My third OC reincarnation story, this time I decided give RWBY a try.
So, here it is
Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY, just the OC's. All credit goes to Rooster Teeth and Monty Oum. R.I.P.
My name was once Allan Kimura, I was a 25 year old computer programmer of Japanese descent, I don't remember or even know how I died but in an instant I lost my life, family, job, and possessions.
I lost it all.
Next thing I knew was that the world went black and I was in an endless void. The afterlife wasn't all it was cracked up to be. I couldn't see, feel, or even breathe; not that I was in any danger since a lack of body meant that breathing was a non-issue.
I merely existed in this darkness with only my own thoughts for company, I'm certain I'll go insane if this was how I was going to spend my time from now on.
Thankfully, after some undetermined time, I saw a light and then I was pulled from the void.
I did not expect what happened next.
I felt warmth with the feeling of being squeezed and crushed in all directions, I also felt I was submerged in some liquid which made it hard to breathe.
That changed when what felt like giant hands grabbed me and after being crushed and shoved around in a very narrow tunnel, I saw light and heard sound and felt cold for the first time in who knows how long.
However rather than celebrating, I screamed from the pain, fear, and sensory overload; I mean how could I not? I had no idea where I was, my arms and legs would not respond no matter how hard I tried and I was being manhandled without my consent.
However after being cleaned and wrapped in a warm blanket, I calmed down considerably and my eyes began to adjust to the brightness which finally allowed me to see and be more aware of my surroundings.
To my surprise everything and everyone had an almost anime appearance but not quite. For one thing it was all in very high quality 3D no animation could hope to replicate and there was something familiar about the appearance of the people with me. Besides myself there were four people, two looked like medical personnel and the other two was a man and woman who looked like a couple.
That was when I finally connected the dots and came to the realization that I was a baby.
A freaking baby.
The man and women were my new parents and the medical personnels delivered me.
What I had just experienced was my rebirth, my reincarnation so to speak. Like in fanfictions along with light and web novels.
Initially, I clung on to a very faint hope that this was all a crazy dream that felt more realistic compared to other dreams but as more time passed I was forced to accept the fact that I was now a baby in a new life.
My new name was Akame Kuronaga. My name being derived from the red eyes I possessed, so I suppose it was fitting even though it felt like it was chosen out of laziness, it also felt weird to have the same first name as the titular heroine of a certain dark fantasy manga.
To say that being in the body of an infant while having the mind of an adult is a horrible experience would be an understatement. I have never felt so weak, vulnerable and helpless in my entire two lives; I knew how to move but my body wouldn't respond. I spent first few weeks as a baby relearning how to roll over, crawl, walk and run. In the end I accomplished this quite quickly which undoubtedly put me months ahead of most children.
Aside from relearning to move independently, I spent time learning as much as I could.
Initially I thought I was reborn to a new unknown world but I found out that this world was not really new or unknown.
One day, I looked out the window at night only to see a shattered moon to my complete shock. That was when I realized that I was reborn in Remnant, the world of RWBY.
When I came to that realization, my shock was quickly replaced with excitement.
I was excited at the possibilities Remnant had to offer such as learning to use Aura, Semblance, Dust, and transformable weapons but then I remembered the Grimm, the discrimination and exploitation of Faunus, the White Fang, Cinder and her subordinates, the later events of Volume 3 and the existence of Salem. Further putting a damper on things was the less-than-ideal living environment; my parents had little to no interest in being involved in my life.
While thankfully they weren't abusive, my parents were however indifferent towards me. Even when I was an infant I never received much warmth and affection from them and when they noticed that I learned to perform tasks on my own without their help and that I preferred to be left alone most of the time, they were all too happy to take a hands-off approach to parenting.
My father seemed intent on not being around much while my mother liked to pretend she wasn't a stay-at-home mom; the more she could ignore the fact I existed the happier she was. They didn't seem enthused with being parents at all. Which begs the question, why did they even go through the trouble of having a child?
However, as long as I was provided food and shelter, I didn't mind staying out of their way and it was also more convenient for me. While I'd be lying if I said that I was completely fine with the "hands-off" parenting and the lack of meaningful communication but I had a mind and memory of an adult; I didn't need to be coddled and I had the freedom to do as I wished, which I took full advantage of.
Knowledge is power, as such I spent most of my time reading whatever books I could find and unexpectedly, my home had quite the selection of reading material. It was far from a bookstore but there were enough books to keep me pretty busy. My parents didn't look like the type to read much books, let alone possess a not so small number of them in their home but there was no need for me to look a gift horse in the mouth, and so I began binge reading.
I have, to my pleasant surprise, discovered that I have an eidetic memory, I only needed to read a book once and I would never need to reread it to look up information. Perhaps the brain in my new body of mine is just that much better than the brain from my old body? Or maybe it had to do with my reincarnation? One story I read in my previous life stated that the soul grows stronger after reincarnating and as a result, the brain enlarges and benefits from it, could this be the case for me?
