The Tragic Death of Summer Rose

The Events before the Release of the Episode
Yes, I know that these lost episode stories have been done to death but this is not one of those stories. This obscure and mysterious episode comes from a show called RWBY, an animated Internet series based on the life and adventures of Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang as they protect the world of Remnant from the evil forces of Salem. Now, before I get to the details of the episode, I need to talk about the details leading up to the episode's private release.

Now me and my friends, Sally and Rodger Andrews are avid anime fans, starting with Cowboy Bebop in 1998 in Elementary School with the latest anime being Overlord in 2017. Now because of our love for anime, we were normally quite alone in school but we didn't care, we believe that anime was awesome and that everyone else had decent but bad tastes in school especially during the time when Vanilla Ice, Jersey Shore and other shit like that was popular at the time. Now exactly 15 years after the release of Cowboy Bebop, July 25th to be exact was the release of the first ever episode of RWBY.

Now me and my friends have been watching Rooster Teeth content ever since they were known as Drunk Tank when it was just three or five guys in a bedroom playing video games. In 2003, they released Red vs. Blue, one of the most famous and important Internet animations of all time set during the Halo universe. I know these details are boring and trivial but I need to fill in the blanks so that all questions about this story after finished are answered. During the production of season eight of Red vs. Blue, Rooster Teeth hired a young quiet man called Monty Oum, an animator from Rhode Island known for making fan animations for Final Fantasy and Halo and later created and wrote the series RWBY.

In 2016, after a deadly allergic reaction to juniper berries, Monty ended up slipping into a coma and died in mid-February. This hurt his friends, family and the fans of his remarkable work because of the loss of Monty and to celebrate his life, his brother Neath uploaded his old works onto website called In Memory of Monty. This website was on the Internet for a limited time (twelve hours) due to the fact that the Oum family didn't want Monty's work to get recorded and uploaded to YouTube out of Copyright purposes. The stuff on this site were his old fan animations like Dead Fantasy but one thing that caught me and my friends' eye: an unreleased episode of RWBY called STRQ: The Tragic Death of Summer Rose. This episode made me and my friends extremely curious and excited because one of the biggest questions of the RWBY plot line was the events leading up to Summer's death and this would be a secret that me and my friends would keep from the rest of the world...until we watched it.

The Episode
The episode opens up with a droning cello chord with the words STRQ: The Tragic Death of Summer Rose appearing on a red, yellow, black and grey background symbolising the colours of Summer Rose, Taiyang Xiao Long and Raven and Qrow Branwen, the members of team STRQ. The title of the episode and the colours started to fade into the blackness as the episode starts to begin. The episode began with a narration of a battle between a group of huntsmen and huntresses, the defenders of the world of Remnant, and the creatures of Grimm, an evil spawn of Salem that are attracted to negative emotions. The narrator then says in a melancholy voice "In the end, the creatures of Grimm ultimately overwhelmed the brave men and women who tried to fight back...with one of the many victims being mother of one, Summer Rose." It was from this point that the episode was read out by a young female voice reading what sounds like a diary extract with an anime style version of what was mentioned in the diary extract. This was how it went.

July 21st 2101
Dear diary:

It's me, Summer, it's very nice to meet and write in you for the first time. This is my first time far away from my family and it is making me very homesick but duty is duty. Today wasn't so bad with low Grimm activity with no losses at all. The town we've been keeping safe has been very cooperative towards us, even letting us sleep in their houses and rest up for the night, it's like a dream come true. Me and Raven ended up being roommates despite our disagreements in the past, especially between our relationship with Taiyang but we've now buried the hatchet about the whole thing. This should be fun but I fear that something about this mission feels off to me but in the end, it's probably my mind playing tricks with me or the homesickness coming back to me. I suppose I better go to bed, see you tomorrow, dear dairy.

-Summer

August 1st 2101.
Dear diary:

It's me again. Things are getting quite bad here, the Grimm are getting more aggressive leading to more casualties upon casualties starting to fill up the local hospitals with deaths starting to pile up into the hundreds. Raven ended up getting badly injured in battle causing her to become bed stricken for what the doctors assume for a week. This is bad but the worst part about this is that my homesickness is starting to take its toll on me and Raven and some of the other people that knew me assumed I was going insane due to the mass body count but I feel the same as I have felt since I arrived in Minstral but it is too early to be paranoid about my own sanity, I could be dead and that would be the worse thing that could happen to me out here. Goodnight diary, let's see how things play out in the morning.

August 13th 2101
Hi Diary.

Raven is back in the fight after she let her legs heal over in the house we were staying at. She is now certain that I'm going mad but I don't know why. I have had more of a temper lately and I do started talking to myself but it's nothing too out of the ordinary because I've always had a bad temper and I still have a massively wild imagination. Raven thinks that I'm unable to continue with the mission but I'm just fine. I'll fight...even if it kills me.

August 26th 2101
Diary,

Raven is frightened of me, I don't know why, I swear I'm normal, promise. I just got a little angry and threatened to kill her. I don't know why. Raven wants me to get mental help but I'm just fine. I swear if I get called insane again, I'm going to fucking kill someone. Just kidding but I can't be certain anymore. I just feel... lost. Goodbye diary.

August 30th 2101
Diary, diary, fucking diary.

I've just killed a man and nearly killed Raven in the process. It was so much fun. Raven started whimpering at me to "stop it before I regretted it" I don't know why I would regret it. She's just a bitch getting in my way. That's why I am going to kill her, I'm going to kill her and feed her to the Grimm. Goodbye diary.

The End of the Episode
A voice rang out with a with a title card saying "four days later". Raven appeared on screen screaming at the dead corpse of Summer with Raven's sword impaling her flesh. Raven screamed "I KILLED HER, I KILLED HER, SHE CAME AT ME AND TRIED TO KILL ME!" She was frightened beyond belief hiding under her covers staring at Summer's corpse with wide, fearful eyes. Beams of sweat rolled down her brow in massive quantities as if she had just woken up after having a nightmare. The episode then showed Raven being comforted by her twin brother Qrow who was asked her "What happened out there... what happened to Summer?" Raven was shaken by what happened that fateful day and she promised to herself that she would never tell anyone about what happened to Summer and why she died. She later ran away from Taiyang's home and disappeared from sight. The episode then faded to black with a message appearing on the screen saying "The End... for now."

After the Episode
After the episode ended, my friends stared at the screen with a look of disbelief and horror. I couldn't blame them, when the episode ended, I felt incredibly uneasy after watching the ending. This didn't ruin our love for the show, in fact, it made us more intrigued about Ruby's character in future episodes of the show but we couldn't help but feel disturbed about the episode. We eventually noticed the description of the episode which stated that the episode was made by Monty to be the pilot for a show based on the lives and deaths of team STRQ. This was eventually scrapped because Monty thought that the concept of the episode was too dark for any audience and so scrapped the show altogether with the first episode never being aired.

After reading this, I went back to the home page only for an 404 error to appear. It was then I noticed that the time had ran out and so the website had been removed due to copyright and piracy. In the end, the episode had fallen into obscurity yet again with hardly anyone knowing of its existence. The episode began to fix plot holes left by the series already released which made me and my friends enjoy series four and five more then the rest of the world. In the end, me and my friends are still alive and we're still friends, hopefully no unanswered questions and an off episode with hardly any blood. If you find this episode, watch with a friend because it's too disturbing to watch alone.