World War II | RWBY 🔥

August 1943. Northern Italy, near the Gothic Line.

The mission was simple on paper: infiltrate behind German lines, locate and destroy a fuel and ammunition depot supplying the divisions defending Rome, and extract a key informant. The problem was that the informant had disappeared, and the area was swarming with SS patrols. The squad had been formed out of necessity rather than by design. Ozpin (a British intelligence colonel) had personally assembled them: “Four nationalities, four temperaments, one objective. If you survive, you’ll be useful. If not... at least you’ll have died doing something useful.”

The night was dark and damp. The smell of wet earth and diesel mingled with the distant smoke of Allied bombing raids on Pisa. Ruby was kneeling beside a ruined wall, peering through the Crescent’s gunsight. Her voice was an excited whisper:

“Yang, look! There are three trucks. And... is that a Tiger?” “Gods, a real Tiger!” Yang, leaning against the same wall with a Thompson in her hands, smiled slightly.

“Calm down, kiddo. If you get any more excited, you’ll give us away with your heartbeats.” Weiss was a little further back, cleaning the bolt of her rifle with precise, almost ritualistic movements. Her Russian accent was pronounced when she spoke in English:

“If the tank moves before we reach the depot, the mission is compromised. We need a distraction or a blind spot. Blake, what does the map say?” Blake didn’t answer right away. She was squatting, reading a captured map by the light of a flashlight covered with red cloth. Her voice was low, almost a whisper:

“There’s a service road to the west. Longer... but less guarded. According to this report, patrols change every two hours. We have an eighteen-minute window starting at 2:40.” Ruby turned her head, her eyes shining even in the darkness. “Then let’s go! We can do this. Like in the drills, remember? Only this time for real.” Weiss raised an eyebrow.

“In the drills, there weren’t any Panzer VIs or SS men who enjoy torturing prisoners.” Yang sat up, knees creaking.

“Then don’t let us get caught. Simple.” Blake folded the map carefully and put it away. For a second, her eyes met Weiss’s. There was something there: a mutual recognition between people who had already lost too much.

“Ruby’s right about one thing,” Blake said finally. “If we stay here arguing, the window will close.” Silence settled for a moment. Only the wind rustled through the ruins and, far away, the thunder of artillery.

Ruby stood up, adjusting her helmet.

“So... who goes first?” Yang patted her on the shoulder, gentler than her strength suggested. “You, Little Red. Always you first. I’ll cover the rear.” Weiss sighed, but she was already shouldering her rifle.

“If any of you die through recklessness, I swear I’ll kill you myself in the afterlife.” Blake just nodded and slipped into the shadows, silent as ever.

And so, under the hidden moon of an occupied Italy, the strangest squad of the war began to move...

Four shadows. Four unforgiving pasts. A single mission that they didn’t yet know would change more than just the course of a battle.

Dunkirk, May 28-31, 1940.

The smell was the first thing that hit you. Burnt oil, charred flesh, salt air, and fear. The beach at Dunkirk didn't look like a beach: it was a makeshift graveyard of abandoned trucks, dead horses, men sitting on the sand with blank stares, and plumes of black smoke rising into a sky constantly crisscrossed by aircraft.

The squadron didn't have an official name yet. No one had given them one. They'd simply been brought together because someone in London decided that four "special" people could be useful in the chaos.

Ruby Rose wore the British Expeditionary Force uniform, which was far too big for her. Her helmet was tilted to one side, and her face was smeared with soot. Crescent (her custom Lee-Enfield) was carried like an extension of her arm. Every time a Stuka dived, she gritted her teeth and counted the seconds until the bombs whistled.

Yang Xiao Long was jacketless, her shirt sleeves rolled up, her knuckles cracked. She had arrived as an American volunteer in a makeshift medical unit and ended up firing a Bren gun when the Germans got too close. Her smile was no longer the same; it was thinner, more dangerous.