Whatever the case, I took full advantage of my new ability and absorbed as much information I could.
I read fairy tales such as The Tale of Two Brothers, The Shallow Sea, The Girl in the Tower, The Silver-Eyed Warriors, The Story of the Seasons, also known as The Four Maiden, and other stories that wasn't mentioned in RWBY. While they're generally regarded as myths and legends, volume 3 revealed that the Four maidens and the Silver-Eyed Warriors are actually real, it would be prudent of me to read up on various fairy tales, legends, and myths for future reference.
History was a bit tricky for me since historians tend to be biased and it showed. Majority of the books on history I read doesn't even acknowledge Faunus discrimination and there was some obvious signs of whitewashing and historical revisionism especially in regards to the Faunus Rights Revolution. Regardless of bias, I still learned much about the history of Remnant, such as the history of the four kingdoms and the Great War, much more than I would have watching the World of Remnant mini-series in fact.
...Sigh...ever since I've realized that I was reborn in Remnant, I was constantly reminded of the fact that I'll never get to finish any series I enjoyed or listen to any music I liked back in my previous life. Manga, anime, cartoons, videos, comics, light novels, web novels, games, movies, fanfictions, etc. I will forever be left wondering what happened next. When that realization hit me for the first time I really wanted to bawl my eyes out. I managed to calm down by making future plans to introduce as many of them as I could if there were no close equivalents, mostly by tracking down and recruiting talented people and giving them ideas and go from there and if I have to, maybe start a company or two and make lots and lots of profit while I'm at it, but for now I've decided to focus on reading and studying.
Reading about history brought a very big question in my mind, when was I exactly born? As far as I can recall, the show never revealed any sort of dating system let alone a specific date although dialogue in the show did reveal that the Great War ended about eighty years before the events of RWBY. The history books revealed that Remnant, strangely enough, uses the same unit of time as Earth, it even uses the same months as the Gregorian calendar, which was good since that meant I didn't have to memorize and learn a completely different unit of measurement of time. However that still didn't answer my question.
Hell, for all I knew, the events of volume 1 or 2 could have been transpiring right now.
Finding a calendar, I subtracted the date when the Great War ended from the current date which came out to be 60. It's been sixty years since the Great War ended and since I was currently 2 years old, I was born about 22 years before the beginning of RWBY, further supporting this was a TV commercial for the 30th Vytal Festival I once watched. Taking into the account that the festival is held every 2 years and Team RWBY, JNPR, CRDL, and CFVY participated in the 40th Vytal Festival, it more or less confirmed that I was born about 22 years before the events of RWBY, which gave me 20 years to prepare for the future.
This gave me an enormous sense of relief because if the events of volume 1 or 2 was transpiring right now at this moment...my future would look significantly much darker and leaving things to chance and fate didn't sit very well with me, to say the least. I died before I got to see Volume 4 and for all i knew RWBY could be on volume 6 or 7 back on Earth if Rooster Teeth decided to take it that far, being about a decade younger than the main cast would have made my knowledge of RWBY irrelevant as there was no way for me to communicate with Ozpin and warn him of Cinder's plan.
Aside from reading books on various subjects and thinking about what to do for the future, I also kept up with current events by reading the newspapers and watching the news. Through these two mediums I found out where I lived and what sort of place it was, and unfortunately, I heard a lot of bad things about the city of Kuchinashi in Mistral.
From what I read, Mistral is located on the continent of Anima, the second largest landmass in Remnant. Out of the four kingdoms, Mistral controls the most territory, encompassing a wide variety of ecosystems and cultures which overall, seems to be distinctly East Asian, primarily Japanese if the names of locations on the map of Mistral is of indication.
Mistral's first settlers found shelter from the Creatures of Grimm in the high cliffs with towns and cities built along the walls. The population grew, which necessitated territory expansion but as Mistral's territory grew so did the difficulty of governing the land and enforcing the law.
The upper class of Mistral are known worldwide for their contributions to the arts, such as architecture, theater, and fashion, most of which seems to be mainly of Japanese influence. The lower class is equally well known worldwide for a different reason. The lower class of Mistral is known to consist of criminals, thieves, traitors and other lowlifes from all over Remnant who flock to Mistral to escape the authorities.
The main/capital city is the least corrupt and the most law abiding city in Mistral due to the presence of the ruling council but the farther the location from the main city, the higher the crime rate and corruption, as is the case with Kuchinashi.
