Author's Note:
I do not own Library of Ruina or RWBY. These series belong to Project Moon and RoosterTeeth respectively.
Edited: 2/17/24 - Added a few bits of description and fixed some sentences
—HEADMASTER'S OFFICE, BEACON—
The Headmaster of Beacon Academy, Opzin, who knew worth thousands of years was at a loss. Not one person can expect a giant tower to erect itself in the middle of the Emerald Forest without any warning. Many questions formed at the top of the headmaster's head: 'What is it? Who put it there? Are there people living in it? Would they be friend or foe?'
To answer all the questions he wanted answered, he would need to establish contact with the structure. He pulled up his scroll and called his trusted aid. Once she picked up, Opzin asked what he needed, "Glynda, can you message Team RWBY to come to my office?"
He simply explained as best he could about their situation. "Of course Professor Ozpin." She responded quickly as the call ended.
Considering this was near the start of the semester, the Headmaster wanted nothing more than to see to the safety of humanity. The Fall Maiden was attacked, leaving her with half her current powers. It did not bode well that a Maiden was comatose considering her weakened state. It would be disastrous if the other half sought out the other half when Amber expired. If it fell into her hands, it would spell doom for the four kingdoms.
Looking out the window, he took in the sight of the mysterious building in the distance; and it was a sight to behold. It had been around 7 hours since its first appearance in the Emerald Forest, yet nothing had changed. Its charred brick wood with multiple curved branches stemming away from it, crude placement of brightly-lit windows, and massive size allowed it to tower over Beacon itself. He slightly frowned upon looking at it. 'I cannot help but wonder…' The Beacon Headmaster thought.
A sudden ding of the elevator of the room quickly gained the Headmaster's attention. He swept away his frown and replaced it with a slight smile.
"Professor Ozpin, Professor Goodwitch said you needed us?" A young, energetic feminine voice called out to him. Ozpin turned around to face Beacon's best first-year team. There stood four girls color-coded in red, white, black, and yellow from left to right. His blonde assistant, Glynda Goodwitch, stood off to the side, watching the entire discussion with a diligent gaze.
The leftmost character was the voice that called out to him. A black-haired girl with red highlights stares into his brown eyes with her silver eyes. With a red and black long-sleeved blouse covered by a pure red cape with a "combat skirt" and heavy-duty, black combat boots: Ruby Rose, team leader of Team RWBY, an aspiring hero, weapon fanatic, and dedicated huntress. Her resemblance to her mother is uncanny. 'She really is like her mother,' Ozpin reminisced. 'She is the youngest of her peers, under two years apart; yet, she has the most potential of them all.'
Next to her is her partner for the next four years: Weiss Schnee, an aristocrat hailing from Atlas. Weiss is a pale-skinned girl with pale blue eyes and long white hair tied into a ponytail drifting off to the side. Heiress to the Schnee Dust Company and well-known singer, she is firm to her title and future role as a huntress. She wears a long thigh-length strapless dress with a white-to-pale blue gradient towards the hem and a bell-sleeved bolero covering the top portion of her body with the same gradient as her dress. Ozpin remembered the first day of the semester when Weiss had gotten into an argument with a certain red hooded reaper. 'I'm glad that Ms. Schnee and Ms. Rose have reconciled their differences, albeit a little rough around the edges, but the improvement shows.'
The next pair in Team RWBY is the amber-eyed, raven-haired Blake Belladonna, a faunus in disguise; it might fool everyone else, but Ozpin knows better than that. 'The White Fang has become an increasing problem, but I know that Ms. Belladonna isn't like that.' Blake wears a black, buttoned vest with coattails above a white, sleeveless undershirt. To hide her faunus traits, a pair of cat ears, she fashioned a black bow to cover them. 'I can see that Ms. Belladonna hasn't told her team about her features.' He mentally sighed. 'Based on Ms. Belladonna, I still see that the Faunus students still have trouble fitting in with the rest of the students at Beacon.'
