Evil RWBYJNPR au where the two teams are composed by criminals, terrorists, bandits and so on. They barely like each other but have to work together out of survival because they are hunted down by the forces of Salem and Ozpin and by accident they become a somewhat heroic bunch of misfits, deep down enjoying it.
Ruby, the (unknowingly to her adopted) daughter of the terrorist Cinder Fall, sent away by her mother to save her from Salem.
Weiss, who murdered her father in an act of rage during a gala and is now wanted for his murder and chased by her sister (who doesn’t want to arrest her but is forced to by her superiors).
Blake, who just like canon is on the run from the White Fang… but this time there’s a bounty on her head, making her paranoid of everyone.
Yang, the daughter of the bandit clan leader Raven Branwen who left her mothers clan after the last volley of insults shouted at each others followed by a brutal beatdown at the hands of her mother and now has no idea of what to do with her life.
Jaune, whose forged documents didn’t work and he got permanently kicked out of Beacon, becoming a thug under Roman to repay his debts, getting increasingly jaded and surprisingly good at his new job to the point that he’s ascending quickly in the ranks at the cost of losing himself more and more.
Nora and Ren, two fellow bandits of the Branwen clan who have been sent by Raven to recover her daughter, only to run away with her because they saw a chance to be free and took it. Close to the point of codependency.
Pyrrha, who snapped after years of being forced to be the perfect champion everyone wanted her to be and went on a murder spree, starting with killing her mother and ending only after hours of her tearing people apart with her semblance. She would hate her current status as the “Champion of Murder” is she wasn’t pretty much dead inside (and hadn’t embraced it out of resignation to a degree).
And finally the two very reluctant mentors Roman and Neo, who just happened to be at ground zero of these kids meeting and now they’re forced to help them because Ruby, being the daughter of their chief, threatened them to.
Oh my, this is gonna be interesting. A lot of ground to work with, even.
Hope you don't mind if I 'cheat' and jump for a scene instead of an origin story. After all, the ask already works as that.
Also, shout out to Gail Simone's Secret Six, which is a very influential comic for this piece.
The place looked like it had lost a fight with the weather decades ago, but no one wanted to demolish the ruins. The sign outside was barely readable, sun-bleached and worn out.
It had been a couple of weeks since the Breach of Vale. Enough time to scatter to the four winds, avoid detection, rest and heal, and then make their way to the rendezvous point in Vacuo. Jeanne's idea to have a back-up plan, but Ren's pick. South Vacuo was easy to reach from Vale, and with barely any law to be a problem.
Inside the joint, the air smelled like burnt grease and bad decisions.
"Real work of class you picked," Weiss commented idly, looking around before glancing down at her plate of chili con carne. "I also asked for a salad."
"Maybe that's what passes for a salad in these parts," Yang replied. But her smirk died as she looked at her ribs, eyes watering from the heavy spices. "…Are these safe, Nora?"
Nora didn't answer. She was already halfway through her meal.
A second later, she shot up.
"Ugh, it's--" She gulped. "It's fighting back."
Ren handed her a glass of something greenish brown and with bubbles. She downed it immediately.
"Not that I'm ungrateful for the food," Pyrrha started.
"But why are we somewhere where the food counts as a war crime?" Blake finished.
"We already went over this," Jeanne said, rolling her eyes. "Ozpin knows our faces. Cinder knows we messed up her plan." She cracked her neck. "We either lie low, or we lie dead."
That settled the table. Not in agreement, but in acceptance.
Yang leaned forward. "So. What's next?"
Ruby hadn't spoken. She sat hunched over her mug, fingers curled tight around the metal like it might slip away if she loosened her grip.
"We can't keep up like this," she finally said.
Weiss frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Jeanne and I have been thinking about it," Ruby said. "We spent the last several months just been taking my mom's orders through Roman." She sighed "Just 'following orders'."
"As always," Yang muttered.
"But then…" Ruby hesitated. The words were stuck for a second.