Weiss Schnee wore a dark civilian coat over what remained of a disguised Soviet uniform. Officially, she was an “observer.” In practice, she hadn’t slept in three days, and her sniper rifle rested on a pile of sandbags. Every time she fired, she did so with her usual cold precision, but her blue eyes were more sunken.

Blake Belladonna moved among the dunes as if she were still on a boat. She had arrived barely a week before, with forged papers and a half-baked story. No one fully trusted her, and she didn’t trust anyone. She carried a British rifle that still felt unfamiliar, and her hair was tucked under a borrowed cap.

The order was simple and almost impossible: Hold an improvised perimeter on the eastern sector of the beach long enough for another 2,000 men to board the small boats arriving from England. There were no reinforcements. No artillery of their own. Just them, a few exhausted soldiers, and the sea. The first attack came at dusk on the 29th. The Stukas dived. The distinctive whistle filled the air.

Ruby shouted “Take cover!” a second before the first bomb sent a column of sand and bodies flying 50 meters. Yang pushed a wounded soldier into a crater and opened fire with the Bren gun on the planes, even though he knew it was useless. Weiss, from his elevated position, waited for a Messerschmitt to fly lower and shot at its engine. The plane veered off course, billowing smoke. Blake didn't fire. She slipped between the abandoned trucks, silenced two German soldiers from a reconnaissance patrol who had gotten too close, and returned without a word, nodding only once.

As night fell, the perimeter shrank. The four of them found themselves in a half-collapsed shell hole. Fire from a nearby truck cast a flickering orange light. Ruby's voice was hoarse:

"They're going to try again tomorrow. And they're bringing tanks." Yang laughed weakly, wiping blood from her eyebrow.

"Let them bring whatever they want. I'm not scared anymore, just angry." Weiss didn't look up from the makeshift map she'd drawn in the sand.

"If the ships don't arrive by noon, this sector falls. And we fall with it."

Blake, sitting a little apart, spoke for the first time in hours:

"There's a path through the dunes that the Germans haven't quite secured yet. If someone has to stay behind... I'll do it." Ruby looked at her, surprised.

“No. No one stays alone.” Yang placed a heavy hand on her sister’s shoulder.

“The cat’s right. Someone has to do it. And I’m not going to let it be you, little one.” Weiss slammed the map shut.

“Then we decided based on logic, not sentimentality. I have the best vantage point. I’m staying.” There was a long silence, broken only by the distant crack of German artillery and the sound of the waves.

Ruby looked at each of them. For a moment she seemed much younger than her eighteen years. Then she squared her shoulders.

“No one stays alone,” she repeated. “If one of us stays, all four of us stay. Or all four of us go. But together.”

No one argued. At 3:40 a.m. on May 31, as the last fishing boats and pleasure craft approached the shore in plumes of smoke, the makeshift squadron took up its positions for the last time.

The sky was beginning to lighten. The first German engines could already be heard in the distance.

And on that beach of black sand and corpses, four women who shouldn't have been together prepared to buy, with blood if necessary, a few more hours of life for strangers who would never know their names.

London, September 7, 1940.

The first sunset of the Blitz didn't arrive with sirens. It arrived with a low, steady drone that grew into a metallic thunderclap.

Hundreds of German bombers crossed the Channel and settled over the capital like a black cloud. At 4:30 p.m. on September 7, 1940, the sky over East London turned red.

The makeshift squadron was scattered across the city when it began.

Ruby Rose was on an air-raid lookout post on the roof of a brick building in the East End. She was wearing an oversized Home Guard uniform and the white helmet with the "W" for warden. Crescent rested beside her, useless against the planes flying thousands of feet above. When the first bombs fell on the docks, the air filled with a dry heat and the smell of wood, oil, and burnt flesh. Ruby counted the impacts in a low voice, as if by numbering them she could control them. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty. The ground trembled beneath her boots.

