Okay, so... Version #2 of this story. Let's see if I can pace it better this time, eh?

Get ready for a lot of shit-writing ahead, since this is my first foray into fanfic-writing in the first place.

EDIT: Believe me when I say the chapters will only get longer and hopefully better the farther in you go. Just some food for thought.

Anyway, let's get to it!

Chapter 1: Stranger in a Strange Land

"We are shaped by Fate just as we shape it." -Bonesingers of Craftworld Ulthwé, Warhammer 40000

Pain.

That was the first thing to flash in his mind. The unbearable ache of every bone in his body. The feeling of going 10 rounds with George Foreman in the Ring, only to get sucker punched by John Cena on the way back to the lockers.

Wait, wait. Two different associations, stupid, he mentally berated himself through the ache. Then again, when you feel that level of pain, you're bound to not think straight.

The second thing to mentally come to him was light. Last thing he remembered it had been midnight or so, he'd been on his couch, coordinating with his buddies for a PlanetSide II raid. Or, was it driving to work the following morning... odd. Now it registered in his cortex that the sun was shining high in the sky—or at least relatively high, as his eyes were still closed—and he was lying on his back on the ground.

Oh yeah, he was on the ground. In the grass. Grass? Where the hell am I, he questioned the abyss. His eyes strained to open, the sun burning his retinas every time his eyes opened. Rolling over on his side, his eyes were finally allowed some leniency to open up. In the cognitive part of his brain, he was expecting to look up and see something along the lines of a car accident that he was ejected from or-

Or someplace else entirely. Huh. In particular, it seemed to be a massive forest, deciduous trees concealing the sky beyond the peephole of a clearing where he was now. A lone tree—an aspen his mind said—stood proudly atop the clearing, its branches just outside of the reach to shield his eyes as he first awoke. Around the clearing the grass seemed almost pristinely short, as if it had just been mowed earlier that day. The occasional dandelion stood amidst the greenery, the yellow blooms proudly declaring themselves amidst the forest floor. Looking back at the tree, he could see something was laying against it—a backpack so he thought—laying atop a massive root breaking the surface of the dirt. Looking closer, it was indeed his backpack; the green-brown camo pattern of a hunter's backpack was ironically easy to spot up against the ivory-white of the aspen.

...Please don't tell me I'm dead, he bemoaned in his mind.

"If this is a cruel joke, God," he decried to the clouds above, "I apologize if I ain't laughing."

The vasty empty sky failed to respond.

He hung his head. No answer. I shouldn't be surprised.

Getting to his feet, he found he was still wearing his usual attire: a white t-shirt, blue jeans, his diamondback snakeskin belt and his brown hiking shoes. Strangely, he showed no signs of significant wounds, just that ache that had finally quieted to a dull roar. Joybunnies. His clothes were also scratch-free sans their usual wear and tear. Surely if he'd been in a crash he'd have some glass sticking out, some scratches, some tears, something to mark the event. Walking felt horrendous, every bone in his legs aching relentlessly. His hearing was working fine, as the twittering of chickadees could be heard in the distance, melding with the rustling of the leaves. It was a temperate day, probably around 70 Fahrenheit or so by his reckoning.

Coming up to his backpack he swiped up his jacket in frustration, muttering to himself with a venomous tone, "What a way to wake up; no clue where I am, no indication of WHAT the flying Hell happened..." Rooting through the contents of his pockets—both of his jacket and his pants—he began taking note of all the contents: Wallet? Check. Phone? Check. MP? Check. Minisketch? Check. Pocket knife? Check. Watch? Check. Battery pack and chords? Check.

"Everything's accounted for," he mused to the nothingness, "Now let's check the pack."

Inside the pack, however, things took an odd turn. Strangely, his large sketchpad and respective pencils were inside with it, along with a couple of his books. No sign of my damn laptop, but that's probably for the better, he despondently acknowledged. There were other items that he didn't recognize, ones he had never owned before. Alongside his other books were a few that he didn't own, including one he could swear bore the insignia of an Eye he was all too familiar with. Strangely he found several of his Warhammer minis in amidst them, intact and unscathed. His Inquisitor and his retinue, his Marine Chapter Master, his Lady Commissar and a few others. Odd, he pondered, What are you doing here?

Rummaging into the bottom though stopped his heart cold as he felt the cold touch of gunmetal.

...There's a gun in my pack, he admonished, Why do I have a gun in my pack?

