Six hundred years ago, the Demon Queen Salem rose from the depths of Oblivion and, with an army of darkness at her beck and call, waged war on the Kingdoms of Remnant. She won
[~]
"So, what do you think?" asked Jaune Arc as he and his travelling companions gathered around the campfire for lunch, "Sounds like a great offer, if you ask me."
"They're hiding something." said Lie Ren as he stirred the simmering pot of soup in front of him while simultaneously trying his best to fend off any attempts from Nora Valkyrie to steal an early bite.
"Well, yeah. Obviously." Jaune said with a shrug, "These days, it's much harder to find someone who isn't hiding something."
"All I'm saying is that you need to be more careful on the types of jobs we take." Ren said as he smacked Nora's hands away with the wooden spoon in his hand.
"Who says I'm not?" Jaune asked as he raised his arms defensively, "Besides, they're offering us twenty gold coins for this. Ten before and ten after we're done. All that for what's basically a transport job. Sounds like an easy payday. Wouldn't you agree, Nora?"
"Hmm? What was that? Were you saying something, Jauney?" asked the woman in question as her eyes were glued on to the simmering pot of soup in front of her.
"Same old Nora. Never change." Jaune said as a chuckle escaped his lips before the blonde turned his attention towards their red-haired companion, "Pyrrha? You've been quiet for a while now. What do you think?"
"I think that… Ren's right in that we should be cautious of who we choose to associate with but also the promise of twenty gold coins isn't something we should just brush off lightly." Pyrrha said as she rubbed the back of her neck in embarrassment, "And besides, I've always found Jaune to be a good judge of character. If he thinks they're trustworthy, then that's enough for me."
At Pyrrha's input, Ren let out a small sigh. Before he could offer up further protest, however, Jaune quickly spoke up.
"Ren, I get why you're worried but we are running low on funds at the moment and this job would be good for all of us." Jaune said.
"That and nobody's really buying any of our junk lately." Nora said as she held an empty bowl in her hands.
"They're not junk, Nora. They're exotic trinkets and collectibles." Jaune said.
"Right. Gotcha." Nora said as she nodded along with Jaune's words, "Trinkets and collectibles. Wink wink."
"So, how many of them are there?" Pyrrha asked as she gratefully accepted her bowl of soup from Ren, "And what exactly are we being paid to do?"
"Well, there's four of them and as for the job," Jaune said, pausing to receive his share of the soup before continuing, "They're paying us for a safe passage to the Kingdom of Vale."
"That's it?" Pyrrha asked, a confused look on the woman's face as she stared at Jaune, "A simple job as that and they're willing to pay us twenty gold coins?"
"It sounds suspicious, yes, but when you think about all the things that can go wrong, twenty gold coins is more than reasonable for a simple job like this." Jaune said, "Besides, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's going to be easy. A lot of things can go wrong like bandit attacks, Grimm attacks-"
"Or we could even be attacked by the very passengers we're transporting." Ren quickly added as Nora snatched her bowl of soup from Ren's hand before promptly gulping down the contents.
"Or that. Look, guys, I get it. You're worried. So am I. That's why we don't let our guards down for even a second during this job. We do that and we'll twenty gold coins richer once this is all over." Jaune said as Ren and Pyrrha shared a look.
"You know, greed is not a good colour on you." Pyrrha noted, earning a chuckle from Ren, "But you're right in that our funds are running low. Not to mention our supplies, too."
"Okay. We'll take the job but we should keep an eye out for any suspicious activity from our guests." Ren said as he passed out a piece of bread to each of his companions, "After all, I'm sure none of here want this to be a repeat of Vacuo."
" I said I was sorry!" Nora protested from the side as her companions shared a small laugh at the woman's expense, "Isn't that enough?"
"Nora, you singed off my eyebrows." Jaune said as he instinctively started feeling the top part of his face, "It took me a month to regrow them."
"Not to mention the amount of food we lost because of the incident." Ren said, a faraway look in his eyes as he recalled the incident.
"Well, forgive me for thinking this was a free country." Nora shot back as she swallowed a spoonful of soup, "Here I thought a woman was free to practise her fire magic with ease."
[~]
"Hi, honey. I'm home." said Yang Xiao-Long as she stepped into their room they had rented for the night.
"You know, we've been travelling together for the better part of two years now and and I still don't know who you're even saying that to." asked Blake Belladona from behind the blonde as she took off her bow to reveal a pair of cat ears underneath. As the two ladies stepped into the room, it was to find the rest of their party on the floor and a pack's worth of playing of cards between them.
