her soul (a real soul!), she knew otherwise. Well, not really knew, but that could be rectified presently.
"What should be our next priority?"
"Now we become the epitome of asskickery and awesomeness! By finding Grimm and beating the crap out of 'em, booyah! I'm going to test the tech I cooked up for just this occasion - and I've already got a bunch of ideas on the way down, too - because seriously, who in their right mind would test experimental laser weaponry on dummies like dad wanted me to, that's just silly, right? So I'm, like, screw general Ironwood, anarchy forever! Let him drag his feet in orbit, we're gonna drop right away. And we did! Well, you did. I'm a genius, but even I can't figure out atmospheric re-entry window on the fly. Good thing you showed up when you did." Gaige suspiciously glanced at her, but Penny kept silent about hacked security cameras in the R&D department of the Crimson Lance. "Anyway, right now, now, we're looking for baddies, and... oh crap, my radar's offline." The broken panel sparkled at her again. Gaige unfurled and digistructed a wide array of tools from her cybernetic limb and enthusiastically endeavored to rebuild it.
Penny bypassed the damaged interface and accessed radar readings directly. It seemed Gaige's wish came true, as red dots were swarming on the other side of the river.
It was time for her to get to work, too.
Axton peeked around the corner for the moment and hid back in case anyone shot at him. He need not have bothered, as the corridor was empty of hostiles. Moving up quickly, he crossed over to the door controls and hammered in an override code into the panel. The door disengaged its locks and split apart. He squatted and very carefully glanced into the next room.
The Schnee boarders have stopped their advance and set up here, his intel claimed, and colonel Zarpedon dispatched a commando to scout the area and disrupt whatever plans the enemy had. Now that he got a visual, their intent become clear - a constructor bot have smashed its way in and was busy assembling some sort of giant walker mech. The Schnee mercs were scattered around, mostly alert, but he could see a few patrols he could take out undetected, too.
Axton quickly run through his options - discarding for obvious reasons the standard routine of reporting back to his superiors and waiting for reinforcements - and arrived at a scientifically sound conclusion that he needed more explosives to deal with the situation. Which, once again, meant he'd have to back off and come around another time after resupplying. Or maybe, just maybe, he could loot something from the corpses of his enemies.
Nodding at his own brilliance, Axton crept forward in between crates and boxes stacked haphazardly all over the place. Whoever was responsible for the cargo arrangement must have been disorganised as all hell, but for now it played into his hands.
Something tumbled under his feet and Axton barely managed to roll out of the way as the grenade exploded. One of the attackers took advantage of the rough topography and climbed halfway to the ceiling, setting up a reinforced position from above. The kinetic shield broke under a heavy sniper round, and the commando scrambled out of the line of fire, hiding himself in a corner. There were shouts and orders a few rows over, and any other men would think himself boxed in and nearly finished, but Axton had a card up his sleeve. Literally.
A flick and a gesture, and a box with his Sabre turret teleported onto the wall above him, gluing itself to the surface and deploying a dome shield, multiple barrels and a rocket pod. There was a muffled 'oh, crap' from the sniper, before a missile salvo hammered that position. The miniguns rotated downwards, spraying bullets all the while, and Axton used the confusion to flank his enemies.
"Bingo!" He murmured when one of the unlucky bastards pivoted a rocket launcher towards the turret. Axton transformed his gun into a tomahawk and smacked the guy in the back. It took another box-turned-autogun, this time on the ceiling, to draw fire, and there was an opening in enemy ranks. He tried to savor the pleasant moment of breaking expensive shit into bits and getting paid for it, leisurely looting the body and crossing the room towards the bot like a badass, while the rest of the area descended into chaos and mayhem.
Finally, the commando climbed onto the suitable crate to get line of sight of the constructor and instead was greeted by the humongous mech it was digistructing, very much completed and active. It turned slightly to track him and its hand cannons started glowing ominously.
"Well, shit," Axton said to no one in particular and dived for cover, mourning his payday.
Step, step, dodge, swing.
The Alpha Beowulf towered impossibly high over her, and had enough strength to uproot trees without slowing down.
Jab, swing, jump, shoot.
Its swipes left whole swathes of forest leveled, making footing treacherous and combat difficult.
Twist, turn, brace, dash.
Intelligence shone through its eyes as it boxed her in, carefully dismantling every bit of cover around her.
Slash, shoot, rush, zip.
