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Hey! Welcome to Remnant, worst hell this side of… Well I was going to say galaxy but we don’t actually have any way of knowing that. Anyway, we’re in a time of peace, no wars. Pretty sweet right? No, not really. As it turns out The governing council’s may be at peace but the world is far from it. You’ve got the Schnee Dust Company on one side fighting the White Fang while the Fang attacks any humans they can. There’s the Huntsmen, our guardian angels. What a joke. Huntsmen are useless for fighting anything other than the Grimm. Hm? Oh yeah there’s more, always more.
There’s a few factions I suppose. You’ve got Salem and her agents, the leaders of the Grimm you could say. Not people you want to fuck with. Then we’ve got the Huntsmen, the “Good guys” trademark, these guys fight the Grimm. They handle it pretty well but they're mostly in it for fame or cash. Hunters don’t really handle normal crime but they will go after bounties, hypocrites. Then we’ve got Ozpin’s merry gang. Conspiracy group dedicated to the peace of the world. Their secrets have secrets, fight for the people but tell them nothing. These guys are the real good guys, fighting a war in secret. Losers. White Fang, ho boy is this one a mess, same with the SDC.
Alright to go over a bit more here, where to start though? Know what, let’s start with Salem. This ancient bitch, ‘The view screen lights up with an image of a white haired woman with a complexion of bone white. Her eyes black with red irises. She wore nothing but black and looked ready to kill at the drop of a hat.’ Is in control of most Grimm. Yeah, she’s waging a war against humanity and we don’t even know it. She’s raised her own little soldiers up to fight the Huntsmen and Ozpin, she’s the big bad.
Her forces include people like Tyrian Callows. ‘The view screen flickers and shows a scorpion faunus with a long ponytail. His eyes were wide and his face split by a manic grin. He wore simple clothes and a pair of bladed gauntlets on his wrist.’ He’s the biggest threat on her side, crazy and does nothing to hide it. Tyrian worships the ground Salem walks on like she’s some kind of deity. Do not underestimate this guy, he will kill you.
Salem also has another notable ally, Cinder Fall. ‘With a flicker a new image pops up on the view screen. A woman dressed in an intricate red dress appears on screen. Her black hair draps down over one eye while a long sleeve covers her left arm. Ethereal flames trail from her right eye.’ The fall maiden. Magical, dangerous and arrogant. She can and will attempt to kill you, how successful she’ll be is another story. Cinder is power hungry and she will do anything for more, do not underestimate her.
She’s got others, Arthur Watts and Hazel. ‘The screen shows two men, one dressed in formal wear the other in simple clothes.’ These two are notable, her brains and muscle. Watts is stupid smart, guy can hack anything and do whatever he likes with it afterwards. Hazel hits hard and can’t feel a damn thing. Neither of them are combat specialists so they are relatively easy to take care of. Watts underestimates how far people will go to win and Hazel let’s his anger rule him.
We’ve also got the Huntsmen. The heros that slay the Grimm and save the day! Yeah, they just delay the end. The Grimm aren’t an issue anymore, Salem is and no amount of Huntsmen can stop her. They do good work and they save lives but in the end it won't matter, the best end up with Ozpin’s league anyway.
First up, Winter Schnee. ‘The screen transitions to show a young woman dressed in Atlas military garb. A sword rested at her waist as she stood at attention, her white hair pined out of her face.’ Semblance? Glyphs, grants her things like time dilation, gravity wells and repulsion, shields, platforms, heavy dust integration and spell work and yet she’s a complete idiot and uses it for nothing but summons! “Hey! that ‘s my sister Ruby!” Doesn’t make it untrue! “Doesn’t mean you need it in your presentation!” Anyway, Winter is not a threat to take lightly. Her abilities are ridiculous without all the glyph effects. Do not take her lightly, she can be beaten and exploited but it’s not a fun fight. Someone with a better understanding of the glyphs and that same semblance will win in moments. “Proudest moment of my life.” We get it, you beat her. We all have.
