The Wrong Place at The Wrong Time

Chapter 1

Walking the Extra Mile

"Where's Nora?"

That particular question would not normally be out of place in any conversation between Teams RWBY and JNPR. As a matter of fact, it was rather common. The ginger bundle of lightning, sloths, and boundless energy rarely stayed in one place, and it wasn't uncommon for J_PR to find her off doing some absurd activity that may or may not be legal. The group sat in the stands during the intermission, waiting for the alert that would call RWBY to the field.

"Your guess is as good as mine, P-Money," Yang answered, resting her arms behind her head, not knowing the full gravity of Nora being 'missing.'

"Well, you all are about to fight, aren't you?" Ren asked. "If I recall correctly, you said you were going after SSSN."

"Yep!" Ruby confirmed.

"You'd think Nora would take it upon herself to be our personal cheerleader," Weiss said. "'Break their legs, guys!'", she continued, in a altogether unenthusiastic impersonation of the Valkyrie.

"That's pretty much what she'd say," Jaune agreed. "I am kind of worried, though... it's been about... I dunno, ten minutes since we last saw her?"

"That's about right," Pyrrha said. "She normally doesn't take that long unless-"

"Stop right there. I don't want to even THINK about the possible collateral damage her 'walks' can cause," Weiss interrupted.

"NORA! WHAT HAPPENED TO... TO... TO THIS!?" Pyrrha shouted, spreading her arms to encompass what was formerly a forest, and now a smoking, crater-marked waste for at least 3 miles ahead of them. A Beowulf lay impaled on a tree branch, vainly struggling to free itself.

The hammer wielder clasped her arms innocently behind her back. "Oh, you knoooooow, I just decided to take a walk!"

She leaned forward into her fellow JNPR girl's face, pointing at a Creep whose jaw was unnaturally distended by the Ursa half-shoved down its throat.

"A very BRISK, ENTHUSIASTIC WALK through the woods."

If anyone saw the sudden twitch in Pyrrha's eye, they didn't comment on it.

"Yeah... she could have gotten herself -someone else- hurt," Blake agreed.

"I guess I'll go try and find her. She probably just went back to campus," Jaune guessed, standing up. His partner shot up from her seat, her previous traumatic flashback now a dull memory.

"I'll come along. Two sets of eyes are better than one, after all," Pyrrha informed them.

"Oh no, now Nora's gonna have to deal with the fun Pole-ice!" Yang gasped.

Ruby chuckled, Blake facepalmed, and Weiss groaned in irritation.

"Tough crowd, you bunch..." she muttered as Jaune and Pyrrha went off to find their teammate.

"Ren, you're not going with them?" Weiss asked JNPR's resident straight man, who had not made any effort to leave his seat.

"I will join them shortly... I'm going to take a quick nap, and catch up with them later. Do you mind?"

"No, not at all. I doubt you'll get good re-"

"Awww he's so cute when he's sleeping!" Ruby squeaked, pointing at the green-clad Hunter in training.

Weiss did a double take, and, sure enough, he was knocked out cold. Say what you want about Lie Ren, but he could likely sleep through a nuclear Armageddon.

"Well, that was quick."

One thing that everyone knew about Jaune Arc was that he was not the brightest bulb in the box. One thing that everyone did NOT know is that Pyrrha Nikos wasn't always the pinnacle of genius either, as evidenced by the fact that their current strategy was to walk in circles around the Festival grounds, trying to make out their favorite ginger in a sea of faces, rather than... you know... calling her on their Scrolls.

Well, to each his-and-or-her-own.

"You see her?" Jaune asked, raising his voice to be heard over the clamor of the crowd.

"Not yet!" his partner replied, looking over a stranger's shoulder at an individual whose hair matched Nora's in cut and color, but she was rather certain that Nora was not a male, and that she did not have a beard. A fruitless effort.

The two partners continued their vigil, occasionally finding someone that looked like their teammate at a glance, but would prove to be strangers under scrutiny. That one was too tall. This one was too short. The other one's hair wasn't long enough, and the one by them's was too long.

"Where would she have gone? It's not like she knows her way around town that well," Jaune wondered.

"She tends to go out with Yang, she knows more than you think."

"Oh, Dust, do they go out drinking?"

"...no..."

"So that's why you suplexed Yang through that table last week."

"Alcohol is terrible for you, Jaune. Remember that."

