A/U: Well here we are again. I've always had a fascination for RWBY ever since the trailers came out. I'm really sad to see Monty Oum go.
Anyways I managed to finally convince my friend BxRenegade, the actual author for Fate/Red Night, to watch it despite his protests and he ended up loving it. He ships the fuck out of it, in his words. Anyways, him and I decided to write this up. We'll see how it goes, in other words, the update consistency for this story is largely dependent on the amount of feedback we get for it. It may seem like its review whoring, but I assure you its not, we will update at our own pace, but between university and family issues I got going on, my motivation for this will depend on BxRenegade's motivation and the audience's motivation. I plan for this to 20+ chapters, it may get there, it may not. But getting this out there is what Monty would've wanted. My creative juices finally started getting flowing again and I'm going to milk it for what its worth.
Also credit goes to BxRenegade for picture, summary, and a bunch of shit. But really only he will notice because no one reads the author's note. ;~;
So please, read and review! As noted by my bio: "The worst thing for a writer is criticism, it's apathy."
Remnant. It was an apt name for a world that was constantly destroying itself. Time and time again the humans and the faunus that inhabited the lands came into conflict with one another and themselves.
In the current civilization, there existed 4 main regions, kingdoms. Vale, Atlas, Vacuo, and Mistral. Its inhabitants were struggling to survive with few scant resources, with the population growth rapidly outpacing its own sustainability.
For a time, the amount of land between these kingdoms was enough, if not plentiful, but as the resources started running dry in their own lands, all of them were quick to expand past the oceans in order to acquire more.
2 of the 4 main kingdoms, Vale and Vacuo, were located on the same continent of Vytal, and tensions were on the rise as disagreement turned to minor skirmishes in the disputed lands. Both Vale and Vacuo started to build up armies in an attempt to intimidate the other into submission, while Atlas and Mistral started to produce their own surpluses to sell to the two tense kingdoms.
Soon enough, Vale's and Vacuo's armies, being deployed so close to the disputed regions, broke out into open conflict. Seeing this, Atlas and Mistral built up their own armies and navies, but decided to stay out of the conflict, not wanting to antagonize the other.
Early on in the war, Vacuo's numbers trumped Vale's own policy of quality vs. quantity. Vacuo, with the aid of Mistral, was able to deploy a larger amount of automatic firearms and armed land vehicles. Vale's lands were overrun with burning fields and destroyed towns as the frontlines shifted to within 100 kilometers of the capital of Vale.
Desperate for manpower, the normally patriarchal human and faunus races shifted to include more and more women into the war effort. At first it was simply introducing women into the work force, but Vale took it a step further and enlisted, and eventually drafted, women into the fight for survival.
Eventually, through a rallied effort of recruits and a large influx of supplies from Atlas, Vale managed to begin a slow takeover of its own lands. They pushed all the way back to the disputed lands, but that was where the march stalled due to another threat.
Mistral, seeing its trading partner faltering against Vale's manpower and Atlas' technology, landed a huge invasion force on the other side of Vytal, catching Vale in a pincer of a two front war. The tacticians of Mistral knew this would earn the ire of Atlas, and launched a pre-emptive bombing run on Atlas' main naval forces, killing hundreds and sparking immense anger from the Atlasian people. Atlas and Vale were quick to make official treaties as the Atlas war machine began churning once again.
With the lines drawn between Vale and Atlas against Vacuo and Mistral, the War for Remnant was in full swing, with Vale already on the verge of being knocked out of the war due to the cowardly tactic of Mistral.
X X X
Ruby Rose, a Sergeant in Vale's Army Group 1, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Battalion, Bravo Company, once more cursed Vacuo and Mistral as she saw another man in her squad get blown up by a grenade through the lens of her scoped M1903 Springfield.
Quickly chambering a new .30-06 round into the barrel, she found the perpetrator set up with a machine gun behind some rubble of what used to be a building.
Taking a breath, she steadied her herself, lining up the crosshairs while using the ticks to determine an appropriate angle to account for bullet drop and the wind's direction. She waited for a few heartbeats and a split second after her last one, she squeezed the trigger.
Knowing how dangerous it was to be confident that a single bullet can take down a person, she keep her sights on her target and was horrified to see the bullet encounter a crosswind, her correction actually sending the bullet along with the wind and impacting wide to his right.
She was also terrified to see that her chosen target was apparently a hardened veteran and did not flinch from what was no doubt a close shot. Instead, he simply stopped shooting at her remaining squad members and shot her position up on a building 3 blocks away.
Ruby ducked behind the blown-out window on the second floor as 7.92x57 bullets started pinging and piercing through the brick wall her perch was shielded with.