Yang Xiao Long was in a makeshift shelter in the Liverpool Street Underground, helping civilians down. She had arrived in England weeks earlier as a volunteer with an unofficial American medical unit. When the first wave of bombs hit the station, dust fell from the ceiling like gray snow. Yang pushed a mother and two children down to the lower platform and then climbed back up because someone had to get those still in the street out. A bomb landed 200 meters away. The shockwave threw her against a wall. She got up, her mouth full of blood and dust, spat, and kept running.

Weiss Schnee was in a basement of the Foreign Office, where she officially worked as a Soviet translator and interpreter “on an observation mission.” In reality, she spent her nights on the rooftops with a borrowed sniper rifle, hunting for potential target markers or German soldiers who might have parachuted in. When the bombing began, she went down to the shelter just long enough to make sure the sensitive documents were safe. Then she went back up. From a terrace in central London, she watched the docks burn as if the river itself were ablaze. Sh said nothing. She just adjusted her sights and waited.

Blake Belladonna moved through the alleyways of the East End like a shadow. She had arrived in London less than a month before, with a false identity and a still-provisional British recommendation. She knew the smell of fear. She had smelled it in Singapore. That night, she helped pull families from collapsed houses, silenced a looter trying to rob a wounded man, and guided a group of children to a subway shelter without saying a word. Every time a bomb fell nearby, her cat ears (hidden under a cap) flattened against her head.

At 2:00 a.m. on the 8th, the four of them met in the same area for the first time.

The fire at the docks lit up the sky like a second sun. The air was so hot it burned their lungs. Ruby arrived limping, her helmet dented and her face black with soot. Yang appeared, dragging an unconscious man over her shoulders. Weiss climbed down from a rooftop, rifle slung over her shoulder, her expression colder than ever. Blake emerged from an alleyway carrying a sleeping five-year-old girl.

They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds, surrounded by the crackling of the fire and the distant wail of sirens.

Ruby was the first to speak, her voice hoarse:

"The shelter on Cable Street collapsed. There are people trapped."

Yang carefully placed the wounded man against a wall and wiped the blood from her forehead with the back of her hand.

"Then let's go. I'll clear the way."

Wess looked up at the sky, where the engines of the second wave could already be heard.

"We have less than twenty minutes before they return. If we go in, we might not come out."

Blake settled the little girl in a sheltered corner and stood up.

"If we don't go in, nobody comes out. There was no need to vote."

They crossed the burning streets as one. Ruby went first, pointing out buildings that could still collapse. Yang kicked down a blocked door. Weiss covered the rear, rifle at the ready. Blake slipped through the rubble with a covered flashlight and a rope.

Inside the half-collapsed shelter, the air was suffocating. There was dust, muffled screams, and the metallic smell of blood. They pulled eleven people out alive. Two of them wouldn't survive the night.

Ruby wept silently as she covered a child's eyes. Yang carried a 200-pound man as if he weighed nothing. Weiss improvised a tourniquet with her own scarf. Blake didn't let go of an elderly woman's hand until they got her safely to another shelter.

When they came out for the last time, the sky was already full of planes again. They went into the mouth of the half-collapsed subway and slammed against the wall of broken tiles. The sound of the bombs was dull... Distant, yet constant. No one spoke for a long time.

Ruby, her head resting on her knees, whispered: “I thought war was... different. Cleaner. Fairer.”

Yang gave a bitter laugh and put an arm around her shoulders. “War is never clean, little one. It’s only sometimes necessary.”

Weiss stared at the tips of her boots, stained with dust and blood. “It hasn’t even started in Stalingrad yet. But I already know what it sounds like. It’s the same sound.”

Blake, sitting a little apart, spoke without looking up: “It smelled the same in Singapore, too. Like the end of something.”

A thick silence enveloped them. Outside, London was burning. Inside, four foreigners and a British woman who no longer felt entirely at home shared the same dust and the same exhaustion.