Yanking the weapon from his pack and into the light, he was caught surprised by the design In his hand. Bersa, .380 ACP, he noted in his head, looks like CC mags. 7 rounds a pop, I think, or was it 8? No, wait, it's 7. Only then did it click in his mind that the gun was not a standard gunmetal grey. That's odd, I don't remember the bronze finish having a navy blue slide, or grip for that matter.

Looking down into the backpack again he found seven more clips, each one loaded to max. About 49 shots, give or take.

"Why the hell would I have that much ammo? Hell, why do I even have this thing!? Is this some cruel prank!?"

Silence.

Groaning to himself he packed up the rest of the gear before moving on to more important subjects.

"What the fuck is going on here..."

His musings remained unanswered. Opting to compartmentalize just as he always has, he picked up the pack and began to move out. At the same time, he swore he heard the notes of a song on the wind, but by the time he would have fully noticed the songs were gone. Great, he mused to himself, I'm losing my mind. The pistol found a home on his belt, the barrel tucked into the snakeskin belt he wore, the magazine unloaded with no trouble at all.

"Now, to find out where the hell I'm at..."

2 hours passed, no sign of anything. No walking paths, no road signs, Hell, no ROADS; wherever he was currently was untapped wilderness. The occasional sounds of birds and beasts echoed about, fueling his antsyness.

You'd figure that there'd be SOMETHING by now, he growled to his mind. The bramble constantly smacking against him was not helping his mood, as by now his legs and arms were sore from the twig-swats they had received. Sure, he worked an outdoorsy manual labor job, but this was not his idea of a morning—or afternoon, rather—so it was imaginable that his anger would boil at this point.

"Must've gotten picked up by some friggin' mountain man or some shit like that, Lord knows whatever it was."

He came to the base of a massive cliff, the eroded face smooth for the most part, as if a river had cleaved the excess rock from their resting place. Above him the afternoon sun smiled warmly—a little too warmly for his taste, he was sweltering in his jacket—and the sky was the most vivid blue he had ever seen. In fact, come to think of it, everything had seemed far more vivid; the trees were a deep green, the earth of the cliffside a rich brown, everything was a vivid color, bright and endearing. This was nothing like his home, everything there drowned out in a sea of scrubland brush and a dull green of the river bosque.

"Well great," he sighed under his breath, "How in the name of The Almighty do I climb this thing?" If the sun had been in a better position—or better yet had he owned a compass—he may have been able to find where he was heading, and even then he'd have to hope there was civilization somewhere on the path. "What I would kill for a GPS right now-"

It hit him like a brick; His phone had a GPS system! Hell, he should've used his phone sooner! Surely he hadn't wasted all the charge so early in the morning? Pulling out the phone, his hopes were dashed in an instant.

No bars. No WiFi. Sonuvabitch.

A rumble from under his feet grabbed his attention away from his phone. The hell, was that an earthquake? Nah, too short, no way that could be.

He soon turned back around to look at his phone, cursing the poor machine out for not being able to find a signal. Sitting on the nearest rock, he tinkered with the settings as much as he could before the battery alerted him to having dropped below 50%. Fuck, he muttered in his mind, gotta save battery. The sun had finally begun to set, yet for all it was worth something felt... off.

It was if the shadows of the forest were longer than they should have been.

The hair on his back prickled, that ancient fight-or-flight instinct desperately clawing for a grip on his mind. I should probably get up top, like yesterday, his mind instructed itself. "Yeah, yeah, g-good idea, me."

After another half hour of testing the rocks, falling down the cliff onto his ass, and then dragging himself back up the same way, he managed to clamor his way atop the cliff.

"Well now," he said, exhausted with the test befallen upon himself in that last half hour, "time to find a tree and climb it... How in the name of God am I gonna do that..."

It was nightfall before he had found a tree stable enough and tough enough to take the strain of his 155-pound body. Settling into the crook of the tree, he set his backpack into his lap and fished about for his Malleus Inquisitor, spotting his red and black hood and cape and the massive Terminator pauldron on his left arm. He chuckled to himself, as always pleasantly surprised by how well his model conversion had worked; He had created the Inquisitor from a Dark Angel Interrogator-Chaplain, kitbashing a Grey Knight arm and Force Sword where the fancy beating stick known as the Crozius Arcanum was supposed to be wielded.

"Well buddy, looks like we got ourselves in an interesting predicament," he muttered to the plastic soldier. As usual, he cursed himself, talking to inanimate people just to hear myself talk. Oh how the Funny Farms would LOOOVE me.

Thumping the back of his head against the trunk of the tree in frustration led the way for another ache—this time from his skull. Stupid is as stupid does. But now was not the time for mental berating. Sleep for a few hours, get up at first light, find civilization, then he could beat himself up.

