Prologue-A Storm-Soaked Meeting
The thunder rumbled and lightning crashed through the black sky. The forest below was lashed with rain, and not even Grimm dared venture into a storm like this one.
Fortunately for the Grimm, there was a group of people who were braving the storm, regardless of what could happen to them in the dark of night.
"Well Ruby, I hate to say it, but I think we're lost." said a white haired girl, with a rapier at her waist. "I swear I saw that particular tree nearly thirty minutes ago."
"Can you guide us better, Weiss?" Ruby Rose shot back. "I've having a hard time reading the map as it is."
"Well, at least we know one thing." said a blonde girl, Yang Xiao Long.
"What?" asked a dark-haired Faunus, Blake Belladonna.
"That the storm's getting worse, and I think it best we find somewhere to camp out for the night." Yang said.
"Well, if you see a cave, let me know." Ruby said to her sister. "We're in uncharted territory...oof!"
Ruby, with her eyes set on the map in her hands, had walked right into a stone pillar. As Yang helped her up, Blake eyed the pillar with a raised eyebrow. It was circular, with strange carvings.
"That's odd." Blake said, pulling the map out of the mud. "This isn't on the map at all."
"And I think the same goes for that temple over there." Yang said. True to Yang's word, hidden in a oaken grove, was a stone building.
"What do you think?" Weiss asked. "It's better than nothing."
"True." Ruby said, fingering the grip of Crescent Rose. "Let's camp there, girls."
As the four Huntresses made their way to dry ground, they were surprised to see a stone fire-pit burning merrily.
"What do we have here?" Ruby said, warming her hands. "Someone's been here."
"You think?" Weiss snorted. "Whoever it is, I hope they're friendly."
"Ditto." Yang smiled. "Though, whoever it was left footprints. Seems they went inside."
Ruby stood up and looked down. In the firelight, they saw mud-tracked footprints lead deeper into the structure. Blake pulled a burning log out of the fire and took point, motioning into the dark.
"Let's go." Blake said. "This creepy, mysterious ruin won't explore itself."
"Here we go again…" Weiss murmured as the four girls entered.
====
Further down the stone path in front of Team RWBY, four boys of around eighteen were sitting by an iron brazier, warming up and resting.
"Figures. It just plain figures." said one, with messy rust-brown hair and a small scar on his cheek. "First we get lost, then it rains, and now we're camping inside a creepy temple. What else could go wrong today?"
"Oh, I don't know." shot another with a pepper-gray crew cut. "Would you care to think of an idea?"
"Shut up, Trevor." said one boasting a brown cowlick with a black stripe. "You're the one who said you knew the route."
"I did!" Trevor said, a bit irked. "Wasn't my fault the storm showed up."
"Cool it, guys." said the final one, with pale orange hair. "I heard voices."
As the four Hunters slowly hid themselves and readied their weapons, the voices came closer. The boys recognized them as female, about their age.
"Is it just me, or are any of you completely freaked out?" said a refined one.
"We'll be fine, Weiss. A little trek isn't going to hurt." said one who sounded confident.
"Yeah, true. There's no Grimm here, either." said a dusky voice. "That's a bonus."
"That's the spirit, Blake!" said one that seemed a little too cheerful. "We'll be out of here in no time!"
As the footsteps came closer, the rust-haired boy slowly drew his Broadsword and leaned it into position to strike. As the footsteps reached them, Shane swung his broadsword.
Except he didn't expect a girl in red clothing to swing a large Scythe, deflecting his attack. As the rest of his team darted into view, Shane got a good look at his potential foes.
====
Ruby Rose deflected the strike and primed Crescent Rose as she eyed the four boys. They were around her and her team's age, and judging by their posture, were no strangers to combat. She decided to take a gamble and see if she could resolve this...peacefully.
"So...mind telling me who you are?" she ventured, gripping her scythe.
"I could ask you the same thing." said one of the boys, who had dual green and blue eyes. "So, who's going first?"
Ruby weighed her options. On one hand, having allies could make the journey to Atlas safer. On the other, she didn't know if she could trust them. She sighed, lowered her Scythe, and smiled slightly as the others put their own weapons down.