The last team member of Team RWBY, partner to Blake, and half-sister to Ruby is the boisterous, carefree Yang Xiao Long: a tall, fair-skinned woman with lilac eyes and wavy, thick golden hair that turns into pale gold at the tips. Her tomboyish nature shows in her outfit: a tan jacket that bares her midriff, a yellow crop top, and a brown belt strapping her tight black spandex shorts. Once again, Ozpin is reminded of Beacon's greatest team to graduate: Team STRQ, 'Similar to Ms. Rose, Ms. Xiao Long, appearance-wise, is very parallel to her biological mother except for the color of her hair. Although, I do wish to not hear Ms. Xiao Long's puns any longer than I need to.''
Ozpin quickly snapped out of his thoughts and replied to the team leader, "Good afternoon Team RWBY, I'm sorry that I called you here on such short notice after your classes." He gave a little pause before speaking again. "But I'm afraid that there is a little problem that needs to be identified."
The girls all looked worried upon hearing his words. For their own reasons of course.
'Did he figure out that I was a part of the White Fang?!' Blake internally screamed as her bow twitched.
'He probably heard about me destroying Junior's bar…' Yang mentally trailed off.
'Was I still not being a good teammate? Was I not good enough?' Weiss unsettled.
'Did he find out that I stole all the cookies from the cafeteria?' Ruby innocently thought.
Noticing the worried look painted on their faces, Ozpin cleared up the misunderstanding, "This problem doesn't negatively affect any of you, I just need Team RWBY to investigate an oddity of sorts." The faces of the girls quickly relaxed when their headmaster relieved them of their worries.
"W-What is this problem that you want investigated?" The leader of Team RWBY spoke.
Ozpin took a solid 10 seconds to place his scroll on his desk, showing a projection of the mysterious structure that appeared near Beacon. "This tower appeared out of nowhere in the Emerald Forest, it has been around 7 hours since its arrival yet nothing has happened." He explained. "Your mission is to investigate the area surrounding the tower before attempting to interact with it."
The confusion among three of the girls was apparent. A tower? Out of nowhere? This is our first mission? The last girl was the complete opposite: bouncing with excitement on the inside. "Uh, Professor?" Blake spoke up for the three confused girls. "Why's this tower important?"
"We do not know." Glynda, the best assistant one could ask for, took over the debriefing. "You are to contact us when you arrive at the location and report on what you see when investigating. You will depart in two hours." The team of girls quickly responded to their Combat Class Professor in the affirmative before entering the elevator behind them.
—HALLWAYS, BEACON—
Upon exiting the elevator that reached the first floor of their academy, the red team leader jumped up in excitement, "WOO! Yeah! Team RWBY's first mission!" She exclaimed. "I wonder what we're gonna find!" The team of girls started walking back to their dorm room to prepare for the journey.
"Ugh, Ruby, calm down. It's probably not even that big of a deal." The ice-cold member of the team replied. "They want us to look at a big tower and tell them what is in it. What's so special about this tower anyway?!"
"We're huntresses-in-training, not some junior detectives," Blake, the anti-social cat faunus in hiding, added in her thoughts. "This isn't a job for huntresses either."
"Two weeks into the semester, training and learning how to kill Grimm, and it's to look at a building," the heiress spoke with disdain in her voice.
"But I mean, it's still our first mission together…" Ruby quietly defended herself.
Seeing her younger sister in distress, Yang tried to motivate her. "Hey, cheer up Rubes, don't listen to Blake and the Ice Queen," she cheerfully stated as Weiss took offense to the nickname. "I'll support you so it's a tie between the team."
After realizing their mistake in downplaying their team leader's enthusiasm, they changed their words to make it seem like they were excited, but in reality, were hoping for a better first mission.
Hearing this cheered up the little red riding hood, it felt nice to have great teammates like hers.
—FLOOR OF GENERAL WORKS, THE LIBRARY—
"So, let me get this straight…" A rough, feminine voice emanated from one of the offices. "We're in another world?" She had gone through a lot of cigarettes listening to their situation. A group of people was around her, some were standing and others were sitting while a green-haired person was lying on the ground and passed out.
"Yes Gebura, I don't see how hard that is to understand," the Head Librarian spoke as she looked toward the red-haired woman covered in scars. "There are too many things to list that signify that we and the Library have been transported to another world."
"I think what Gebura meant to say was that traveling to another world is impossible," a young voice belonging to a girl in yellow explained. "Even I don't fully believe it, but as long as we're away from the City or the Outskirts, any option is preferable."
