And here we go with another one!

Strategic Kingdom Division

(Inspired by The Division 1 and 2)

During the Vytal Festival, the market places and city fairs of Vale are bustling with life and people. Crowds of tourists and residents are tightly packed together, moving between stands and passing around money and products and food and such to one another, chatting and smiling and standing so close to each other in the busy streets that they were almost touching.

Something begins to spread amongst them. A virus. A plague. A disease that is fast acting and extremely contagious. Whether or not it is natural or manmade at this point is unknown...

But it spreads fast.

Day one: hospitals begin to take in the first cases as tourists continue to travel in and out of the kingdom. The virus spreads.

Day two: the hospitals begin to reach maximum capacity. Panic begins to spread in lockstep with the disease. Quarantine is activated. Resources begin to ration. Transportation goes into lockdown. It is already too late to stop the plague.

Day three: international panic sets in. Trade begins to collapse. The Grimm move in like carrion birds to a corpse in the desert.

Day four: the shelves empty. Power begins to fail. Water begins to dry up. Everything is cancelled. Everyone is forced into their homes or into Q-Zones. A Joint Task Force is established. Mass graves begin to fill the streets. The alleyways become breeding grounds for the disease as bodies stack up.

Day five: despair and panic take hold. Fighting begins to break out amongst the survivors. The Q-Zones fall into disrepair.

Day six: rioting breaks out. Order breaks down. Everyone and everything is a potential threat. Violence takes hold.

Day seven: everything falls to pieces.

Months pass by. Grimm seep into the streets like water. Mass panic takes hold. Factions begin to form in the aftermath. The entire kingdom is sectioned off into wildlands and fiefdoms. The JTF is ravaged and splintered.

The Huntsmen and Huntresses are called into action.

Everyone is mobilised in conjunction with the JTF. Even the students of Beacon Academy and the visiting teams that were stranded in the aftermath of the virus and Vytal Festival were called into action. At the forefront of the efforts was Team RWBY, leading the charge into clearing out the factions still in the streets alongside the weakened and broken JTF forces.

However, alongside the Grimm and White Fang elements that still populated the streets, there existed multiple other criminal factions and elements as well:

The Looters: an umbrella term for the street gangs, rioters, and desperate homeless that had taken to the streets to try and take what they needed to feed their friends and families. Armed with baseball bats, pistols, and whatever tools they could get their hands on, they are considered less of a threat and more of a hinderance. Still, it is advised to approach them with caution.

The Convicts: inspired by the Hyenas and Rikers and led by the freed Roman Torchwick, they are a street gang of drugged-up opportunists and escaped prison convicts that seek to spread chaos and death wherever they go, though they are constantly being stopped in their tracks by...

The Peacekeepers: an alliance of former corrupt police officers and disgruntled prison guards that had taken to murdering anyone that stood in the way of them unifying all of Vale together. Whilst weak compared to the Hunters, they are equal to the JTF and are considered the strongest faction in the city.

The Hazmats: led by Doctor Merlot, they are a collection of scientists dedicated to researching and understanding the virus that had ravaged Remnant by any means and without any morality, including kidnapping and experimenting on human and Faunus test subjects. Their primary enforcement are former SWAT teams and specialists in hazmat suits, armed with machine guns and flamethrowers.

However, as it would soon be apparent, there are other players and factions in Remnant, outside of the walls, that are trying to take advantage of the chaos.

As the Huntsmen and the JTF begin to clean up the streets of Vale and rebuild their home, they begin to discover the existence of outside elements interfering in Vale, including a new faction of former Atlesian soldiers trying to assert control over the city.

Providence: a collection of former Atlesian soldiers that had gathered around General James Ironwood. Thanks to his already existing paranoiac tendencies and Mettle semblance, Ironwood split off from the JTF and took many of their members with them. Now they exist as a dictatorial state of warlords and bullies, using fear and intimidation to get their way. Their once resplendent Atlesian armour is stained and broken, their droids have broken down due to lack of resources from being cut of from Atlas, and they now resemble ragged and unorganised militiamen than standard infantry soldiers.