Kuchinashi being farther from the governing council's watch made it an ideal place for criminals to stay under the radar and according to the news, the crime rate of Kuchinashi is gradually getting worse. This made me worry since I had to go outside all by myself at some point as my parents had no interest in taking me somewhere let alone provide supervision. What would I do if I ran into some thugs and criminals? Being a kid probably wouldn't keep me safe. Reading about real life crimes and criminals along with fictional examples in my previous life has taught me that honor amongst thieves is mostly a myth. Criminals who would kill a 'friend' to make more money or throw them to the wolves to save themselves far outnumber those who are genuinely loyal.
Seeing that questioning the future and being pessimistic wouldn't get me anywhere, I have decided to study up on Grimm, Dust and Aura as much as I could.
A book I found on Grimm was basically a more lengthy version of what I read in the RWBY wiki, except with more anecdotes, miscellaneous information, and new species that I have never seen before but as I expected, information on the Grimm Dragon was nowhere to be found.
Dust and Aura was the interesting and peculiar subjects for me.
I learned about various types of Dusts, their applications, and the basic process of its refinement and distribution but nothing on where it exactly comes from or its chemical structure. The creator Monty Oum (May his soul rest in peace) has compared Dust to Materia from Final Fantasy VII, which brought up several questions in my mind. If Dust is Remnant's equivalent of Materia, then did that mean Dust is compressed spirit energy in solid form? Was it some sort of physical manifestation of this planet's life force? If so, that would explain why Aura is needed to activate raw Dust and why it doesn't work outside Remnant's atmosphere.
But, alas, they were questions for another time as I didn't even unlock my aura nor did I have any dust that I could use to experiment, let alone possess advanced equipment for analysis. I can however, practice and experiment with Aura; after I unlock it that is.
Information I found on Aura was basically a more lengthy, informative version of what I read on the RWBY wiki. Aura was similar to to the principle of Chi/ki, especially from fictional works with martial arts and sometimes fantasy although Aura grants all users with an automatic defense reminiscent of the Halo shield system. Many of them involved meditation and all of them involved training of the hellish, outright torturous variety. The book on Aura stated that there are one of four ways to unlock Aura: either through training, a skilled person using their own Aura to unlock yours, be in great danger or stress, or through long meditation.
The first three option was immediately taken off the list. Even if there was someone skilled in the use of Aura in close proximity to where I lived, it was very unlikely they would accept to train a random 3 year old let alone unlock his Aura simply by asking and there was no way I was going to risk serious injury or death. Hence leaving only meditation. I read RWBY fanfictions that had meditation as a part of training for Aura, so I decided give meditation a shot.
Finding a mat and a place to meditate, I assumed a quarter lotus position. I straightened my spine, rested my palms atop my knees, let my shoulder and back muscles relax, tucked my chin and relax my jaw before allowing my eyes to close. I breathe slowly, then calm and relax my mind.
For the first few minutes, I felt nothing out of the ordinary but then I sensed it, it was dormant but I felt it nonetheless and I decided to focus on it. The longer I focused, the more I felt it and after some time, I finally located where the feeling was the strongest.
Rather than trying to force Aura out, I instead focused on achieving peace, tranquility, and serenity.
After some time, I heard an odd somewhat loud hum and then, my once dormant Aura roared to life which seemingly caused my surroundings to vibrate.
Opening my eyes, I looked at myself and saw a dark black glow radiating from my body, which soon afterwards ceased, I felt great power resonating within me.
I swelled with pride at my accomplishment. I never felt so empowered, so awake, in my entire two lives. My mind went wild with the possible applications for Aura and Dust along with possibly using techniques from series such as History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, AIKI, Rurouni Kenshin, Naruto, One piece, Avatar/Korra, and many more and once I master Aura control, Dust usage and my Semblance after I unlock it, the sky's the limit. It took every ounce of maturity I had to not jump up and down in joy and be all giddy.
I have never felt more grateful than I have now for the meditation lessons from my dad and grandpa back on Earth who often forced me to learn it. I never thought it would come in handy this way, although I had to admit, I was surprised that I managed to unlock Aura on my first try by meditating even with my prior knowledge. I knew that Aura is ubiquitous on Remnant to the point anyone could attend a combat school and unlock their Aura through training or a skilled student unlocking an ordinary person's Aura but still, didn't I unlock my Aura a little too easily?
...Eh, no point thinking about it, what's done is done and why waste time thinking about such a thing when I could be training and studying?
So for the next several months after unlocking my Aura, I continued to meditate to improve my control over the flow of Aura and took advantage of my new Aura enhanced strength by gradually building up even more strength by doing exercises such as push-ups, squats, lunges, plank, and wall-sit. I also continued to read whatever books I haven't read and keeping up with current events. I would become more and more excited every time I made strides in my efforts.
With the progress I was making I thought nothing could possibly ruin the feeling of joy and other positive emotions I felt.
I was later proven wrong when my parents sold me to pay off a debt they owed.
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