"At least we all still have each other," a more soft-spoken, cheery voice proclaimed. "Most of our co-workers are still alive and we released everyone who perished in the Library back into the City." The rest of the Patron Librarians looked back at their optimistic co-worker with short, brown hair clipped by two white hairpins.
An energetic girl in orange with a red hairband on top of long brown hair that turned light brown at the tips was quick to jump on the happiness wagon, "Hmm, I totally agree with Tiph and Hod here. We have to stay positive if we wanna figure out what's gonna happen to us." The girl wrapped her arms around the previous two speakers, pulling them closer together. This was Malkuth, the Patron Librarian of History.
A soothing, masculine voice belonging to a long, blue-haired man spoke, "Frankly, I'm kinda excited to learn more about this world~". The Patron Librarian of Social Science, Chesed gandered towards the balcony of the office as he was talking.
"For all we know, there has been no signs of life inhabiting the forest surrounding us," Angela inputted. "Considering it's been hours since our arrival, it's more likely to say that either we're here on our own or we've been found first."
The mood in the room grew tenser with the last sentence that the A.I. spoke. If the latter was true, then the natives of this world would wait to see what the Librarians would do. The silence in the room lingered until a voice brought their attention to the speaker.
"Uhh, should we explore our surroundings? I personally don't like waiting until we get killed," the black fixer spoke out his thoughts.
The A.I. thought about it for a moment as she looked up at the ceiling of her office. 'This is a different world, we don't know what to expect. Some of the keypages disappeared but some of the Objet d'Arts and Limited pages remained within her library.' She made her decision as she looked at the legendary color fixer. "Gebura, take Roland and Chesed with you to explore our surroundings," Angela ordered, opening her giant book. "Choose whatever keypage you want."
The red fixer stood up from her seat and put out her last cigarette. "Alright, I'll just use my keypage" A faint light surrounded her and pages could be heard flying through the air. As the light faded, her appearance changed back to when she was still in her prime, the legendary Red Mist. As she got a feel of the keypage equipped to her, she felt something off. "Hey Angela, is there something different?" She confusedly asked. "The keypage feels a bit weaker than normal."
Before Angela could process what went wrong with the keypage system, a stern, and old voice interrupted her thinking. "It would be appropriate to assume that since the Library is weakened from the conflict in the past few days, the Light has been significantly decreased, therefore leaving objects created by the Light to be weaker," Hokma, the Patron Librarian of Religion, stated as he walked over to inspect the keypage.
As the old man started talking with a younger man with purple hair, like Gebura, Roland chose his personal weapon: The Gloves of the Black Silence. The only addition to his attire was a pair of pure black gloves that he equipped. It was his wife's gloves that slaughtered thousands of people including her brother and his ensemble, yet he accepted the sins that he carried. It was he who chose to break away from the City's mentality, he chose a different path by following his boss to see where she would go next; however, he didn't expect to find himself in a new world by following her.
"Hmm~…Maybe I'll borrow Mr. Esther's page~." The blue-haired coffee addict quickly equipped his chosen keypage, showering him in a light. His attire was a long white coat over a black suit, held together by a large medallion representing the Index Proxies. Esther's weapon of choice, a long, rectangular sword was fastened to the left side of the belt.
Angela nodded at the Patron Librarian of Social Science's choice. "You know your duties. Get with it," she demanded.
"Geez Miss Director, no need to get harsh. We're going, we're going." The black fixer alongside his two friends walked out of the office. He turned around to look at his co-workers. Hokma and Yesod were discussing with Angela on the status of the Light. Tiphereth and Malkuth were reading up on some books about nature and survival. He turned back around after hearing Tiphereth stomping on the passed-out Netzach and yelling at him to stop sleeping, while Hod tried to calm her down. He made his way toward the red and blue duo as they were leaving him behind. "So…What'd ya think is out there?" He asked curiously when he caught up with them and walked down the stairs toward the first floor of the Library.
The blue-haired man responded cordially, "Hmm~, maybe there's a cafe~."
"You need to get your coffee addiction in check." The red-haired woman sneered at him. "We don't even know if there are any people in this world."
The trio fell into a non-awkward silence as they climbed down the stairs like they had done so many times in the past. "I hope there's a HamHamPangPang…" Roland quietly muttered, but not quiet enough that his companions didn't hear him.