We also have team JNPR of beacon academy. “Huh, wimps.” Yang, not now. ‘The screen flashes with four people this time. Two boys and two girls. One girl with long red hair and green eyes dressed in gladiator armor. The other girl had short red hair, dressed in shades of white and pink with black she held a large hammer like a walking stick. The blond boy wore a minimalistic plate armor and the black haired boy was dressed in all green.’ Jaune Arc, Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie and Lie Ren. Jaune can amp other people’s aura and semblance even so far as to fully restore a broken aura to untouched in minutes. Do not let this happen. Pyrrha has polarity. Fight her without metal and you have a shot at winning, be us and you’ll crush her anyway. Nore, don’t bring lightning, you will regret that. Keep an eye on Ren, he is their ninja. Overall great, separate not so much. Ren has a hard time fighting if it appears Nora is his target and Jaune has severe problems with revenge if Pyrrha dies, exploiting that.
Of course we haven’t brought up Ozpin’s group yet. Shadow group meets in secret. They plan and work through things to a frankly scary degree. They work to ensure the public knows nothing of their war. How is that a good idea? They also fight to protect the maidens and well those of us with silver eyes. They're not subtle about it. “ Psh yeah, ‘You have silver eyes.’ as the first thing he says.” Yeah, not his brightest moment.
First up in his group Qrow Branwen. ‘The screen flashes to show a man with feathers like black hair. A partially collapsed broadsword at his back. He was dressed in a grey dress shirt and simple pants. A flask in hand.’ Semblance, misfortune. Hits him and his enemy, makes fighting him a pretty unlucky situation. Be a good enough fighter and this will barely matter, anyone can beat him with enough effort. He is the second best scythe master alive so be wary of him. Qrow is the deadliest fighter they have.
Then there’s Glynda Goodwitch. ‘The screen flickers to life again, this time showing a stern blonde woman. She’s dressed in formal wear with her arms crossed in front of her. A riding crop in one hand.’ Semblance, telekinesis. Powerful, versatile and way too reliant on her semblance. Break her aura and you’ve won. Don’t let that fool you though, she is a vital member of Ozpin’s operations. “She’s the clean up crew!” Pretty much yeah. Cleaning is most of what she does, almost all of it in fact. Wasted potential if you ask me.
Then we’ve got general Ironwood. ‘The screen showed an aging man dressed in military garb.’ Military leader of Atlas, fond of robots not so fond of not using excessive force. We’ve seen him drop off the deep end more times than not at this point. We don’t know his semblance but we know his weapon, two pistols. Each has a heavy impact but neither compare to some other weapons that exist. Get him in a pinch though and he’ll screw up, do something he shouldn’t, make allies into enemies. He thinks he can lead on his own, take it from a real leader, he can’t.
We’ve also got his Ace ops, unfortunately there’s no world wide public photos of them. Firstly, their leader, Clover Ebi, lucky fisherman. Skilled but too trusting of his semblance, a skilled opponent fights through luck. He’ll learn one day. Harriet, self styled fastest woman alive, she’s wrong. Her anger and arrogance will destroy the team as a hole, she’ll never learn. Elm, a foolish woman with her own anger problems, an anchor that can not be moved. Vine, a man with a versatile power set that limits himself excessively, isolate him and he’s done. Marrow, quite possibly their greatest asset and only hope of beating us, not that they realize that. They stifle him and berate him, while he can improve he is far too valuable to treat the way they do.
And then there’s the SDC. “It’ll be mine soon.” We know Weiss, stick to the plan. Currently run by Jacquas Schnee, professional dipshit. The man isn’t a Schnee so he’s far less useful than his children. No training either, just an ass. He shows all the signs of regular abuse of all his children. Winter got out as soon as she could and joined the military, Weiss went to Beacon and made a new family “Damn right I did.” and Whitley had to deal with his father up until the man's arrest, he’s kind of a carbon copy. Combat wise this group is meaningless, Winter and Weiss are in different groups.
The White Fang, violent extremist revolutionaries, yeah no, their terrorists. This group will do anything to show they should be feared and seen as equals. People peacefully going shopping for food? White Fang will slaughter them without mercy. Huntsmen fighting Grimm in a human community? SLaughtered. Faunus huntsmen defending people? Executed. Deserters form their ranks that just want to sell books? Slaughtered. No mercy, targets the general public for political gain, uses fear tactics, all the checkboxes of terrorism. But then they target the SDC, we get it, we know why but they kill innocents for the crime of working for the SDC, human or faunus they die. There are only two notable agents.