Quickly, she memorized the path her bullet had taken the first time, and yelled a quick "Covering fire!" to her squad mates scattered amongst the town square 2 blocks away.
After 30 grueling seconds of thinking her voice wasn't overtaking the distinct rat-a-tat sound the machine gun shooting at her was making, she finally heard the report of Garands and Thompsons. She chambered another round into her Springfield, which was emblazoned red with the words "Crescent Rose" in black on the stock and waited.
Soon enough the machine gunner turned his attention on returning fire and Ruby set her sniper on the remains of the window sill and without hesitation pulled the trigger and quickly chambered another round.
Halfway through the chambering mechanism, she traced her bullet's path twisting and winding down the streets towards the Vacutian machine gunner. Punching through her target's neck, she watched the man's neck spray open with blood like a fountain, falling back into the cold ground behind him, leaving a machine gun without a gunner.
She realized it wasn't over as the machine gun's loader stood up in apparent anger and resignation and drew his pistol, an ugly little thing called a Luger, and fired twice before succumbing to the gunfire around his only sort of cover.
The first 9mm round didn't even make it past the first block, hitting the corner of a building. The second round actually glanced off a brick to her immediate right and ricocheted past her right shoulder, causing a deep gash that looked much worse than it felt, seeing as Ruby was currently drowning in adrenaline.
It was still enough for her to drop her shooting arm off her weapon. Giving a quick glance to her arm to make sure it wasn't going to cause her to bleed out, she slung her rifle over her left shoulder as she took cover and drew his own pistol, a .45 M1911, and dropped a floor below using the blown out section of the house she was in.
She closed the gap between her and the next building's edge. As she reached it, she heard one of her squadmates, a young man whose name she didn't remember, call out "Clear!" Stepping out of cover with her shooting arm limp at her side, she walked over to the rest of Bravo Company.
She counted 6 other green helmets, a marked decreased from the 13 they started out when they went into this bombed-out town.
She saw her squad's female corpsman, Corporal Sonya Alder, a relatively young fox faunus, checking on a dead friendly soldier and walked up to her.
The Corpsman heard Ruby coming and glanced up with no little weariness, only offset by her shock at her wound. She rushed over and took out a medical kit and Ruby sat down by the destroyed fountain in the middle of the town square, already familiar with the procedure of field wounds. After a quick examination she reassured Ruby with a quick, "Don't worry, just nine millimeter."
She felt a tap on her left shoulder as the medic began treating the damage to her right and turned as much as she could to the person. It was a tanned middle-aged man in standard dull green uniform, a Corporal Jones if she was right.
"2nd Lt Greenwood's dead and gone, and 1st Sarge Oliver was killed in the initial ambush, ma'am." he said gruffly.
Ruby sighed as she knew what that meant. This would make it the fourth time her immediate superiors in the field were killed in action, forcing her to take up the temporary mantle of squad leader.
"This mission's fucked up. We were supposed to see what the hell happened to Kilo Company another 25 kilometers from here, but seeing as how there's Vacutians only this deep in, we can probably assume they're all dead. Where's Private Kelt?" She knew she had to come into contact with the Lieutenant in charge of the 15th Platoon, the one Bravo Company was a part of.
"Here ma'am! I'll get LT on the horn." The Private manning the only radio in the squad was milling about half a block away. He quickly rushed over to set up the radio and Ruby hoisted her arm higher in response to the Corpsman's prodding.
She remembered the name of this town now. Burley, a quaint little town out of the way of any happenings in the capital.
She was knocked out of her brief musing when the Corpsman poked her face. Looking at her quizzically, she found that the radioman was holding the receiver out towards her.
Taking the receiver to her ear with her one good arm, she reported that her company was hit hard by an ambush when forward elements were closing in on the remains of the town.
She furrowed her eyes in annoyance when 1st Lieutenant Baker, commander of the 3rd Infantry Platoon that Bravo Company was under, ordered her company to fall back to Fort Guidance, just a measly 150km from Vale.
Complying, she gave back the receiver to Private Kelt once all was said and done. Once Bravo Company was regrouped, she told them to bury the bodies of their fallen comrades.
After a few minutes, Bravo Company, once more under her command, set out east towards Vale.
X X X
Back at the base, Ruby met with her superiors.
"Sgt. Rose. Glad you made it back. How's the arm?" queried 1st Lieutenant Baker. Next to him was an older man, he was in uniform and looked to be of a higher rank, but she couldn't see his chevrons from her current position. She was in the field HQ, more specifically the hallway leading to Baker's office, but he met her halfway here with the other man in tow.
