Ruby Rose, for the first time in a while, wanted to be alone.
No one needed to look twice at her to see that she was carrying an oversized, folded weapon under her cloak or realize that her outfit came in all sorts of shades of red. As her dark-colored boots stomped across the sidewalk of a street in Vale with her head lowered, one would guess she lost a costume contest.
Despite being admitted to an academy – specifically one that trained monster-slaying hunters -- two years early, and chosen to be the leader of her own team, Ruby was always regarded as innocent and childish at first glance.
Despite impressing so many people, Ruby wasn't entirely satisfied that she had to continue living up to impressing them – her teachers, her team (known as RWBY), and herself. If she ever failed, she felt she would have to earn their trust and praise all over again. If she kept succeeding, she would have to keep trying harder and harder in her studies and combat training to show she was growing.
That’s why she wanted to be alone in the City of Vale, dressed in her usual choice of attire; to stop impressing people for once and get a chance to be herself.
“Weiss is gone on a family emergency, Blake is just nowhere to be found, and Yang is practicing with Nora for the upcoming tournament – what should I do?” Ruby wondered aloud.
“Why not buy a pony?”
Behind Ruby was none other than Pyrrha Nikos, a member of a team JNPR whom team RWBY was good friends with. She too, was also in her usual choice of unique attire – a strapless golden chest piece, golden leg-armor, with a red drape tried around her mini-skirt, along with a gold circlet under her long blood-red ponytail.
Unusually, in her hands was a horse plush donning some bits of armor and a hoodie specially made for it. On its flank was a crescent facing downwards, and its bright yellow hair gleamed in the sun. It also had two huge blue eyes.
“Oh. Hey, Pyrrha,” Ruby greeted cheerfully, “What are you out for?”
“I actually work here.” Pyrrha said, gesturing to the store she happened to be standing in front of. “It gives me something to do other than study for tests all week long. Wanna come in?”
Ruby found out that Pyrrha had been working at the store dubbed Pony Pick-up since she was at Beacon for a full month now.
Initially, the store looked like it only held several clothes and accessories meant for pony plushies with no plushies on display at all. Looking around, Ruby found that the only things that weren't small-sized garments in the store were cans of paint, scissors, tape, and (oddly) medical supplies.
“You can make your own pony in here – all you need to do is pay one lien and enter what you want it to look like.” Pyrrha stated, gesturing to a tube connected from the ceiling to the wall. All that was on it was a state of the art touch-screen and a section that could be opened from the outside.
“Really? Then, what do you here?”
“Just cleaning and maintenance,” Pyrrha replied, “Why don’t you give it go?”
Feeling some excitement coming to her, Ruby did so and briefly could see her and Pyrrha’s reflections in the screen until she placed her lien in a hidden slot behind it. Then, the screen lit up and asked:
FILLY OR COLT?
“Fillies are girls, and Colts are boys,” Pyrrha explained. Ruby continued, choosing ‘Filly’.
…PROCESSING…
After the machine made some noises, another question was asked by the touch screen, followed by the screen's keyboard popping up underneath it.
TYPE IN FUR AND MANE COLOR PLZ
FUR:________________
MANE:__________________
“Oh I also forgot-,” Pyrrha realized, “-once you make a choice, you can never go back and fix it.”
“Never?” Ruby gasped.
“Well, you can style the hair as much as you want once you receive it, but it happens to be a glitch in the machine’s programming,” Pyrrah said, and then held her own pony close. “I almost made Jaune here have lime hair…”
“Jaune?” Ruby wondered, now seeing that Pyrrha’s did in fact looked an awful lot like the leader of team JNPR. Though Jaune was extremely rusty in combat nor a strikingly handsome student, he was still a person whom Ruby considered funny and nice.
Pyrrha's eyes widened, and she blushed. “Y-yeah… what? That's not something to tell him… or anyone…”
Ruby smiled, and went back to the screen for a while, but she didn’t type anything. “I can’t think of anything to base this pony on…”
Pyrrha suggested making one on Yang.
“Yang did like ponies a lot… but… she might hog it from me if she found out it looked like her…” Ruby sighed, "She kept doing that with some of my birthday presents that were either plushies or toy guns...."
“What about a relative? Or a teammate?”
Ruby sighed, and pulled out her pockets, showing that they were empty. “I could do one for Weiss or Blake if I had some more money.”
“Don’t worry – I’ve got some more,” Pyrrha offered generously.
Ruby objected, stating she would just get her teammates all ponies once she had earned enough money (somehow, for she used up most of her money to buy desserts at lunch).
“Maybe do it on a relative then? One that means a lot to you.”
Ruby frowned, still looking at the screen. Out of all her relatives, her uncle Qrow meant the most to her, though he didn't have much heart for toys, unless they were practice weapons. There was someone else who meant just as much as Qrow to Ruby, but that relative was long gone, with that relative's tomb on an icy cliff in the middle of nowhere.
“How about a friend? Or someone who reminds you of you?”
Ruby thought hard about this one. Was there someone who did remind her of herself?
“You called me friend! Am I really your friend?”
”Sen-sational! We can paint our nails, and try on clothes, and talk about cute boys!”
“I don't have a lot of friends… but if I did, I'd want them to talk to me about things…”
“Don’t worry – I’m combat ready!”