Adam Taurus. ‘The screen shows a redheaded man in a simple grimm mask wearing a suite. Sword at his side.’ Sociopathic and not fighting for faunus rights. This man needs to be in control so much that as soon as former member Blake Belladonna deserted he decided to fuck her shit. He followed her around the world at one point and promised to destroy all that she loves, and yet some idiots still say he was an extremist revolutionary. He’s dangerous sure but combat wise he’s useless without that sword. A skilled fighter will beat him with relative ease, the man doesn’t learn from former encounters and makes predictable moves all the time.
Sienna Khan, leader of the Fang. We don’t exactly have a photo of her but she dies so often it doesn’t matter. Her semblance, she deals more damage the lower your aura is capping out once her opponent's aura breaks. She is literally better at killing the defenseless. Simple solution, don’t project your aura while fighting her and she’s weak. A projected aura is not needed for semblance use, an unbroken one is. She's not too much of a threat but still a big deal, take her out as quickly as possible in combat.
Then there’s some rouge agents, people who can take any side in the end, or almost any side. These people are often the most dangerous, I’m talking most powerful people on whatever side they are involved with. They can and will wipe out entire army’s. There are only two people in this group, Raven Branwen and Penny Polendina.
Now than Raven. ‘The screen shows a woman dressed in reds and blacks wearing a full face grimm mask. A massive scabbard holding multiple blades at her side.’ She’s the spring maiden, bandit queen and a real bitch. She’s a toss up, sometimes she’s on Ozpin’s side, sometimes the Fang’s, sometimes Salem’s “Not anymore!” but usually she’s ours. She can make portals to those she has a bond to and can control the weather. Magic’s a hell of a power. She’s an expert swordsman and is incredible at full power.
Penny on the other hand. ‘The screen shows a woman with bright red hair in a green accented dress. A series of swords hovered behind her.’ Penny is the first and only artificial human capable of generating an aura. The winter maiden, typically she’s either with Ozpin or us. She’s powerful, sure but giving a machine a soul is probably not the best idea. She can think for herself and decide what she thinks is right and wrong. Penny is a fierce fighter but she can be handled with relative ease, just be careful when fighting her.
And then there’s one more group, civvy’s call us terrorists. Ozpin refers to us with the phrase ‘The enemy of my enemy is also sometimes my enemy.’ and Salem calls us an annoyance. Hold on, let me get this working. ‘ The screen flickers to static for a moment.’
“Come on, work damn it!” The same voice that had given the presentation comes through the speakers. With a pop the screen shifts to show a young girl with red so dark it’s balck hair and silver eyes. “Finally!”
The girl jumped back to reveal herself, she was relatively short and dressed as a huntress, a large red box hung on her back. The camera angle showed a large room, multiple work desks with scattered parts and paper lined the room. A yellow and black motorcycle sat in the middle of the room. At one of the desks was a woman with white hair, she held a rapier in hand and seemed to be loading something into it. A black haired cat faunus sat at another desk with an open book while a blonde with a metal arm sat on a couch off to one corner.
“Alright! My name’s Ruby Rose. Leader of this group of, uh, freelancers. Yeah, freelancers, let’s go with that.” The girl vanished into a cloud of Rose petals and reappeared besides the white haired girl. “This is Weiss.” She once again vanished only to appear next to the faunus. “This is Blake.” Once more vanishing to appear on the couch next to the blonde. “And this is Yang.”
“Ruby, I know sanity is hard to keep over the course of three thousand apocalypses but I highly doubt a fourth dimensional entity watching our lives needs a video to do so.” The white haired woman snapped her rapier back into place properly. “But we do need something to kill a few hours, so do go on.”
“Aw thanks Weiss! So as I was saying, we’re the Freelancers. Basically every time time is reset we go about stopping Salem ourselves. Only problem, we need Ozpin to send us back.” Ruby burst apart and reformed next to a white board. And began writing something down. “So for our first one thousand two hundred sixty-two resets we fought alongside Ozpin and once we lost he’d send us back. Those timelines are the same up until I turned fifth-teen then we’d arrive in the past and get to work, usually those timelines lasted three years, two of us fighting and one in hell.”