Looking through his pack again, he continued to scour through everything inside; Somehow it was as if the inside of the bag was ever so slightly larger than the outside. Now I know I'm losing it.

"Let's see, gotta be something in here. Sketchpad's in here, that's good. The Art of War's in here, that's nice of whoever; I can re-read it for the 10th time. Bible's in here, good, now I can pray my way outta this mess. Heh. No laptop, no Nook, no DS, no PSP, no electronics beside my phone, and I can't even call anyone. There's the... RWBY Steelbox; not really helpful here, thank you whoever. Oh, wait! There is a little Blu-Ray player... that's got no battery. Fuck. Come on, there's gotta be something in here I can use—and hopefully something to eat..."

With nothing better to do and frustration at the lack of edibles gnawing at his patience, out came his sketchpad, the mechanical pencil clinging to the ringlets of the paper to avoid falling into the cluttered clusterfuck of the inside of the pack. Flipping through the pages he came to the project he had left off on earlier.

It was a basic pencil sketch, but the concept was where the merit lied; a crowded charge across no-man's land, as figures of many shapes and sizes careened their way towards an advancing mass of shadows. Maws, teeth, claws, fur, horns and more erupted from those shadows, thrashing wildly before the charging forces, a dirty and ragged banner of a red snarling wolf flying menacingly overhead. The chargers, however, appeared more regal, majestic in their design. In the background three massive armored men towered over the battlefield, their faces contorted with determination. The largest screamed of might, his massive mane of hair billowing in the breeze in the shadow of titanic wings as his equally-massive glaive extended before him, seeking purchase in the shadows as he stared them down with a single glowing eye. The second was clad in mighty armor, patterns of swirls and flames dancing across his armor. In his extended hand a mighty sword, wreathed in flame that drove back the shadows—both literally and figuratively—lighted the path ahead. From behind the second figure a third came screaming forth—equal in size to the second—his massive armor lined with the furs of animals, a wolf's head sitting upon his left shoulder. In his hand a colossal axe, the sharpened teeth on it telling of a chainsaw blade. He was elderly looking yet there was an edge to his eyes, one that told of countless battles and untold horrors. At their feet ran hundreds of soldiers, some in basic infantry gear, rifles and bayonets flashing in the dimmed light of the smoky battlefield. Others towered over the infantrymen, their massive frames and armor telling of kinship with the titans that rallied them to battle. Blood drops with wings, upside down omegas, Ouroboroses, snarling wolves, winged swords, black fists encased in a ring, ravens perched atop blood drops and more decorated the pauldrons, each one drawn to the artist's best attempts at accuracy. Yet they were not the focus of the picture, as numerous and intimidating as they were.

Nay, the focus laid directly center stage, a contingent of 8 warriors charging head first into the fray, the Sun's only rays permeating the smoke and beaming brightly upon them. At the lead was a little girl, her red cape and black dress fluttering in the wind, rose petals dancing in her wake. In her hand was a mighty scythe, mechanical and soaked in inky blackness in blooded splatter patterns. To her side was a young man, his armor of pure white gleaming brightly as the Sun shone above and onto the plates of his armor. In his hand he held a simple sword and shield, though the sword was raised high in defiance, his face seething with fury. On the girl's flank were 3 more; a maiden dressed in pure white, armed with a simple rapier, a glowing titan striding forth alongside the group created with her power. Another one, long hair—practically a lion's mane—burning brightly, her fists pounded together, a smile of mirth plastered on her face. And another, clad in black, feline ears peeking above her raven hair, twin blades in hands, pouncing from above the group. Behind the young man came 2 others, a man of raven hair, twin pistols with sickle-like blades jutting out were raised in his hands, steely cool in his eyes. By him was a maiden of short bright hair, a menacing, toothy grin etched in her face as she rushed forward to introduce her comically-oversized hammer with the legions of the abyss. And above the smaller group flew an angel, her armor shimmering in the light of the Sun. A spear and shield were her weapons, her hair billowing in the wind as she flew above the knight, almost as though she watched over him in particular.

She was supposed to have a face of peace and calm, but he had not completed it. Life's not a very fair bastard when it comes to time management.

"Well, Pyrrha," he said with a resigned sigh, "I suppose I should finish your picture. Can't have an angel without her face if I'm gonna post this on Reddit," he chuckled. The click of a pencil set him to work.

All the while—hidden by the cover of thick foliage—the light of a fractured moon shined overhead...

Next Chapter, I stumble into trouble... and meet up with our heroes...