Hoping it would do, Ruby, typed in the rest of the info on the touchscreen’s keyboard. After fur and hair colors, next came eye color, eye lashes, hair length (Pyrrha recommended it to be very long), pony type, and several other options until, finally, all that was needed to be done was a cutie mark.
“What’s a Cutie Mark?” Ruby asked.
“That’s the pony’s emblem, which is stitched into its thighs,” Pyrrha said, “Though there are a limited amount of marks to choose from for this machine, you can have a custom cutie mark hand-stitched onto it,” She tapped the crescent on *Jaune’s* thigh.
Wondering why of all places an emblem would go on the thigh, Ruby stated, “I’ll just do that.”
“Okay – but we may need to come back tomorrow. I have to close the shop very soon,” Pyrrha stated, “Any later, and my boss said she wouldn't mind locking me in.” Pyrrha then went on about her boss, how she was very weird,and in some cases, mysterious. She was a very tall faunus with horns and horse ears, ate only vegetables, and allowed no-one, not even her employees, to come into her office.
“Maybe she’s just a shy person...” Ruby shrugged, instantly hearing a *DING* come from the computer, and message saying:
Hurray! Your pony is ready!
Have Fun! And Remember, Friendship is Magic!
“Ignore that; I don’t get it,” Pyrrha stated, “My boss told me that it was one of things hard-wired into the machine.”
“What’s your boss’s name?” Ruby asked, reaching into the cage to get her pony.
“She… never told me her real name…” Pyrrha stated.
Ruby pulled out the pony, pleased that it came out just as she had envisioned it – cream colored fur, with freckles, neon green eyes, a tiny unicorn horn, and curly orange hair.
“Splendid!” chimed Pyrrha, who threw *Jaune* in the air and caught him. “Let’s get some more supplies before closing time”
Upon returning to her room, Ruby snuggled with the pony – which she named and modeled after her long-lost friend, Penny. Ruby had hoped Penny would appear out of nowhere, since it seemed to be habit of hers. However, Penny never did, and Ruby at times could not help but wonder about Penny - how she appeared to get to areas so fast, how she was awkward, why some of her clothing reminded her of an Xbox One, and especially how she was able to store so many swords in a backpack and levitate them flawlessly.
The thought of Penny's swords made Ruby shiver, for she remembered how penny mercilessly cut down several thugs all just to defend Ruby and her friends, so she returned her attention to the pony-Penny.
To Ruby, the pony’s massive neon eyes gazed back at her in some unblinking alien stare (much like the eyes of the real Penny), yet her curly, fiery, orange hair and hot pink bow reminded Ruby of Penny’s happy personality. Ruby still had to stitch some kind of a mark on her flank, for it looked very empty and meaningless without it.
“What could symbolize Penny?” Ruby thought aloud in her bunk, still holding the smiling pony above her. For starters, Penny was a great combatant...
Just then, her scroll beeped. Placing the pony aside, Ruby retrieved it and played the incoming message.
*Hey, Ruby. It's Yang! Weiss is back early! Where are you?*
Joyful and puzzled to see Weiss back so soon, Ruby sprinted out her room without closing it.
Once Ruby’s footsteps were no longer heard, the pony on her bed had all of a sudden blinked. Propping itself upright, it clopped across the bed and made its way to the scroll. There, it logged out of Ruby’s school account and entered in a shared account to send a message.
“Team Remnant to Team Equestria – This is 936-67-434. I’m in Beacon Academy, and I'm beginning my observations...”
Facing a massive hologram of the message received an hour later, a tall white alicorn smiled in a darkened room. Beacon Alchemy was a very rare place for one of her fillies to end up, but she was happy nonetheless that a filly found a home.
“I may not be able to promise them normal lives, but I have promised them their lives anyway…” the alicorn said, staring at the message for an extended period of time. Alone, no one was here to see her sore purple eyes and the slowly-healing scars around her chest.
“Nonetheless, it has to be done – as long as these young and innocent ponies continue to live their lives, and... and as long as many more will come after them…” Celestia settled, looking away from the screen. “…I wish you were here to watch time pass, sister…”
Just then, Celestia’s sharp hearing caught the sound of shattering glass and footsteps above her.
“Someone is definitely not-welcomed here during closed hours,” Celestia growled, manipulating her body in an ugly process; her hooves divided into five sections, her neck shrunk and her mouth receded in her face, her tail vanished, and two human ears grew from the sides of her head…
After further transformations, Celestia threw on some clothes and stomped upstairs.
“Nothing but robbing an abandoned shop to make a man feel that he is a great criminal again…” said Roman Torchwick, taking lien out of the cash register at a steady pace. Robbing a store was a vacation from working with Cinder and the White Fang. So long as there were no huntresses on patrol, Roman felt safe enough to deal with the Vale Police Force if he had to.
While he was collecting lien, he suddenly felt a blinding light shine into his face, causing him to drop a bit of lien onto the floor.
“If by *abandoned shop* you mean *ignored and uncared for*, you are sadly mistaken,” hissed a female voice, who sounded just as threatening as Cinder Fall.
Roman’s eyes adjusted to the light and found himself facing at quite a beautiful lady – though he assumed she wasn't a human, for between her pink-aqua-blue-colored hair were two pony ears and a tiny horn in the center.
…Ah, a faunus..
“If it’s alright… I’ll just be on my way, miss,” Roman replied casually, seeing her angered royal purple eyes. Meanwhile, he held a finger on his cane’s trigger in case things would get ugly soon…