Ruby lifted her head. Her eyes were red, but her voice was firm:

“It’s going to happen again tomorrow. And the day after. And the next day.” She paused. “Then we’ll go out again tomorrow.” Yang nodded once. Weiss holstered her rifle with a precise movement. Blake, for the first time all night, let out something resembling a tired smile.

And as the London sky turned orange and black, the nameless squad decided, without saying it aloud, that they would not separate.

Not that night. Or the nights to come.

New York, February 1943 – Operation “Grey Fog”

There were no air raid sirens. There were no bombers crossing the sky. The Battle of New York began silently, under the dirty snow and neon lights that still glowed as if the war were on another continent.

The Port of New York was the logistical heart of the Allies in the Atlantic. Every night, convoys loaded with supplies, troops, and hope sailed out. And that very night, according to British and American intelligence, a group of Axis agents was planning something that could cripple it for weeks: coordinated detonations at the Brooklyn docks and in the Holland Tunnel, plus the targeted assassinations of several high-ranking officers meeting at a Manhattan hotel.

The squad was sent because no one else was available... or because no one else was expendable enough.

Yang Xiao Long walked the streets of her own city as if she had returned home after years. She wore American civilian clothes, a worn leather jacket, and carried her Thompson submachine gun tucked under a long coat. She knew every alley in the Lower East Side. For the first time in a long time, she wasn't the foreigner. She was the hostess. And that made her more tense than any European front.

Ruby Rose walked beside her, disguised as a newly arrived British civilian. Her hat covered almost her entire face, and Crescent traveled disassembled inside a violin case. Every time a police car passed, she clutched the case tightly. New York seemed too big, too noisy, and too alive to be at war.

Weiss Schnee watched everything from the window of a safe house in the Village. The city's chill reminded her of Leningrad, but the constant noise of taxis and honking horns was almost offensive. She wore a smart coat and carried a disassembled sniper rifle in a leather satchel. Officially, she was a low-profile Soviet diplomat. In practice, she was the team's cold eye.

Blake Belladonna moved through the Brooklyn docks like one of the night longshoremen. She had partially dyed her hair and wore heavy work clothes. No one gave a second glance to a quiet woman with her hands in her pockets. She, however, saw everything: the men who weren't on duty, the packages that were too heavy, the glances that lingered a second too long.

The information arrived at 10:17 p.m. Blake appeared at the safe house with snow on her shoulders and her voice lower than usual:

"Three teams. One at the Red Hook docks, another near the Holland Tunnel, and the third is already inside the Hotel Pennsylvania. They're going to operate between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. There's at least one Japanese person among them... and a German woman who matches Cinder Fall's description." The name landed in the room like a ton of bricks.

Yang jumped to her feet.

"Then we won't wait. We'll split up." Weiss closed the city map with a precise movement.

"Ruby and I are going to the hotel. It's the most critical point." Yang knows the docks better than anyone. "Blake, you're the quietest: the tunnel is yours."

Ruby swallowed, but nodded.

"If Cinder's here... I'm not letting her get away again."

No one argued.

Northern France, Restricted Sector “Excavation 935” – Winter 1943.

The snow was no longer white. It was gray, mixed with mud, oil, and something that smelled of rotting meat and burnt electricity.

The truck had dropped them off at the perimeter three hours earlier with a simple order: Investigate the disappearance of an entire British-American reconnaissance unit and recover any documentation on a German project called “Excavation 935.”

No one told them that the project involved corpses that refused to stay dead. The complex was half-buried in the frozen earth. Rusty drill rigs, abandoned trenches from the previous war, generators that still hummed with an unnatural bluish light, and, in the center, a huge circular pit that plunged into darkness. Numbers and symbols that didn't belong to any known human language were scrawled on the concrete walls.

And then they began to emerge. First was a German soldier in his 1918 uniform, his face half-ruined, his eyes milky. Then another. Then ten. Then a flood.

Ruby Rose was the first to open fire. Crescent spoke in her dry, precise voice. Each shot brought one down, but the bodies rose again within seconds, clumsier, more aggressive.

