When all is said and done, who will be the last Huntress standing...?

Last Huntress Standing

(Inspired by Logan and Transformers: Last Bot Standing)

It has been a full century since the end of Salem and the Grimm, and the world has moved on.

The kingdoms have rebuilt themselves, Menagerie and the Faunus are thriving, the Grimm are gone, and aura and semblances are a thing of the past. It has been so long since the age of strife and worry that some of the youngest of the people of Remnant are beginning to question whether the age of Grimm and Huntsmen, and even aura and semblances, even existed in the first place...

And the old heroes and villains of Remnant are almost all dead.

Almost.

But things are changing across the world. At the end of the Grimm and the fall of Atlas (now a forgotten memory amongst the four kingdoms of Vale, Vacuo, Mistral, and Menagerie), technology went back several years and even centuries. They are only just rediscovering radios and steam power, and the dust that they once used have all dried up, meaning that the people of Remnant need to find alternative means of power.

In a quiet corner of Remnant, in a small town known as Arcadia, the people there have just discovered steam technology and have reinvented the train, and many believe that it will put their rustic livelihoods at risk and run them out of business.

One family head by the name of Joan Arc, the great-granddaughter of Jaune Arc and the breadwinner of their house, seeks to protect her own business from this new age of innovation and steampunk power, afraid of the change that it would bring. Her entire livelihood had been made around crop dusting atop the feathered Dragons and taking care of the herds and flocks of animals that they kept on their farm, and she wasn't a fan of the idea of letting these steampunks (as she called the inventors and the rich people who supported them) wander into her home and force her into poverty and irrelevance.

However, her concerns would fall on deaf ears, as always. The Arcs were not the most popular family in Arcadia, despite them being descendants of the founders of their town. They were a secretive family that constantly kept to themselves, and the fact that they're friendly with the rude Old Crow that kept in their house next to the Arcs all the time doesn't help.

At the edge of the town, a stranger approaches...

In the middle of town, a fair is being held. It's the hundred year anniversary of the end of Salem and the Grimm. Joan is not eager to join in the celebrations, but as the inventors and rich businesses begin to set up shop around their house in an attempt to force them out of business, she is forced to take part in the festivities.

The stranger drew closer.

The dusty Old Crow felt the stranger approach, and emerges from their home.

At the fairgrounds, Joan is mocked for her hasty display by the richer inventors and fairgoers, but is the first to spot the stranger at the town doors. They're big and lumbering and salivating at the jaw, mottled with cuts and patches of rotting skin and emaciated bones...

And the Old Crow stood before them, baring entry into Arcadia.

The stranger was sharp-toothed and ravenous, starved and thirsty for food. Nothing in the fair would satisfy him. The thing inside his stomach pulsed like a heart.

It marched forward, hungry for food-that-was-not-food.

The Old Crow flipped down their hood... and the withered, ancient form of Ruby Rose greeted the stranger.

And then attacked him.

Her old scythe, broken and rusted and as withered and torn as she was, tore through the body of the stranger and cut him in half. White smoke poured out of his stomach, and he fell dead on the floor.

The rest of the town was horrified by the seemingly senseless attack, but Joan was the only one undisturbed. She approached the ancient and withered Ruby Rose, and talks to her as if she knows her. She even calls her Great-Auntie Rose.

Ruby is old and her mind is fraying. She doesn't recognise her, but she is aware of the fact that she has caused a disturbance in the town, and leaves.

Joan follows.

In the distant past, when Salem and Ozpin left their world and the Grimm were rendered extinct, the glue that held Ruby and her friends together slowly dissolved as they all went their own separate ways. Ren and Nora got married and had the family that they had always dreamed of, Yang went to go explore the world, Weiss and Blake began a vast campaign to reform global treatment of Faunus, and Jaune moved on from his grief and founded the small town of Arcadia, starting a family of his own there as well...

And Ruby?

Ruby had nothing.

All her life, she had wanted to be a Huntress. All her life, she had wanted to help people.

Now her duty was done. Her life as a Huntress was over, and she had nothing left to show for it.

And so, she became a recluse in her home in Arcadia, never going outside and only ever speaking to Jaune and his family when they got the chance. Eventually, her old friends and allies would begin to pass away, and she would be left alone. Her silver eyes would make her live longer than humans, so she would be the one to mark their collective passing and mourn for them eternally, as she was left alone in the world, without any purpose at all.

But now, with this new strange force in the form of the stranger at their door, Ruby Rose, now known as the Old Crow, would find herself with a purpose once more.

However, the townsfolk do not take kindly to the Old Crow's sudden act of violence, and when more strangers arrive, they are quick to lock the rest of the Arc family in their homes whilst they greet their new visitors and mourn for their departed fellows, all the while declaring Joan and the Old Crow as wanted criminals at the same time.

In the Arc household, the youngest of their family, one Janice Arc, digs up Crocea Mors to protect them from the outsiders and strangers, but finds four strange, inert Relics alongside the dust-covered sword...