"Wait, hold on… How much is this card worth again?" asked Weiss Schnee, the Royal Atlesian Princess currently in disguise as she and her travelling companions are en route to Vale with important information. Currently, however, she was struggling against the fourth - and youngest - member of their group in a simple card game, "Was it ten or eleven?"
"Ugh, Weiss!" Ruby Rose pouted as Weiss showed her the cards in her hand, "You're not supposed to show your cards. That defeats the whole purpose of the game."
"Are you sure you received a formal education, princess?" Yang asked, a snicker leaving her lips as she stared at the two women on the floor.
"Hey! I take offence to that." Weiss shot back, "Anyway, how did it go? Were you able to secure a transport to Vale?"
"I feel offended that you even have to ask, Weiss." Yang said as she clutched her chest in mock offence, "Did you really doubt my negotiation skills?"
"Nobody likes a show-off, Yang." Ruby said as she put away the playing cards.
"Oh, fine. I forget how lame you guys can be sometimes." Yang said as she took a seat on a nearby bed, "As for our ride, we got one. Wagon, bigger on the inside, all that jazz. Promised them twenty coins if they could bring us to Vale in one piece, ten before and ten after."
"That sounds fair." Weiss said as she and Ruby shared a nod, "What about the people you met with? DId they seem trustworthy?"
"Even if they're not, I wouldn't worry about it too much. The guy I talked to had a sword but didn't seem like he used it much." Yang said as she laid down on the bed.
"She's right but his companion, on the other hand was a lot more cautious of us." Blake noted as she performed an inventory check on her own equipment, "He's definitely on guard against us. That or he's just looking for an opportunity to rob us."
"Not if we rob them first." Yang said with a sly grin, "With your ice magic and my fists, they won't even see it coming."
"Really? We haven't even met the rest of their travelling party and you're already talking about robbing them?" Weiss asked as she stared at Yang with a deadpan look.
"I mean, is it really robbing if we rob from a party of robbers?" Yang shot back earning an eyeroll from the Royal Princess in disguise.
"That's terrible logic." Weiss said with a sigh.
"Besides, you said it yourself, didn't you? That 'this mission has to succeed. It's too important to fail. Countless lives depend on it.'" Yang said as she did her best to mimic Weiss's voice, "If we have to beat up some bad guys to get to Vale then I don't see the harm in it."
Weiss was silent for a few moments as she pondered the blonde's words, "… I don't sound like that."
"No, that's exactly what you sound like, Weiss." Ruby commented from the side as she was in the middle of performing some last-minute maintenance on her twin sickles, Crescent and Rose.
"Shut up, Ruby." Weiss said as she threw a pillow at the woman's face.
[~]
It was noon when their clients arrived, if the fact that the sun was high in the sky was anything to go by. Jaune waved them over as soon as he spotted them.
"Hey there. Yang, right? Good to have you." Jaune said as the two blondes shook hands. The man then proceeded to introduce the rest of his party, "So, you've met Ren. This is Nora. She's our go-to handywoman whose main duty is making sure the Juniper - that's the name of our caravan - is in one piece after every fight we're in."
"Do you guys get into a lot of fights?" Blake asked as Jaune let out a chuckle.
"More than we want to." Jaune said, "But it's mostly with Grimm and maybe the occasional bandit or two. Nothing we can't handle."
"That's reassuring, then, since our client here - Madam Shionne Vesperia - is a Noblewoman and expects nothing but the best and safest twenty gold coins can buy." Yang said as she patted the shoulders of Weiss who was currently wearing a simple brown cloak, the smell of which was causing the woman's nose to twitch in irritation, "Being of a noble status, you'll understand why we want this to be a… discrete journey."
"There is absolutely no problems on that front. You're the boss." Jaune said with an understanding nod before the doors to the caravan opened to reveal Pyrrha, "And this is the final member of our party, Pyrrha."
"Hello there." Pyrrha said as she greeted Yang's party with a wave and a smile. Dressed in a simple green blouse, a pair of black pants and a pair of vambraces on each of her arm, the red-haire woman was enough to make Yang go-
"Damn. If I didn't have Blake, I would be all over trying to pick her up." Yang thought to herself, the woman not even realizing the blush appearing on her face. It was only because of Blake elbowing her on the side that she was able to get back to reality.
"Don't let Pyrrha's good looks here fool you, though. She's sort of the muscle of our little party here." Jaune said as he handed a crate of supplies to Ren who promptly placed it in the caravan.