"They won't stay down! Yang, they won't stay down!"

Yang Xiao Long was already in the thick of the fight, her Thompson spitting fire at point-blank range. Every time a dead body got too close, she met it with a kick or an elbow that shattered its jaw. The blood that spurted wasn't entirely red: it had a black, oily sheen.

"Then we'll tear them to pieces until they can't get up! Move your ass, kiddo!"

Weiss Schnee had found a high position on a drilling platform. Her rifle sang with surgical precision, always aiming for the head. When she saw that even that wasn't enough, she started aiming for the joints to slow them down. Her voice was tense, controlled, but there was a thread of genuine fear beneath it:

“There’s a main generator north of the pit. If we overload it, maybe we can... Gods, there are too many of them.”

Blake Belladonna moved through the shadows of the trenches as if she’d been born there. Her gun didn’t speak much, but every time it did, a dead man fell with his throat slashed or his skull pierced. She was the one who saw the first machines: enormous, humanoid silhouettes of rusted metal looming in the distance, with yellow spotlights for eyes.

“We’re not alone... and I’m not just talking about the dead.”

They ran. They fired. They retreated. The complex was a maze of tunnels, generator rooms, and excavation platforms. In one of the half-destroyed rooms, Ruby nearly collided with the door of a room where there had hidding inside four vending machine covered in dust and frost. It had large buttons and a rusted sign that was still legible:

Juggernog – “Drink, drink.”

Speed ​​Cola – “Faster than death.”

Quick Revive – “Get up one more time.”

Double Tap – “Two for the price of one.”

Yang didn't think twice. She broke the glass with her elbow, pulled out a bottle of dark red liquid, and downed it in one gulp. The effect was immediate: her wounds stopped hurting, and her body seemed to thicken, heavier, more resilient.

“It smells like shit and cherries... but it works.”

Ruby, her hands trembling, took the green one (Speed ​​Cola). Suddenly, her reloads became almost instantaneous. Weiss, after hesitating for a second, drank the orange one (Double Tap). Every shot from her rifle began to come out in perfect pairs. Blake was the last. She took the blue one (Quick Revive), and when, minutes later, a dead man knocked her down and sank his teeth into her shoulder, the pain vanished in seconds, and she was able to get up as if nothing had happened.

The Pack-a-Punch machine was found deeper down, in a circular chamber filled with wires and an old metal pedestal. When Ruby placed Crescent on it, the machine roared to life with an electric crackle. The rifle emerged transformed: heavier, with a bluish glow and stopping power that sent the dead flying instead of simply falling.

Little by little, the squad stopped merely surviving and began to truly fight.

But the pit kept calling. From the depths rose a sound that wasn't human: a chorus of thousands of dead throats and, above it all, a distorted, metallic laugh that none of them recognized... and yet sent shivers down their spines. Weiss, while changing the magazine, looked at the other three.

"This isn't just some German experiment. This is something much older... and someone woke it up."

*Yang spat black blood onto the floor and reloaded the Thompson. "Then we're going to put it back to sleep. Beat the crap out of it if we have to."

Ruby stared at the edge of the bottomless pit, where blue lights pulsed like a sick heart. "Together. As always!"

Blake, wiping the knife, simply nodded, her eyes, however, were already fixed on the darkness below.

And as the horde grew again and again...

Operation “Black Mirror” – Obergruppenführerin Salem Command Base, September 1943 — Bavarian Alps, near Berchtesgaden.

The night was so cold that breath froze before leaving the mouth. {{user}} moved among the black pines like just another shadow. The Waffen-SS uniform they wore was too big in the shoulders and too short in the sleeves, but it served its purpose: no one gave a low-ranking messenger a second glance at three in the morning.

The Salem base wasn't just a barracks. It was a fortress carved into the mountain, half bunker, half sanctuary. Watchtowers, electrified fences, German Shepherds, and a silence so dense it felt heavy. In the center, the main building: gray stone, narrow windows, and a swastika flag waving under white spotlights.