Joan and the Old Crow make camp in the valleys near Arcadia. The Old Crow asks Joan if anyone has found the four Relics, now supposedly powerless after the end of the Grimm War. Joan confirms that no one does, though thinks that someone will figure out sooner or later. The Old Crow mentions that it might be time after all.

But as they moved down to the road leading to Arcadia, they were met by a mob of both residents and strangers, whipped up into fury by the death of the first stranger.

And then the truth of the strangers came out.

The strangers were a collection of former Huntsmen and Grimm, starved and lonely and desperate to survive. When the gods came and went they took aura and the Grimm with them, killing all the Grimm on the planet and anyone with aura other than those who had summoned them. However they didn't do a thorough enough check and left a few of both behind, though they were starved and slowly dying from the gods' magic.

Now the aging remnants of the Huntsmen and Grimm had banded together, casting aside their old allegiances and hatreds in order to etch out a living for themselves in a world that seemed desperate to forget and kill them. Their old fury towards one another was no longer within them: now they were a family of travellers, aimlessly wandering from place to place across Remnant and trying to survive.

When the strangers come across the Old Crow, withered and weakened by age and fatigue, they are elated to see another one of their kind running around, unable to understand the concept of one of their own kind killing another, and make a deal with the townsfolk to take her with them. Much to their surprise however, the Old Crow rebels against this idea and seeks to fight them, keeping Joan behind her in a protective stance despite not being able to remember her. There is a tense standoff between the two groups before they both decide to back off from each other, the Old Crow and Joan heading back into the valleys whilst the strangers and townsfolk head back to Arcadia.

At the Arc home, Janice hears tapping on the walls as the strangers try to break in.

In the valleys at the dead of night, the Old Crow is confronted by a group of the strangers, who seek to try and make amends for what happened before. They are willing to overlook the death of one of their own and get along with her, and the Old Crow cannot help but feel tempted by their offer, though makes it clear that she has no desire to work with a bunch of Grimm.

However, when she is confronted by their leader, she completely loses any interest in joining them.

An aging Cinder Fall greets her, emaciated and broken and spliced with so much Grimm growth and corruption that she was more monster than woman. However, her mind had degraded with age and hunger, and now she couldn't even recognise who the Old Crow used to be. The old ego and sadistic bullying that she used to practice have now withered away, replaced by a strange care for those under her command, though, as always, she held onto her strange penchant for fire and the hunger inside her.

The Old Crow wished to have nothing to do with the strangers. She had no desire to add herself to their number. However, the more she learnt about the strangers, the more horrified she became of them. Of them travelling from town to town in search of food, of them, much like herself, refusing to let go of the past and seeking to find a way to return to the good old days, leeching off people like parasites and fighting everyone that they come across all in the name of their self-preservation...

And then she learnt of what they eat.

Other people's aura.

As it turned out, the gods hadn't simply taken aura away from the world. They had instead locked it away inside of people, their souls now impossible to unlock and use as weapons ever again.

Supposedly impossible, at least.

But the strangers were withering and dying. The magics of the gods had decreed that they were to die, and so they needed to find a way to prolong their lives and stop their inevitable decay.

And so the former Huntsmen and Grimm took to harvesting and eating the aura within others, ripping it out of them and chowing down on their souls in order to strengthen their own and prolong their lives.

The process kills their victims, and the strangers have already gone through dozens, if not hundreds of settlements over the last century, killing thousands of people in order to stop the decay that would soon spread to them.

But now they had sensed something within the town. Something within the Arc home.

Four somethings.

And now they were going to fetch them for themselves.

But first, they needed a snack.

And they were going to start with Joan.

The Old Crow springs into action. Despite the wear and tear that the passing of time had inflicted on her, her opponents were just as frail and weak as her, so the fight between her and the strangers is much more even than it could've been.

Cinder, finally remembering who the Old Crow used to be, flees from the fight and radios to her goons in the town to begin the operation.

Within the town, the strangers turn on the townsfolk, and begin to round them up for harvesting.

Around the Arc residence, the strangers break in and steal the four inert Relics, taking Joan's family hostage and forcing Janice to flee from them.

Within the Relics, their dormant energies began to stir.

For decades, the strangers had been wandering the world without any purpose, and with no chance of going back to the lives that they once led. They were doomed to live withering lives as they decayed and rotted, their aura leaving them and their bodies turning to ash and dust.

But now they had a chance - a real chance! - to go back to the lives that they once led.

They would use the Relics that the Arc family had been hiding away in their home to undo all the changes that the gods had brought upon the world. They would revive Ozpin and Salem, bring back both aura and the Grimm, and return the world to the status quo that it once operated in.

They would return Remnant to the old order in which it operated, and return to the lives that they once led.

They would destroy the future in order to return to the past.

And the Old Crow would be having none of it.

The Old Crow and Joan would move out to stop them. The Old Crow would not allow them to destroy everything that had already been built just so that they could return to the comforts of their old lives.

Their story, of Huntsmen and Grimm and Relics and Maidens, had to come to an end.

And so, the Old Crow would adorn the name of Ruby Rose for the last time, ready to put an end of their old twisted legacy.

It was time to finally put the past to an end.

This was a bit too close to Last Bot Standing for my liking, but oh well, I still like it.