"I'm Ruby Rose, leader of Team RWBY." she said. "That's Weiss, Blake, and my sister Yang. You?"
"Shane Riverport." the one with the longsword said. "Trevor Fern, Ryan Gaige, Mason Rochan. We're Team STRM."
Ruby shouldered her Scythe and eyed Shane.
"Nice to meet you." She said. "You get caught in the storm?"
"Yeah." Ryan said, placing a warshield on his back. "We were tracking a horde of Grimm when we ended up in here. Figured we'd camp until it passed. What brought you here?"
"Not important." Ruby said, keeping silent about the Relic of Summer shrouded in her bag. "We're traveling to Atlas, if you must know."
"Atlas?" Shane said. "That's a long way from here."
"You're telling us." Weiss said, sitting down cross-legged by the fire. The rest followed her lead, though Shane shot Weiss weird looks from time to time.
====
"So, now that we're all acquainted…" Mason said. "Anyone hungry?"
"A little." Ruby admitted, placing a hand to her chest.
Mason opened a duffel bag, revealing a decent amount of supplies and bottled water.
"You keep all this with you?" Weiss asked, taking a long drink.
"We never stay in one place for too long." Ryan sighed, popping a few crackers into his mouth. "Pays to stock up."
Then, Yang leaned back on an stone outcrop, which moved back into the wall. Before anyone could react, the wall opposite the brazier opened up, revealing a dark atrium.
"That's something!" Yang smiled, being helped up by Blake. "But...why does this place have secret doors?"
"Easy." Trevor shrugged. "Birds fly, sun shines, and ancient temples always have secret doors. Three fundamental rules of life."
"I'm pretty sure you made those up." Yang said.
"So?" Trevor asked. Weiss groaned and took a few steps forward, only for a cloud of bats to fly straight past the two teams, sending Weiss to the floor. Shane helped her up, and as the two teams entered, three braziers around the room ignited with white flame. And as the two groups stepped back, the door slammed shut.
"Damn!" Trevor swore. "What's going on here?"
Then, there was a loud moan that echoed through the room.
"I've got a bad feeling about this." Shane said, drawing his Longsword. The others followed suit, Yang priming her Ember Celica with a loud crack.
"Keep it down." Shane said. "Whatever's here probably doesn't like us."
Then, the lamps went out. The two teams pressed against each other, their weapons darting around.
Then came the lightning bolt, which crashed through the stone roof and into the room, blinding the Hunters and Huntresses. As their vision cleared, Shane swore as loud as he could.
Strewn around the room were Grimm. Lots and lots of the, and they definitely did not look happy.
"Take 'em out!" Shane said as he took a defensive stance.
"Don't wait on my account!" Ruby yelled as the Grimm charged, roaring with fury. Weiss and Shane ended up back to back against a group of Beowolves, who pawed at the ground.
"You take those two." Shane whispered. "I'll take these three."
"Sure about that?" Weiss replied, Myrtenaster drawn back.
"Dead sure." Shane replied. "Now!"
Weiss barely had time to sidestep a lunge just as the Grimm attacked. Weiss drilled seven thrusts into one's skull and followed up with a slice to the throat. As she dodged a second lunge, she watched Shane with interest. Weiss recognized his fighting style as the Colossus Stance, which utilized heavy strikes and solid defensive skills. She dodged and finished off a wounded Beowolf and watched Shane impale one through the head, before disabling two more in quick succession.
"Watch out!" Yang yelled as she threw a Beringel to the side.
Weiss barely had time to react as a Boarbatusk rolled past. If Weiss hadn't dodged, she would've been flattened. Weiss readied Mrytenaster as it charged once more. She sidestepped and planted her rapier's blade into its eye, blinding it. As it thrashed around and killed several unfortunate Grimm, Ruby decapitated it with a swing from Crescent Rose.
"We're clear?" Shane said. At that moment, Trevor ended a wounded Beringel by filling it's face with aura-enhanced shell from his Taurus Shot Rifle
"Clear." Trevor said as the Grim disintegrated. "You fought well."