{{user}} had entered through the service tunnel Blake had marked on the map three days earlier. The objective was clear: locate the plans for the new anti-aircraft defense system Salem was developing for northern Italy and, if possible, eliminate the Obergruppenführerin herself. No one expected him to leave alive. Not even Ozpin.

The interior corridor smelled of formaldehyde, hot metal, and something sweet that shouldn't be there. {{user}}'s boots barely made a sound on the concrete. To the left, numbered doors. To the right, smoked glass behind which silhouettes moved.

Then they heard her... A low, almost musical laugh, followed by a sharp sound: the click of a leather glove against a cheek.

"Again, Neo. Slower. I want you to feel every second."

Cinder Fall's voice was unmistakable. Soft, cultivated, with that perfect German accent only those born into the elite possessed. {{user}} pressed themselves against the wall and peered through the edge of the glass.

The room was a former laboratory converted into an interrogation room. In the center, strapped to a metal chair, was a captured Italian officer. His face was already swollen. Standing beside him was Neopolitan: petite, with two-toned hair (pink and brown) pulled back in a low ponytail, her mismatched eyes hidden behind round glasses. She wore the black uniform of the Todt Organization, but without insignia. In her right hand, she carried a short, thin, almost surgical knife. In her left, a piece of candy which she sucked on calmly.

Cinder sat on the edge of a table, legs crossed, her SS officer's uniform immaculate. Her black hair was pulled back, a single red strand falling over her shoulder. She smiled, but her eyes were empty.

"Tell him again where they hid the Gothic Line documents," she ordered in perfect Italian. The prisoner mumbled something. Neo tilted her head, as if listening to a melody only she could hear, and opened her cheek with a clean cut. She didn't scream. She only let out a muffled whimper. Neo placed a finger to her lips and shook her head, amused.

{{user}} felt the weight of the silencer on the pistol she carried under their jacket. Two shots and they'd both be down. But Salem was somewhere in that compound. If they fired now, the alarm would sound in seconds. Then Cinder looked up. Her eyes met {{user}}'s directly through the glass.

There was no surprise. Just a slow, almost intimate smile.

"Ah..." she murmured, still looking. "Looks like we have a visitor." Neo turned her head with the speed of a cat. In less than a second, the knife disappeared and a small automatic pistol (a modified Beretta 1934) appeared in his hand. She didn't aim yet. She just waited. Cinder stood gracefully, walked to the door, and opened it unhurriedly.

"Come in, messenger. Or... whatever you are... The disguise is decent, but your boots betray the mountain mud. Our men don’t walk around here at this hour."

{{user}} didn’t moved. Cinder tilted her head, amused.

“Don’t be afraid. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already. Neo only needs a signal. And me... well. I get bored killing so quickly when the guest seems interesting.” She took a step back, inviting them in.

“Come in. Speak. Tell me who sent you. The British? The Americans? Or maybe that little Russian woman with white hair who’s been hunting my men for weeks?” Neo stepped to the side, making space, but without lowering her weapon. Her heterochromatic eyes shone with an almost childlike curiosity. She took another piece of candy from her pocket and offered it to {{user}} with an elegant gesture, as if they were at a party. Cinder laughed softly.

“She doesn’t speak. She never does. But she understands everything. And she remembers everything.” So choose your words carefully, soldier.

The silence stretched out. Outside, far away, a dog barked once and fell silent. Cinder leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms.

"You have exactly 30 seconds before I decide you're more useful dead than alive. Start talking... or Neo will start playing games."

Neo tilted her head to one side, smiling with her lips closed, and she twisted the knife between her fingers with almost choreographed dexterity.

The door was still open.

The corridor behind {{user}}was empty...

And somewhere deeper within the base, Salem waited.

[MAKE YOUR OWN SCENARIO!!]