It ignored any wounds it had suffered and didn't seem to slow down even a little.
Step, whirl, sweep, shoot.
It had bone plating strong enough to weather multiple disintegrator shots from her scythe point blank.
Halt, jump, swing, run.
For Ruby Rose, it was Tuesday.
Flash, bounce, pivot, shoot.
As its arm buried itself into ground and wood chunks, she sprinted it up to the head and buried a blade five feet long into the Beowulfs eye.
Flash, swing, flash, shoot.
Another teleport and she was under its supporting paw, severing hamstring in between its armor.
Jab, rip, twirl, hack.
Reality blurred and crumbled into blue-tinged phantasmagory, reassembling her on the other side of the beast.
Hew, dodge, dash, lunge.
Another attempt at an eye, but the Beowulf shifted and blocked her with its lame paw.
Flash, slash, thrust, leap.
A blade poked into the tendon under its upper arm was more successful.
Jump, twirl, step, shoot.
Ruby helpfully planted her scythe under its chin when it collapsed.
Flash, jab, hack, slash.
It tried to howl, but its mangled throat garbled sound.
Slash, slash, jab, rip.
A flurry of strikes opened up its scull. A bullet inside finished it off.
"Phew. That was awesome." She said to the rapidly decaying corpse.
A meteor smashed into the ground not far away, blasting the area in fire and setting the forest aflame.
Ruby zipped on top of the dead beast and made a show of casual relaxation with Crescent Rose strewn over her shoulders.
"You're late to the party again, Yang," she teased.
"Meh, you've cheated. Again." Yang walked over and poked the Beowulf. "This guy was a big one."
"Yeah, I think it was so old it might have seen Eridians in the flesh. That's so cool!"
Yang reached into its muzzle, broke off a tooth bigger than she was and deconstructed it into her belt storage. "For posterity," she explained.
"Do you think dad ever killed a bigger one?"
"Probably. He travelled a lot before settling in."
"I bet he never killed one before he finished school, though." The skull was too wispy to support her now, so Ruby jumped down next to her sister.
"Well, duh. You have a penchant of sticking the team into missions like this one."
"It was Weiss this time! And I don't see anything wrong with searching for alien treasure, Yang."
"Exactly my point. Do you have any idea what would happen when the news reach the public?"
"Rivals! It's gonna be like a race! Sweet!" Ruby studied Crescent Rose in case Grimm bits haven't evaporated from it yet, and then twirled it around and collapsed it on her back.
"Yes. Sweet. Lets go with that," signed Yang. She made a point of looking around. "What's taking them so long?"
"Weiss always preferred to travel in style," Blake said from behind them and pointed at the sky. Ruby squinted in that direction, and finally spotted a cloud moving sedately through air. On top of the cloud was an ornate ice throne, whereupon Weiss leisurely sat.
"Is this a joke?" Yang opened her ECHO scroll and hit speed dial. "You could hurry up any minute, you know," she said as soon as the connection was established.
"It's windy up here if I go too fast. I don't want to catch a cold."
"You, cold? Pft, let's see if I can warm you up," Yang grinned and deployed Ember Celica. A flare round crossed the sky and punched into the cloud from below. The throne sunk and fell through it.
"I should have known there will be no respect from you plebs." The connection terminated and a sheet of ice spread from the falling throne to the ground at an angle. The construct slid it down like a sled, coming to rest next to the party. "So, what's the emergency?"
"We're missing out so much fun!" Ruby declared. "Ancient ruins, and aliens, and alien ruins! Don't say you're not excited!"
"They were here for thousands of years, i don't think they will go anywhere in the next few minutes."
"Spoilsport."
"Dolt."
"Jerk."
"Dunce."
"Where did Blake go?" Yang wondered, trying to spot a familiar glimmer in the air. Her scroll pinged with a waypoint, and she beaconed others behind her. A short walk later, and a vista opened up from the top of the steep cliff. Below, a picturesque valley spread both ways, a sharp contrast to the burned out forest behind them. Brush and trees stretched far and wide, covering the whole canyon in rich viridescent colors, which was why a grey area with purple markings on top of it stood out.
"Team RWBY, it's time to make history… stuff… happen. Are you with me?" Ruby cheered.
"I suppose it could be fun."
"Sure."
"Lead on, sis."
"Then let's go!"
And so they made their way down, self assured in their own might and invincibility. Spoilers: they weren't.