"Then we realized what we were really doing," Jeanne continued for her. Her tone was steady, too steady. "And we didn't like it."
Yang looked away first. Nora's grip tightened around her fork hard enough to bend the metal slightly. Blake's ears flattened, not in fear, but in shame.
"There were children at Vale," Pyrrha said, looking up for the first time. "Entire families." Her voice was calm, but Jeanne knew what was behind that. Out of all of them Pyrrha was the most chocked when they realized what they were doing.
She also remembered. Not the fighting, or the orders. It was the sounds. The destruction and death released in the middle of a populated city.
"We may lie, steal, cheat," Jeanne went on, as to cut the tension. "But unleashing a train full of Grimm into a city?" She shook her head. "Apparently that's too much for us."
No one argued. They all remembered when they saw the break, and the Grimm pouring in. How Ruby was the first to react, but Jeanne the one who organized them into saving people for once.
"We helped stop it." Yang said but didn't sound convinced.
"After we caused it," Blake replied, her tone far grimmer.
Pyrrha's gaze lowered onto the table again. "People still died."
No one argued that either.
"So, this is about drawing a line?" Ren asked as he set his glass down with quiet precision.
Ruby snorted. "We're way past that part."
The admission felt heavier out loud. Like she was confessing all of their sins together.
"We're not monsters," Ruby said. "But we're not heroes either. Not after Vale." A pause. "We're too dirty for that now."
She set her mug down with a soft clink.
"That's when it hit me," Jeanne picked up, preventing another guilty silence. "Why are we even trying to pick a side?"
Ren's gaze sharpened, attention locking into Jeanne.
"We don't," Jeanne shrugged. "From now on, we're professionals."
"Professionals?" Weiss raised an eyebrow.
"It's practical," Jeanne explained. "We take jobs. We get paid. We survive."
She made it sound simple, clean and detached.
"And when a job looks like the Breach?" Blake asked, carefully to not sound confrontational.
"We just turn around," Jeanne’s tone remained calm. "And walk away."
"Or we change things," Ruby added.
"Change things how?" Yang frowned, but Ruby met her gaze.
For a second, something uncertain flickered between them.
"If doing the right thing helps us sleep at night," Ruby said, "Then we do that."
"Wait." Nora blinked. "We're allowed to do that?"
A small smile tugged at Jeanne's mouth. "Why not?"
She tapped the table with her mug, grounding the moment.
"We don't need to overthink it. We just do what feels right." A pause. "And we look out for each other, as we agreed before."
That landed in all of them. They were low-lives, criminals, even killers. But they also were alone before meeting each other. For better or worse, they gave each other something to loose.
Ruby looked around the table, confirming no one had moved, or looked like they were about to argue. But most importantly, no one was making a move to leave.
"To being free." She lifted her mug.
Jeanne raised her glass. "To being safe."
Weiss hesitated, then sighed, like she was giving in to something inevitable. "To… not making things worse."
"To doing whatever we want." Yang smirked, tension gone.
"Together," Nora added quickly, almost spilling her mug.
Ren leaned his shoulder on hers. "To staying alive."
Pyrrha studied her reflection in her drink for a moment. Her expression didn't change, but her shoulders dropped, as if releasing a weight.
Seven mugs met at the middle, but didn't touch. Not yet.
They all turned towards Blake's direction
"You know this won't last," she said, holding her gaze to her companions.
"We can't keep tiptoeing that line forever," she went on. "Someone's going to make us pick a side. Eventually."
Ruby and Jeanne slowly looked at each other, then smiled. It wasn't warm or reassuring. There was no joviality or hope in how they displayed their teeth. What they showed as they both turned back to Blake was sharp and reckless.
The kind of sharp smile people give when they know the odds are against them, and simply do not care.
"If someone ever tries to force any of us to do anything." Ruby lifted her mug slightly. "They're welcome to try."
Blake held her gaze for a moment longer. Then she exhaled, almost amused.
"Figures," she rolled her eyes, then reached for her drink.
This time, the clink came easy.
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