Jaune would normally make an awkward, weak joke at this point, but Pyrrha was looking unusually serious right now, sort of how she did whenever Nora talked about walking. Considering what Pyrrha had told him about the hammer-wielder's love of taking nice, brisk walks through the countryside, he couldn't say he blamed her

After about another minute of walking, Pyrrha decided she was going to do the sensible thing and call her friend to make sure no one was going to have to go home in a body bag. She reached into her shorts, trying to grab her Scroll... which wasn't in her front pockets. She reached around to her backside and stuck her hand in the back- wallet, dorm keys, team photo, but no Scroll. She must have left it in the stands.

With a sigh, she turned to her partner. "Jaune, can I borrow your-"

There was no one there. Apparently Jaune had mastered the art of disappearing into thin air as a result of her training.

"Jaune?"

Pyrrha looked around, a slight coil of worry forming in her belly. If she had to look for two people, that would be less time she could spend evacuating the general population of Vale in the event of Nora taking a nice long walk. As much as she loved Jaune, the safety of the public was one of her top priorities as a huntress-in-training. Jaune could probably handle himself... probably. She took out her Scroll, tapping the 'Team' icon, and noticed something extremely odd. Nora and Jaune's bars were not green, or yellow, or even red.

They were white, with black stripes.

White-on-black bars on an Aura monitor meant that the person being monitored was currently out of range of the current device. Normally, this meant weak reception, a large distance, or Grimm destroying the CCT Tower nearest you. There was no Grimm Alarm or gunfire, and she had five bars of reception right now.

That meant that, somehow, Jaune Arc and Nora Valkyrie had managed to get at least 10 miles away from her within 10 minutes for the latter, and 45 seconds and counting, for the former.

Wait a moment, now Ren was out of range... something wasn't right. Was her Scroll damaged? She flipped over the device, checking for cracks, dents, or anything out of the ordinary. Nothing stood out, so she removed the cover over the inner workings of the device, only to find nothing amiss. Something was definitely very wrong.

Her Scroll beeped, showing that someone had messaged her. Upon examination, it was Weiss.

'Pyrrha is Ren with you?'

She quickly typed out her reply.

'No I thought he was asleep."

'Well he isn't here! and neither is Blake!'

Okay, perhaps they were just playing a joke on her. RWBY loved to play jokes on her, especially now that Nora had gone and blabbed about her secret crush to the entire team, although, according to Yang, 'a blind man would be able to see that you want to jump his bones.' They knew how to get a rise out of her, this was just a prank. Just a silly, silly prank.

'Weiss this isnt funny. The joke is over.'

'Pyrrha this isnt a joke I swear! Now Yang's gone and Ruby's having a heart attack.'

'Weiss stop it. This joke isnt funny anymore, just give it up. I can't believe you dragged Jaune Nora and Ren into this- I can't believe YOU got dragged into this.'

Pyrrha's textual rant was suddenly interrupted by an invisible force suddenly collapsing in on her. It felt like she was in a garbage compactor, like her entire body was being compressed in on itself. Before she could utter any sound, she was gone.

A loud thud accompanied Pyrrha hitting the hard pavement, her head thankfully landing on a patch of dirt exposed by the worn asphalt.

"Okay... that hurt quite a bit," she muttered, sitting up as she looked to the sky. The weather was certainly not very inviting, wherever she was. It was overcast, with winds whipping hard enough to actually sting, cold as ice. She felt an odd, tingling sensation all over her body, but she assumed that had something to do with that sudden burst of pain she'd experienced a moment ago.

Carefully, she got to her feet, wiping the dust off her body as she checked to make sure everything was in its right place. She still had her weapons on her back, and her Scroll had landed just a few inches from her hand -she'd likely let go of it on impact with the ground. She picked up the device, noting a rather large spiderweb crack in the center of the screen. However, it apparently still worked, as it powered on with a flicker.

She quickly went to the 'Team Icon', once again greeted by the black and white bars, only now her name had one as well. They were evidently far from a CCT tower. No matter, they had been out in the wilderness before, they could certainly handle it now. She tapped a microphone icon on the display, holding it closer to her face to make sure she was heard clearly.

"Jaune, Nora, Ren, are you alright?"

Static.

"Can you hear me?"

Static.

Pyrrha looked around, making sure no one was around to hear her, before huffing and stomping her foot.

"Dammit..."