"Thanks. We've been at this a while." Blake said, sheathing Gambol Shroud.
"We should get out of here." Shane said. "Looks like the storm is still going.'
True to his word, the holes in the roof displayed a still-black sky, full of lightning.
"So, I take it we're parting ways?" Weiss asked.
"Up to you." Shane replied. "If you want help, we'd be glad to oblige."
That train of thought was ended by a white light appearing on the floor, followed by several others. Then, a massive disk in the floor opened, revealing a stone archway.
"What's going on?" Blake asked no one in particular.
"I do not know…" Ryan said. Then, the archway shuddered, and a white orb appeared in the center of the hollow space. While this wasn't startling at first, that quickly changed.
Because after a few seconds, the orb started to grow bigger, and a strong wind was pulling stones off the floor towards it.
"RUN!" Shane yelled. His team and Team RWBY didn't need to be told twice. They sprinted for the door, which had been opened in the battle. However, it wasn't long before they ran out of ground to run on. As both teams were brought into the orb, a massive blast of energy tore through the temple, bringing it to the ground.
====
Equestria, Ponyville
Around Ten in the morning.
Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Magic, reasoned she had recently reached her fill of Royal Paperwork. She hopped away from her desk, walked down the stairs, and headed for the door to Ponyville Plaza.
"Twilight?"
She turned to see Spike approach with crossed arms.
"Spike…" she said.
"You've been putting it off each day for a week now." Spike groaned. "That paperwork isn't going to do itself."
"It's so STUPID!" Twilight sighed, raising her voice. "...I'm sorry I yelled, but when you have to sign off on a finance report that Celestia and Luna already gave their approval to, it gets rather…"
"Monotonous?" Spike volunteered.
"Yeah, that's it." Twilight said. "I'm taking a break, Spike, and when I'm done, I'll finish it in a while."
"A couple of decades, more like." Spike said under his breath.
"What?" Twilight asked.
"Nothing!" Spike said. "Have a nice...break."
Twilight stepped outside, and was promptly sent sprawling by a blast of arcane energy and a fierce wind. As she regained her footing, she could see some kind of portal had opened above the Everfree and was currently sending what looked like large chunks of stone and earth into the Forest.
"Great, just great!" Twilight moaned. "What else could go wrong?"
Resigning herself to the inevitable job of keeping Ponyville calm, which was a nightmare of a task itself, Twilight headed for City Hall.
====
"Weiss, Weiss! Wake up!"
Weiss's eyes opened to see Shane helping her up. Her friends and Team STRM were awake, and currently standing in a clearing.
"Where are we? What happened?" Weiss asked her fellow Hunter.
"No clue." he said. "First, we got sucked into...whatever that thing was. Now, we're in a forest that looks even more dangerous than the one we just left, and I'm pretty sure...DUCK!"
Shane tackled Weiss just as a piece of masonry smashed into the space they previously occupied. For the second time, Weiss had avoided being turned into a pancake.
"Thanks." Weiss moaned, shoving him off. "So, what now?"
"Search me." Ruby said. "I mean, there's always the question of where are we currently in space and time?"
"And why are giant chunks of stone falling from the sky?" Trevor added.
"Let's just get moving." Shane said. "If we can get to higher ground, we can get a feel for the terrain."
The others nodded, and the eight Hunters and Huntresses headed off towards a nearby mountain.
====
"Twilight, did you see…"
"Yes, Pinkie, I saw it." Twilight moaned. "There's a portal in the sky, and it's currently sending who knows what into the Everfree."
"That's not what I was talking about." Pinkie said, her tail twitching. "Ooh! my Pinkie Sense is buzzing with a short interlude!"
"...What?" Rainbow Dash asked.
"It means one of three things. New friends, a sudden appearance of pineapples, or some unexplainable happenstance that contradicts the space-time continuum, contrary to our rules of reality and physics." Pinkie said, pulling out a large book marked with "Greatest works of Neil DeGrasse Bison."
Twilight and her friends stared at her, Twilight's jaw going slack at Pinkie's use of vocabulary. She gaped like a fish, before composing herself.