"Back in shooting order Lieutenant, sir." Giving a quick salute, she watched as Baker returned it just as quick, probably wanting to get to the point like her if his facial expression was any indication.
Baker then gestured to the man. "This is Captain Richards, he has something to tell you Rose." Giving another salute to the man, her heart sunk to her stomach. She had seen this before, someone of higher rank informing people that their sibling had died in the field, and that they were free to resign without any possibilities. Most of the time, the recipient either lashed out understandably or continued to serve with an increased severance pay.
Her sister's face popped up in her mind. Yang. She signed up earlier than Ruby, opting to enlist as a tank crewman. Yang always had a fascination with explosions and fire, not much came close to that other than a flamethrower tank. Of course, after finding out that her baby sister Ruby decided to go infantry, she had quickly wrapped up her courses and transferred into infantry, but she was farther behind than Ruby and as far as she knew wasn't yet deployed.
Then again, it wouldn't be the first time recruits died. Training schools were a popular target for bombing runs, or so she heard from the papers.
"While it is a misfortune that Greenwood, Oliver, and other brave men and women of Bravo Company were killed, it was not in vain Sergeant. We now know that the Vacutians plan to take advantage of the Mistralian landings to the far east and knock us down in one fell swoop. The higher ups received many reports of a similar nature today and we've decided to change the composition of forces in this theatre of the war." He stated to her.
Ruby inwardly sighed in relief. This was about her company's losses and a change in policy for the higher-up NCOs. She was expecting a change in company or the like, but at least she wouldn't be hearing about Yang's death for now.
"That is why, Sergeant Rose, in light of your long service record in this war so far, I've been authorized to give you a field promotion to Staff Sergeant. You'll officially be in command of your own squad." Ruby was surprised to say the least. Typically the Vale Army operated as large chunks of soldiers or armored vehicles spread amongst a large area of operation. From what it sounded like, she wasn't getting Bravo Company, so it looked like she was getting a smaller squad, just like the recon groups.
"You'll be getting a briefing packet and report to Baker here with the other squad leaders tomorrow morning. You'll find your new squad mates' profiles in there as well. This is an experiment of sorts, to split up into squads and give them independent orders in the field. We are hoping this will lead to a more flexible unit and enable us to react faster to Vacutian invasions as we hold off the Mistralians in the east while Atlas gets its shit together." The Captain gave a bit of a smirk as he said that last line, in what was in no doubt a clear divergence from the speech he gave her that sounded well-rehearsed.
"Thank you, sir. I will not let you down." She snapped off a salute and waited until the Captain finished his and turned back down the hallway.
Making her way back to her barracks, she found that her rooming was changed. Picking up her belongings, she found that she was given a private bunk, not much spacing or furnishings, but at least it gave a semblance of privacy. The one thing that stood out however was a manila folder on top of the small wooden stand.
Setting down her stuff, she rifled through the packet, skimming most of it and skipping to the promised profiles of her new squad mates. She managed to catch that her squad was Group 3 R. Which meant reconnaissance, but was slightly outdated in light of the new policy and changing of the units.
Weiss Schnee, a young woman with white hair that seemed to carry off a pompous aura through her picture. Born in Atlas, and attached with the profile were details of a major incident. Apparently she had passed through Officer's School in Atlas, but was dishonorably discharged and moved to Vale, where she had went through boot camp. She was now a Private First Class on her first deployment.
Ruby glanced back at the photo, trying to remember what she had heard of the Schnee Corporation, based in Atlas. Apparently it was framed for numerous charges internationally, but were all dropped at some point or another. Many pro-faunus demonstrations had taken place, but to no avail. Apparently the CEO's daughter signed up in the army, but there were a lot of scandals and incidents following her like a shadow.
Ruby then turned to the next profile, Blake Belladonna. She was a cat-based Faunus with black hair. She was a Corporal with more medical training than the average soldier, who had to pass boot camp with possibly the quickest first-aid course in history. Normal background check with this being her 2nd deployment into the field. Not much history or proof of education but that was normal. Vale was taking anyone who had two legs and could shoot a gun.
Finally, her 3rd and last profile came up with a picture of a shit-eating grinning blond that was more than familiar to Ruby. Yang Xiao Long, a Private, designated the radioman of her new squad. Everything in her history was something Ruby was not surprised about, considering she kept in contact with Yang through a series of letters. This was to be her first deployment. Apparently another minor incident was attached to her profile involving her shouting at her superior to be placed on Ruby's team.
Ruby shook her head and layed down on her new crappy bed. She reviewed the packet again from the top, more slowly now that her curiosity was placated.
Eventually she was tired enough that she simply slept with the folder on her stomach, the white noise of the soldiers outside being her lullaby.