Well, that was certainly cathartic. Now she had her mind in the right place, and, as such, she decided to take inventory of her surroundings. As she looked around, she was able to deduce a few things. It was hot as hell, and dry, and the wind only made it worse. It was probably somewhere around 4:00 in the afternoon, judging by the sun's barely visible place in the sky. All of the buildings around her were decrepit, abandoned, half buried in dust and sand, and most definitely uninhabited. A highway loomed overhead, and by highway, she meant HIGH-way. It had to be hundreds and hundreds of feet off the ground, winding to the north and south. Or, at least, she thought it was the north and south. Her Semblance would likely mess with any compass she owned.

"Well, I suppose there's no harm in checking," she said to herself, looking at the small compass in the corner of her screen.

For the first time in all her days since discovering her Semblance, it was not pointing at her. Rather, it was pointing slightly to the left. Therefore, she was supposedly facing west. The wind was coming from the same direction.

Was something wrong with her Aura, she wondered, noting the distinct feeling of it being... dull, almost non-existent.

A single light in a window caught her eye, from some sort of shack to the right side of the road. She probably needed to get out of the heat and wind before she started to tire. She strode over to the door, and opened it slowly, peering inside. "Hello? Is anyone here?"

No one was within, and a single, dim bulb hung from the beam that held the roof of the hut together. There was a chair off to the side of the halo of light given off by the bulb, and a small desk beside it. A door was framed by shadow directly ahead of her, unmarked, with a glass pane centered near the top of it. She couldn't quite see through it.

She approached the door, relaxing her stiff shoulders as she reached for the knob, turned it, and pulled, revealing a skinless man with a rather large knife and an pained rictus staring at her.

Instinctively, she extended her hand, attempting to call up her Semblance to push whatever in the seven Hells this ABOMINATION was back, only for her Aura to sputter uselessly. Her effort was rewarded with the knife-wielding freak lunging for her, tackling her to the ground with a roar filled with hatred and pain. Training kicked in, and her knees buried themselves in the stomach of the assailant, allowing her to shove him off of her and roll back, taking Miló off her back and shifting it to sword form. Her opponent managed to clamber back to his feet, another cry welling up as he rushed her haphazardly, no regard for technique or restraint. She deftly sidestepped his attack, taking Akoúo̱ off her back and swinging it directly at his head, connecting with a loud crack. The man stumbled and fell a foot or two away, clutching at the affected area as he attempted to get up.

She recognized that he was bleeding rather badly, and there was exposed bone prodding out from -well, exposed flesh. And, needless to say, she was rather disgusted, horrified, and, to her shame, a bit terrified of whatever this man had become.

His breaths came in ragged pants as he righted himself, his hand falling limply to one side, his grip on the blade growing tighter as he glared over his shoulder, his teeth once again bared in an animalistic grin. He pivoted on his foot bringing the knife up in a backhanded hold, as if he were a trained knife fighter. Then, disregarding that, he charged again. Pyrrha prepared to sidestep the strike again, intending to knock him unconscious with a blow from the flat of her blade, only to be shocked by another flash of metal from his other hand.

A handgun.

Instinctively, she shifted her blade to its rifle form, intending to shoot the gun out of his hand, but he shot first. The round grazed her neck, leaving a burning trail of pain in its wake. Ignoring the urge to reach for it, she fired, her own shot finding its mark and blasting the gun out of his grip and through a nearby window. With a last agonized scream, he barreled forward, knife held in both hands overhead as he leapt for a downward stab.

Only to be met by a blade to the chest.

Pyrrha stared up into the eyes of this... man?... as he registered the fact that he had been impaled. His eyes practically burned as he brought the blade down, only for Pyrrha to withdraw her blade and step back, leading the man to fall uselessly to the ground, burying his blade in the wood floor.

'Did I just kill someone?' she asked herself, finding that she was pretty sure she wouldn't like the answer.

The man crawled towards her, malice still evident in the pained groans that accompanied his pulling the knife from the floor, and dragging himself towards her. She stepped back, but he didn't stop. In fact, he seemed to grow angrier. His groans became louder, filled with the same rage he possessed in their initial encounter.

*ptah*ptah*click*

Someone was coming.

Now, all things considered, it was very likely that this unidentified entity meant Pyrrha Nikos no harm. However, it was equally likely that whatever it was DID, and, considering Pyrrha had just had her first encounter with the denizens of this-Oum-forsaken-ruin ended with her getting shot at and slashed at with a knife, she was more likely to take the latter probability more seriously. She quickly ran past the floor-ridden man-monster, opening the door and shutting it as quickly and quietly behind her as she could, finding herself in a rather decrepit and rank bathroom.

Well, it was either this or possible death. She could handle hiding in a bathroom for a few minutes.