However, as the Huntsmen spread across the wildlands of Vale, moving between disease-filled settlements and dug out survival bunkers, they came across more threats and factions, all trying to carve a name and place for themselves in the chaotic and lawless world that they now inhabited.

First, there were the Coyotes, loosely aligned clans of bandits that had agreed to work together in order to take on Providence. Identified by their red armbands and vests, they are quick to violence out of desperation, as their lives outside of the city and settlements have left them paranoid of both Grimm and government forces, which also makes them dangerous and vicious killers and fighters.

Then there were the Chained, a cult of killers that worship a twisted form of the Brother Gods and sought to spread their corrupt religion and death as far as they could. Wrapped in cloth and chains, armed with machetes and chainsaws, and with a penchant for using captured Grimm to assist them in battle, they were malicious in their combat, and fanatical in their devotion to their maniacal deities.

Thirdly, there were the Hunter-Killers, rogue Huntsmen that had gone bad, driven to desperation by the virus and now insanity by the loss of their teams, friends, and families. Now they wander the city and wildlands as roaming killers, depopulating settlements all by themselves, and working for anyone that will feed their need for blood in order to sate their misery. Covered in the trophies of the Huntsmen and Huntresses that they have slain, they are some of the most dangerous fighters across the Valerian wastelands.

However, there is one faction in the territories of the former kingdom of Remnant that will prove to be the most dangerous that the JTF and Huntsmen have to face.

They are known as the Triad, and they are led by three teams that make them the most personal of the enemies that RWBY have to face.

They are led by JNPR, ARBN, and BRNZ.

When the virus set in and chaos began to reign over Vale, Team JNPR and several other teams were deployed into the city to try and keep order alongside the JTF. However, as panic began to set in, followed by riots and violence, and as the bodies began to pile up and the JTF continued to splinter, JNPR began to prioritise saving as many people as they could, leading them out of the city and into homemade communities in the wildlands. Amongst them were their families that had been visiting the city for the festival, as well as a hundred other civilians as they led them out of the city.

But then, as the struggle for resources began to set in and the virus continued to ravage them, their new home was caught in the middle of a war between the factions, and they were all killed. Their families and friends, as well as those under their protection, were all wiped out.

Disheartened and demotivated by what happened, the teams continued to ferry civilians out of the city, feeding them food and weapons to defend themselves with from the stray JTF stockpiles. However, as Ironwood splintered off from the JTF, alongside the Peacekeepers and Hazmats, and as the Looters and Convicts warred in the streets, and the Chained and Coyotes continued to pillage the city walls and the Hunter-Killers continued to widdle down their numbers, the disillusionment within them continued to grow...

Until they finally snapped.

When the outbreak first started, several mercenary groups and private military contractors were hired by the wealthy and privileged of the city to protect their assets and keep them safe, but when the three teams that would soon become the Triad talked to them, they were able to convince them to agree to their plans. At the same time, they began to recruit multiple Huntsmen and Huntresses, both students and graduated, to abandon the JTF and join their cause.

Then, when the time was right, JNPR, ARBN, and BRNZ led a revolt against their JTF commanders and fled the city, taking hundreds of civilians and tons of resources with them.

Now the Triad had dozens of settlements placed under their protection, with an army of mercenaries and PMCs at their call, and with a hundred rogue Huntsmen by their side. Equipped with the best weaponry available to them, and the most advanced technology that they could scavenge and research, they sought to unite the people of Vale to their side and put an end to the chaos and violence across the kingdom through means of force, and would not take no for an answer.

The Triad were going to bring order to Vale first, then all of Remnant. They were going to bring about an age of peace and prosperity, and they were not going to let anyone get in their way.

(Think of them as a fusion of the Black Tusk and Last Man Battalion along with the Rogue Agents as well.)

This would be the most dangerous fight that RWBY and their allies were ever going to face, and they would be going up against the people that they once thought as friends and allies.

It was a mess of morality and mortality, and with a virus still rampant around the kingdom, RWBY and their friends would be forced to to ask themselves a very serious, and very dangerous question:

When everything is on the line, should they truly be working to save what remains, or should they fight for a new future?