"Pinkie?" Twilight asked.
"Yes?" Pinkie responded, shoving the book into her mane.
"You read Neil DeGrasse Bison? she ventured.
"Of course!" Pinkie cheered. "Just because I don't understand his books doesn't mean I can't like them!"
"...True enough." Rarity said.
"Let's just get a move on." Applejack said. "I think that portal's not going anywhere, anytime soon."
"Right!" Twilight said. "Lets' go!"
As the six ponies headed for the area where the debris was landing, they knew nothing of the eight beings currently climbing the nearby mountain.
Author's Note
Yep, back and better than ever. With three co-writers/editors/canon-checkers. Expect this one to be more polished.
Next time-Ponies meet Grimm. Teams STRM and RWBY meet Timberwolves. And a wild ride through a raging river.
"Shane?"
"Yeah, Trevor?"
"You're an asshole, you know that?"
Shane merely rolled his eyes. About thirty minutes earlier, Teams STRM and RWBY had begun climbing a mountain as a way of surveying the area. So far, the boys were lagging behind the girls, who were resting at a cave entrance above them.
"It's only a little free-climbing." Shane said to Trevor, as Shane pulled him up to a ledge. "Nothing we can't handle."
Trevor said something unpleasant under his breath as the two of them helped Mason and Ryan up to the cliff ledge. As the boys dusted themselves off, Weiss smacked Shane playfully on the shoulder.
"What took you so long?" she joked.
"You girls move too fast, you know that?" Ryan said, out of breath.
"Maybe it's because you're moving too slow." Ruby joked. "Or is it just me?"
Mason rolled his eyes and looked over the horizon, eventually settling on the faint image of a mountainside city.
"You seeing this?" he asked Shane. "There's a city over on that mountain."
"I see it. Barely." Shane replied. "So, that's another thing that makes me believe we're no longer on Remnant."
"Come on." Yang said. "If we're not somewhere in Remnant, where could we be?"
The boys didn't reply, only Shane gave a loud sigh in return.
"I would say we should camp out somewhere, but it seems our supplies didn't follow us." he groaned. "So, either we find friendly civilization or starve."
"I vote for the former." Blake said. "Seems there's a town not far from here."
Blake pointed to a village outside of the forest.
"Let's start there, then." Ryan said, slinging his Mast of Caduceus staff over his shoulder. "We're sitting ducks here."
The boys and girls nodded, and began to trek down the mountainside towards the edge of the forest.
====
"So, back into the forest we go." Yang said. "Wait, you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Trevor asked.
Then, an echoing howl resounded through the forest.
"That's what I heard." Yang said.
"Doesn't sound like Grimm, if you ask me." Weiss said, fingering the handle of Myrtenaster.
"True." Shane said, drawing his longsword. "Eyes peeled."
As the eight of them entered a large clearing peppered with rubble, loud, crashing footsteps came closer and closer. Shane saw something big lunge at a startled Weiss. He quickly sliced off its head, and rolled to a combat stance as he inspected...whatever it was.
"That's definitely not Grimm." Ruby said. The creature Shane had killed was lupine, but made entirely of wood, twigs, and sap. Shane knelt next to it, and groaned.
"Now I'm sure we're no longer on Remnant." he swore.
"How is that possible?" Weiss asked, hand on her hip. "That portal can't have taken us to…"
"I don't believe it either." Shane said. "But what other explanation is there? Explain this!"
He pointed at the wooden wolf, and Weiss looked away.
"What if you're right?" she said. "Then where are we? What's going on back home?"
"I don't know, but I think more are coming!" Trevor interrupted. As the eight Hunters and Huntresses took defensive stances, ten more wooden beasts entered the clearing, and they certainly looked angry.
====
"On your right, Shane!" Trevor said as he fired a slug from his shotgun, killing one.
"Thanks!" Shane replied as he kicked the encroaching beast away before slashing it. "We're outnumbered, that's for sure!"
"We can see that!" Weiss replied, drilling three rapid thrusts into one's chest. "You want to run?"