The man who entered the hut was tall, about as tall as Ozpin. A long coat billowed behind him, and the light cast on the doorway revealed he was wearing some sort of armored chest piece, with the number '06' emblazoned in white paint. Behind him was a smaller man, more akin in height to Jaune, in a hat that wouldn't look out of place in Vacuo, a tan shirt, and a bright red scarf. The former had two rather large gauntlets, while the latter had some sort of gun.

"Another marked one," the larger man said, in an accent Pyrrha couldn't quite place. "Looks like he got a little roughed up, eh, Sancho?"

"It's 'Dutch'," the other man drawled, in what sounded something like a Western Valean accent. "Who the hell is this 'Sancho' you keep blabbing on about?"

"Have you ever read a book, hijo? And no, La Fantoma is NOT a book, it is softcore pornography."

"I don't need to read a damn book, stupid! We've got those brain-jar thingies to do the thinking for us!"

"Look, forget it. This thing is crawling towards us, are we going to kill it, or what?"

"After you, oh wise one!"

The man in the coat stepped forward, lifting his foot into the air, and bringing it down with a wet *crunch* on the head of the 'marked one', rendering him still forever.

"And now I've got ghoul on my boot. Asqueroso..."

The man's face was now visible in the light. He was relatively tan, about the same tone as Sun, with scars marring his face, including a rather nasty one off to the side of his forehead that looked almost like an entry wound. The man's eyes were a light brown, almost yellow in the light, with thick, bushy black brows above, matching the thick, slicked back hair atop his head, shaved on either side. Said stubble was rather gray, as was the majority of the thin beard framing his jaw, save for a rather large mustache in the same shade as the rest of his hair.

He looked up at the door, and Pyrrha stood ramrod still. She wasn't able to see the 'marked one' through the glass, how would he be able to see her?

"Hey, Esteban. I saw the door shut when we came in," the smaller man said.

"A marked one wouldn't have run away, hijo."

"Wouldn't put it past them. I'll make sure."

"Whatever. You get killed, I'm going to laugh, then cry a little... then laugh some more."

"Jackass."

"Pendejo."

The smaller man stepped into the light as well, revealing a clean shaven, youthful face. She couldn't see much above his eyes, which were barely visible through the shade presented by his hat, but she could see that they were perhaps only a shade removed from her own. These eyes were cold, however, sunk in and hollow. It was almost as if he wanted something to be behind the door.

Quickly, she ducked to one side, noting a urinal stall that would be hidden from his view. If he chose not to investigate too closely, she would be safe.

The door opened, and before she could make the corner, his head turned to her.

Their eyes met, his eyes wide and hand clenched tight around his gun. Her hand gripped her blade equally taut, anticipating a fight that she wasn't sure she really wanted to be in. Without her Aura, she felt nearly naked, not to mention the fact that she would have to lunge at him, leaving herself open to be shot, in order to strike him. She nodded slowly, backing up, and he shook his head at a similar pace, taking a single step back.

Before she could mouth anything back, he looked back out the doorway.

"Ain't nothing here," he said as he backed away, shutting the door. Pyrrha breathed a restrained sigh of relief as the man stepped away from the door. She leaned back against the bathroom wall, listening for their departure.

"Nothing. Not even a medical kit?" 'Esteban' asked.

"Nope. Just shitters and a urinal," 'Dutch' replied.

"Okay. I don't see anything in here other than a few boxes of 10 mil ammo, and some .44 Magnum rounds. Here."

The sound of a box full of metal impacting cloth could be heard. "Beholden to you, old man."

" ¡Pues claro!" Esteban replied. "You ready to roll out? That Ulysses bastard is getting on my last nerve with his cryptic speech crap."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm ready to go," Dutch answered.

The sound of the door to the domicile opening was followed by a loud cry of 'Buenos dias, Diviiiiiiiiiide!' and an exasperated groan. Two sets of footsteps could be heard for the next two seconds, and then the door slammed shut.

Pyrrha slowly opened the bathroom door again, looking down at the corpse of the 'marked one'. Blood spattered in a small radius around where his head used to be, with a few bloody footsteps mixed with a bit of loose flesh led to the door. It took a good bit of willpower not to get sick looking at it. Yes, she was trained to be able to look death in the face, but it's not like she'd been this close to it before.

She shook her head. 'I should probably wait for a bit while I let them get ahead, then I'll go looking for RWBY and the rest of my team.'

She sat down on top of the desk she saw earlier, taking a deep breath, and shaking her head.

She looked down at the corpse, and it dawned on her.