"I can't believe I'm stuck with you two," Gebura sighed. "I just hope there are sensible people."
—EMERALD FOREST—
"I hope there aren't gonna be any problems," the heiress softly spoke before curiously asking. "What do you think we'll find there?"
Much to her suffering, her partner was the opposite. "Maybe we'll find people. It's a tower that appeared out of nowhere..." Her thoughts put pieces together to form her greatest conclusion ever. "Mayyybe they're aliens! I wonder what weapons they use!" The weapon lover explodes with her energetic personality. Ruby's partner just facepalmed and sighed in her hand.
"Their weapons must be 'out of this world'," the blonde pun-lover said enthusiastically, heavily grinning whilst earning a groan from her entire team.
From their perspective, the Emerald Forest was a giant lump of green. The forest was the location for initiation for new students at Beacon Academy, they would have to retrieve certain 'relics' and make their way back to the cliffside of the forest. Sending students hurling through the air into Grimm-infested woods may seem like a terrible teaching method, but this process lets destiny take control and guide the new students.
Their bullhead was now landing in a clear opening in the forest. The huntresses-in-training walked away from the aircraft and stared back towards the pilot taking off back towards Beacon, with their leader waving 'goodbye' to the now distant bullhead. They returned their gaze toward the forest in the direction of the mysterious tower. It had been a few weeks since the girls had been here. Ruby remembered running into Weiss, their partnership had been rough since the beginning, but it was showing gradual improvement. Weiss shuttered after recalling fearing for her life in the vices of the giant Nevermore and falling toward the ground. Blake thought back to how she met her partner and how wild she was. Yang, on the other hand, remembered feeding an overgrown chicken buckshot.
The long walk toward the center of the Emerald Forest was very boring. There were no Grimm around nor anything worth mentioning, it was the same trees with the same green color all around. Feeling bored after exhausting all their small talk, Ruby thought of a great idea. Rushing ahead of the team, earning a confused look from her teammates. "Last one there is a rotten egg!" She sped off, leaving them in the dust.
The W and B of their team were just flabbergasted. "Is she always like that?" Weiss asked directing her attention to Ruby's half-sister.
"Yeah…it would be better to run there than just walking for hours till we get there," Yang came up with an explanation. Both Blake and Weiss just stared ahead of them, then back to Yang, then at each other before giving up, and getting ready to start spriting after Ruby.
In the meanwhile, Ruby was blasting through the forest. She wasn't far enough that she would get into trouble without backup but she couldn't see her teammates either. Deciding to slow down, she took in her surroundings. The wind was blowing in her direction, a little birdie was chirping, and the trees were rustling. 'I wonder how much further this place is…' She pulled out her scroll to check her position compared to the mission location. 'Oh, it's close.' She pocketed her scroll, before hearing something. Wait, she barely could hear anything; the once noisy forest just completely became almost mute. She couldn't understand what was happening. Turning her head around multiple times to scan her surroundings, she pulled out her weapon: Crescent Rose, a beautifully designed large, red scythe that also acted as a sniper rifle. Her silver eyes scanned through the thick forest and dense vegetation.
As soon as her weapon was fully unsheathed, she spotted something staring back at her. In the shadows of the trees, it was a person of pure blackness, almost their entire outfit was black including a blank mask that covered their entire face. She thought that this was a new type of Grimm, but she loosened her guard after seeing their human appearance. After being noticed, the black-masked person stepped out from the shadows holding what seemed to be a large shotgun that had a huge muzzle pointed at her. The sight of staring down the barrel of the gun initially surprised her, but Ruby could not help but wonder how that gun worked. It was not the time for her hobbies, she quickly snapped herself out of her trance.
The person spoke to her in a threatening and demanding tone: "Who are you?"
Author's Note:
Wow, I did not expect to be able to post chapter 2 right after.
First things first, as I said before, I have literally no experience writing fanfics or anything in general. This is something I made on a whim. I can say one thing though; this will most likely follow the canon story of RWBY, but with the influence of the Library in play. I'll try to incorporate Library of Ruina mechanics into RWBY like keypages and passives, but those are not guarantees.
If anyone finds something unexplained or missing, don't hesitate to tell me about it. I want to find a writing style that I can work around considering my inexperience.