"Seems like a good plan to me." Yang said as she punched one into a tree, which shattered into bits. After a few more minutes of fighting, the humans took off at a breakneck speed, Trevor bringing up the rear while killing their pursuers.
====
"SHIT! Watch out!" Shane said as he pulled Weiss to a stop. Weiss, if she had kept running, would've skidded right off a cliff into a raging river below.
"Thanks." Weiss replied. "So, I guess we stand and fight?"
"Working on it." Shane replied. "That jump looks survivable, but I'm seeing rocks below. That's not helping."
"And more of those things are coming!" Trevor said, firing three blasts. "Either we jump or get eaten alive!"
Shane thought hard for a few moments, then he snapped his fingers.
"Ruby!" he yelled. "See that tree right there?"
"Yeah!" she replied. "What about it!"
"Cut it loose!" Shane said. "Along this line here!"
Shane drew a line in the dirt, and took a defensive stance.
"What's the plan?" Yang asked.
"We use this ledge as a raft." he said. "Once it's loose, we should be safe from the rocks and the river."
"You sure about this?" Weiss said.
"Got any better ideas?" Shane shot back. "Ruby!"
"Alright…" she said. As she tore into the ground with Crescent Rose, the beasts drew closer and closer.
"Got it!" Ruby cried as she felt the earth beneath her shake and begin to tilt. "Hang on!"
As the eight Hunters and Huntresses fell, the stone outcrop survived the fall and landed in the river, sending everyone bouncing around.
"I'll steer!" Shane said, plunging his sword into the river to use as an oar. "Grab something!"
The others didn't need to be told twice. As they clutched whatever they could, Shane steered the pseudo-raft towards calmer waters.
"Watch out!" Weiss cried. "Waterfall!"
As the hazard approached, Shane growled.
"Brace!" he cried as they went over the rushing water, and everything went black.
====
"Twilight, there's nothing here." Rainbow complained as they walked alongside Ponyville Lake. "We didn't find whatever it was in the Everfree, so why could it be here?"
"It's called a hunch, Rainbow." Twilight said. "And that outcrop coming down was not a coincidence."
Suddenly, Pinkie jumped a few feet and shook like a dog.
"What's that?" Rarity asked.
"Pinkie sense is super-buzzing!" she cried.
"What's that mean?" Fluttershy asked.
"IT MEANS INCOMING!" Pinkie yelped as a massive stone outcrop slammed into the lake from atop the waterfall, soaking anything in the proximity.
Including the Elements of Harmony. Except for Pinkie, who had pulled an umbrella out of nowhere.
"My mane!" Rarity said, horrified. "It took hours to get it right this morning!"
"I think we've got bigger problems." Twilight said, pointing. The Elements then got a clear look at what was currently spread out across the stone slab.
Mainly, eight bipedal beings that Twilight recognized as humans. There were four boys and four girls, and what interested Twilight most was one girl with black hair had fox-like ears.
"Um...Twilight?" Applejack asked. "Aren't those…"
"Yeah." Twilight replied. "Girls, I think we're in over our heads."
"I think so." Rarity said. "Should we get the Guard?"
"Yes, but we're not leaving them here." Twilight said, gathering the unconscious humans using her magic.
"Twilight, are you sure that's a good idea?" Rainbow retorted. "They could be evil! Here to conquer Equestria! Or both!"
"Rainbow, please." Twilight scoffed. "Last time I met humans, they were fine. And frankly, not every extraterrestrial being is hostile and/or here to conquer Equestria. You read too much science fiction. We'll take them to the Castle, and we'll go from there."
"Fine." Rainbow said. "Don't blame me if this goes wrong."
As they teleported to the Castle of Friendship courtesy of Twilight's magic, back in the Everfree, below several pieces of stone rubble, a low roar could be heard. The forms of several Grimm shook themselves off and snorted to each other. As they started to move towards Ponyville, their minds were filled with the need to hunt.
Author's Note
Yep, some Grimm made it through the Portal. And they're hungry.
Next time-The Hunters and Huntresses defend Ponyville, and Ozpin speaks with an old friend regarding the missing Team RWBY...