"I can't stay in here."

She got off the desk, walking towards the door and opening it, looking back out. The wind immediately made her reconsider for a moment, but in the end, she had watched enough movies during her Sanctum days to know that people that stayed in rooms with dead people started to talk to them, and then go crazy. So, that wasn't an option. She turned to the right, and saw the backs of Dutch and Esteban as they walked along. Esteban was now holding a long-barreled, heavy-looking rifle with a wind sight, while a pair of blades were holstered on Dutch's back.

Quickly, she shut the door, and ducked behind a nearby barrel, watching as they went up the road a bit further, before following suit herself.

"Hey, Dutch. How long has it been since you had a hit?" Esteban asked.

"About an hour. Why?"

"God despises liars, hijo. How long has it been?"

"... about ten minutes."

"Oh, come on... what was it this time?"

"...Steady..."

"You got the shakes?"

"...No..."

"Oh, come the FUCK on, hijo! You need to get clean! I swear, when we get home, I'm taking you to a doctor."

"When 'we' get home? And with what money, you spent it all on ammo for that Auto Rifle, and a bunch of fancy guns that are sitting on the bed in Novac!"

"Well, maybe if you stopped buying chems, we'd have more money!"

"I have more money than you, smart guy!"

"And you use it on that garbage!"

"That GRX shit might as well be a chem."

"I use it because it ISN'T one, that's the whole point, Dutch! ¡Ayúdame, Dios!"

Pyrrha wondered what exactly a 'chem' or 'GRX' was. Well, it's not like she was going to walk up to them and ask.

"Can we change the subject, old man?"

"Fine. What do you want to talk about?"

"I saw somethin' in the hut."

"Thought you didn't?"

Pyrrha's breath caught in her throat, and her grip on her weapons tightened.

"That Marked Man was wearin' Legion gear. We've only been seeing NCR thus far."

"Huh, I saw that too."

Pyrrha exhaled loudly, thankful that she hadn't been exposed. Unfortunately, if she intended to glean information from following these two men, she wouldn't get anything very important. She didn't understand half of what they were talking about.

"Wonder why."

"Beats the hell out of me, Dutch."

Pyrrha heard their voices starting to fade with distance, meaning it was time for her to catch up. She carefully measured the distance between her and the nearest concealment, and dashed across the way, not making a sound until she had crossed the road.

"So, where are we going, again?" Dutch asked.

"The High Road, hijo. That big overpass up there," Esteban replied.

"Right, right. Then where to?"

"Wherever the hell this Ulysses cabrón is."

"Got it. How long you reckon this is gonna take?"

"Two days, maybe four tops."

"So, you're telling me it's gonna be a week, in actuality."

"Oh, ye of little faith..."

Again, she was forced to try and keep up. This time, there was a neatly stacked pile of rubble. She ducked behind it, peering at them from behind a bent girder. They were approaching some kind of intersection- part of the overpass she had seen had apparently collapsed down on the main road.

"Well, I'll be damned," Esteban said, staring at the rubble. "Pip-Boy says we gotta go in there."

"Shit..."

Pyrrha closed the gap between them a bit more, managing to just make it past Esteban as he turned his head in her direction, coming to a halt behind a fallen billboard.

"Something caught your ear, old man?" Dutch asked.

"... no. Must have been nothing."

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

"That's gunfire!" Dutch shouted, drawing his handgun. "Coming from the overpass!"

Now, Dutch and Esteban only heard gunfire, but Pyrrha heard something completely different. You see, on Remnant, there are many weapons, each with a distinct sound that is almost completely unique to it. And the gun she was hearing right now, was Ember Celica.

"Chingate! You think it's a Marked One?"

"I don't know, but it won't hurt to find out!"

Esteban racked the action of his rifle, his coat billowing out as he broke into a dead sprint towards the entrance to the collapsed overpass. Five drew a broad, rectangular blade from one of his sheathes, and followed suit. Pyrrha, realizing she had little to worry about in the way of being spotted at this point, followed after them from a short distance away.

Here it is, my dear readers, my late Christmas gift to you- IT's BAAAAAAAAACK. This is the final, reworked draft of the story that started me in fanfiction, 'The Wrong Place at The Wrong Time'. I hope you enjoy reading it, it's been almost a year in the making.

Credit to my coauthor, who shall be referred to now as 'Hipster Hippo', my editor and wallet Big Mike, and everybody who has me on their alerts and favorites. You people are the best, don't you forget it!

Until next chapter,

Shock.