"Neat. Well, it's nice to meet you guys. Like Jaune said, I'm Yang, Madam Shionne's bodyguard. This is Blake, her attendant for this journey. That little bundle of energy over there," Yang said as she pointed at Ruby, who was currently receiving an impromptu tour of the inside of the caravan by Nora, "Is my sister, Ruby."
"Alright, well… Step inside the Juniper, make yourselves comfortable and we'll be on our way in no time." Jaune said as he tended to the horses at the front of the caravan.
"Aye aye, captain." Yang said as she led the rest of her party inside the Juniper. Stepping foot, it was to find that it was like most magical caravans - or magivan for short - in the world of Remnant in that it was bigger on the inside. Most people usually used those whose spaces were two or three times bigger on the inside while merchants tended to go for the ones that were five times bigger. As for the nobles or the royalty, they usually had specialized caravans that were ten to twenty times bigger on the inside. Or so Yang had heard.
From what Yang could see, the Juniper was more than five times bigger on the inside. Stepping past stacks of crates that had been placed on one side of the caravan, the party of three - Ruby was still being shown around the inside by Nora - carefully made their way to what they assumed was the common area.
"Well, it's certainly spacious." Blake noted as she took a seat around a table.
"And a mess." Weiss added as she sat beside the Faunus-in-disguise while picking up a cloth from her seat and placing it on a nearby shelf.
"I think it's cozy." Yang said as she surveyed her surroundings, mainly for escape and in case a sudden fight broke out, "Besides, all it needs to do is get us to Vale in one piece. We accomplish that and we are golden."
The trio's discussion would have continued had it not been for Ruby suddenly appearing beside their table.
"You guys, this caravan is great. Nora just showed me around and the upgrades and patches she's done all over the place are crazy." Ruby said, her words leaving her mouth at a mile a minute, "Did you know that she placed these orbs of fire dust on the back of the caravan so they can-?!"
Before Ruby was able to finish her sentence, however, the door was suddenly blasted open as Jaune came charging through with another crate of supplies in his hand followed closely by Pyrrha.
"How did they even find us, Pyr?!" Jaune asked, the blonde dropping the crate in his hands on the nearest open space before charging back out.
"What's going on?" Yang asked, the blonde getting up from her seat as she joined Pyrrha in preparation for whatever was coming after them.
"It's nothing to be worried about." Pyrrha said, the woman strapping a short sword on her left hip before placing a fastening a shield on her back.
"Does nothing usually require you to arm yourself to the teeth?" Yang asked as she stared the woman up and down, "Come on, what is it? Maybe I can help?"
"It's just… we ran into some trouble with local law enforcement lately when," Pyrrha said, the girl pausing as she let out an embarrassed cough, "When we sold the local lord there a defunct product."
"What did you sell him?" Yang asked.
"An orb of ice dust." Pyrrha replied as Yang and the rest of her party cringed at the answer, "The lord and his wife was apparently a big fan of the snowy Atlesian climate and thought to… make his home more interesting by using ice dust to make one of the rooms in his home permanently snowing. When they tried to use the orb we sold them, they were promptly frozen in place. It took a week to safely thaw them out. One thing led to another and now we're wanted criminals. In Argus, at least."
"To be fair, if he was so rich then he should have hired a mage or something to check if the orb we sold him was defunct." Nora said as she brought in the last of their supplies into the caravan, "What kind of rich guy doesn't do that?"
"Regardless, they've found us - either by having a familiar track us or they hired some professionals - and now, we have no choice but to run." Pyrrha said as she grabbed a pristine looking bronze bow nearby and a handful of arrows before leaving the confines of the caravan.
Not a moment later, however, Jaune entered the caravan.
"Nora. Wheel." Jaune said.
"You got it, captain!" Nora said as her eyes seemed to twinkle with either madness or excitement. A moment later, the ginger-haired woman dashed deeper into the caravan before appearing before her blonde leader a few seconds later, "Here you go!"
"Good. Get it ready." Jaune said with a nod, accepting what looked to be a metal wheel with three bars of metal protruding from within and meeting at the center. Without any sort of explanation, the blonde-haired man simply dashed out of the caravan as Yang's party shot each other looks of confusion. They were about to speak up before Ren and Pyrrha appeared at the entrance with two horses in tow. Horses that they should be using to get them away from their current location.
"Um… Why are you two bringing the horses in here?" Yang asked.
"We would love to explain everything but unfortunately, we're outnumbered and soon, we'll be surrounded." Ren said as he strapped the two animals to the wall, "I suggest you all strap yourselves in, as well."