“In the next eight hundred twenty-four we fought alongside Ozpin but not for, we did our own thing and planned some things out.” Yang was the one to speak up this time. “That didn’t work very well, Ozpin still needed to send us back in the end of all of them after we lost. So next up we tried flying solo for six hundred timelines.”
“That brings us to now, we can’t beat Salem yet so we stopped really trying and instead use our timelines to plan and find the pieces to our plans.” Blake looked up from her book as she spoke. “We’ve found all the pieces so once we’re Ozpin’s only hope of beating Salem and are all he can send back we’ll make him send us back further.”
“Well none of that includes the seven hundred ninety-eight times where things went really wrong, but we try to ignore those ones.” Weiss paused and ran the numbers in her head. “Wait, we’re really ten thousand four hundred sixty-nine? Really, huh, easy to lose track I guess.”
“Neat. Anyway, once Ozzy sends us back to when I was five, they were seven, we’ll get started on our master plan!” Ruby’s smile turned cruel and her eyes glinted with rage. “If we can’t beat Salem and stop the end of the world we’ll just rule it.”
“This is Ruby Rose, future immortal goddess of choice signing off.” Before the monitor turned off the girl's grin grew wider and the look in her eyes grew far more malicious. “Look forward to it, I know we do.”
“Sir I’m not certain this is a good idea. After three thousand four hundred eighty-four times watching as Salem wins hasn’t done them any favors.” Glynda glanced at Oscar, his eyes glowing a faint green as Ozpin spoke through him. The boy had given up control until this job was done for a multitude of reasons.
“Neither am I Glynda but tell me, what else are we to do?”he got no reply from the woman, or any of their other companions. “They have a plan, one that might work may I add, and none of us have any idea at all.”
“Their plan involves absorbing the relics Ozpin.” Raven Branwen practically growled. “I know I don’t need to explain why that’s a terrible plan.”
“It is still better than nothing Friend Raven.” Penny pointedly ignored the muttered ‘not friends’ from Raven. “I think anyone will take crazy all powerful entity’s like them over the alternative.”
“Doesn’t mean I like it.” Raven paused for a moment. “If only those juniper kids hadn’t died, at least then we’d have options.”
“Unfortunately it’s very likely casting the spell will drag team RWBY into the past the moment we cast it. They’ve had it cast on them enough that they may even be able to choose to hitch a ride.” Ozpin frowned at the thought, something disturbed him about how this was happening. “As it is, all damages they have to their current bodies will be dragged back with them.”
“Great, my crazy seven year old hell bent on world domination will have a prosthetic and her equally crazy inventor sister is going with her.” Raven glared at the man. “Thank you for that reassurance.”
“I still question how good of an idea this is sir but I concede that it is our only option.” Glynda glanced down as she spoke, the world had, apparently once more, gone to hell.
“Damn right it is!” Glynda groaned as the four girls came into the building. Weiss and Ruby were clearly still making out. Yang took notice. “Damn it you two!”
“Oh lay off, I won't have her to myself for two weeks and even then I have to go nearly a year without this!” Weiss’s anger sounded extremely in-genuine.
“We’ll be seven.” Yang shot back with her own grin.
“And we’ve experienced ten thousand years worth of time, age is irrelevant.” Glynda hated interacting with them, the past year of this hell had been full of this while they convinced people of their plan.
“Girls. We came here for a reason, shall we?” The four turned to him and nodded. Within moments the spell had been cast and the four vanished. Ozpin blinked at the others. “Huh, I expected the universe to-”
Everything faded from existence.
On a dark summer’s night on the island of Patch the careful hesitant peace was broken by crazed laughter. The air shifted at that moment, the sense of something being off filled the thoughts of all who would have been present. That crazy laughter was quickly joined by another before both began to fade as a five year old and seven year old ran off into the distance.
In Atlas the power structure shifted in a moment and no one would know for years. The nation would never be the same, things would change. Far far more than anyone was ready for, and no one would notice until it was too late. A soft chucking cut through the night air as the one responsible thought of it all, oh yes, things would change.
In Menagerie the screams of agony cut through the air. The fourth had a mission and she wouldn’t waste time. Cutting down an honor guard like it was nothing was child's play to the… child. The White Fang leadership would change this night, this was for certain. Nothing could stop their plots.