"But-" Yang was about to protest before Pyrrha put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"Please, trust us. It's best if we're all seated for what's about to come next." Pyrrha said. Before any of their guests could voice out any further protest, however, the sound of shouting could be heard from the outside as the Juniper suddenly found itself under attack - both from the magical and non-magical kind.
Just then, the voice of Nora could be heard shouting from somewhere deeper in the caravan.
"Alright, Jauney! She's primed and ready to go whenever!" Nora shouted out.
"What's primed?! What's ready to go whenever?!" Yang asked only to receive silence as an answer as Ren and Pyrrha promptly strapped themselves to a nearby couch.
[~]
Major Caroline Cordovin had seen a lot of fighting in her lifetime, from the skirmishes between the Mistralian and Atlesian navy in times long past to more recently, when Atlesian forces had to deal with the constant attacks by the White Fang.
"Damn Beastmen." Cordovin said aloud, the woman spitting on the ground at the mere thought of the White Fang insurgents. Before her thoughts could go any further, however, one of the men under her command ran up to her. Saluting her, the soldier then proceeded to report to her about their current situation.
"Major Cordovin, with the help of our archers and mages, we have them pinned down. Soon, we'll have them surrounded, as well." the soldier said.
"Good, good. Seeing as they attempted to assassinate Argus's Lord, show them no quarter, Sergeant." Cordovin said with a nod.
"Yes, ma'am." the Sergeant said, the man saluting Cordovin once more before joining the rest of the troops. From where she was standing, the outcome was clear. With the constant barrage of attacks and the fact that her men were slowly but surely ensuring there was no way for these criminals to escape, it was a forgone conclusion that these criminals were done for, "After all, they haven't even strapped their horses to the front of their caravan."
A smug smile had formed itself on Cordovin's face as she thought of the punishment they would receive once they were captured. In the next instant, however, everything seemed to go wrong all at once.
Just as her men were nearing the caravan, the back of it seemed to explode in a hurricane of flames. The explosion sent out a blast wave that knocked Cordovin back a few feet but what shocked the Major the most, however, was the fact that the caravan was currently speeding away faster than anything she had ever witnessed.
Eyes wide and mouth open with shock, it took a few seconds before Cordovin regained her composure.
"Someone tell me what on Remnant just happened!" the Major shouted out.
[~]
"Ma'am, they're ready for you." Emerald Sustrai said as she gave a respectable bow to the woman in front of her.
"Are they? Good." Cinder Fall said, her amber-colored eyes glinting in the moonlight before tossing a scroll at Emerald, "Inform the council that negotiations with the White Fang have gone smoothly and without incident."
"Ma'am? But we've yet to meet with Adam." Emerald said, confused at her orders as she stared at the scroll in her hands. Cinder, meanwhile, stopped in her tracks as she looked over her shoulder at Emerald.
"I gave you an order, Emerald. Obey." Cinder said, her voice lacking any sort of warmth whatsoever.
"Y-yes, ma'am." Emerald said, the woman immediately leaving Cinder's presence to carry out her orders.
As Cinder stalked through the halls of the ruin's many hallways, her hand instinctively went to ring strapped to a chain necklace.
"Soon, Juniper. Soon we will be together again." Cinder whispered to herself, a soft look in her eyes before they hardened once more as she entered a room full of Faunus. Looking each of them in the eye, Cinder spoke up so that everyone could hear her, "Gentlement, shall we begin?"
[CHAPTER END]
A/N: So, just a quick note about what this is all about. I wrote this series after reading 'By Steel and Starlight' by Selene Sokal. That series is just one of the best RWBY fics I've read that isn't by Coeur Al'Aran. Without going into spoilers, it's basically if RWBY and Star Wars had a baby together. If you haven't read it, please give it a read. I guarantee you, you'll have a great time.
Anyway, this series of mine is heavily inspired by that fic. Not to worry, though, as I have come up with a totally original plot from start to finish. I'm hoping that means this series is the one I finally see to the end. I have the beginning, the rising movement, the climax, the falling action, and the ending all planned out. Here's hoping I actually have the motivation to complete it.
So, back to the first chapter. Just to be clear, I've aged up the characters by quite a bit here. The cast (minus Ruby) is 25 and so that makes Ruby 23. The eight of them obviously haven't met before this but that doesn't mean they haven't had any of their own adventures. Let me know what you think of the first chapter. I'm both eager and scared out of my mind to find out what your opinion is.
As always, faves, follows, and reviews are always appreciated.
NoXIV signing off