This is just a super short one off. Came into my head after finale of Vol. 3 and also because I had just done a ton of Bloodborne PvP; the idea was formed in about 10 minutes.
For power levels between Bloodborne/RWBY, I don't think the player hunter is necessarily more powerful than RWBY characters – they might not even be equal (unless you go on an echoes grindfest and seriously level beyond what is necessary) – but the hunter is definitely used to winning as a serious underdog. I.E. Ebrietas, Moon Presence, and of course…
The Defiled Chalice Watchdog of the Old Lords, where you basically can't get hit at all if you want to win. It's not like the strategy in Bloodborne is straight overpowering everything, anyways.
My Hunter strategy in a Hunter vs Huntsman fight would be: dodge, dodge, dodge, gun parry (great thing about fighting humanoid enemies), visceral attack with damage and heal runes. Getting caught in a combo from RWBY seems like it would drain your health pretty badly, so risking your own combo string doesn't seem worth it. Just repeat that visceral attack cheese over and over again for as long as necessary.
Inspiration: Bloodborne PvP makes you quite bloodthirsty – a sure way to become undone by the blood.
In this story, the sinister bell seeks out other sinister bells, both ringing and inactive, which allows the hunter to locate other hunters to kill. Ringing the bell just allows it to guide you that much quicker.
And, uh, I'm just straight ignoring the Grimm Dragon in this, because I don't want to spend time figuring out a solution for it.
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The hunter looked at the Plain Doll's porcelain face, before beginning to speak.
"Tell me, doll, how long will I be bound to this dream?"
"Good hunter, Gehrman awaits you, at the foot of the great tree," the doll replied, as if that was answer.
The hunter furrowed his brow.
"And if I should choose not to meet him? What if I were to continue wandering the streets of Yharnam, slaying beasts and the blood-addled until the end of time?"
The doll didn't respond. Truthfully, it was only the fact that she lacked blood that spared her.
Before, he was sick and helpless, wandering into Yharnam in hopes of finding a cure for his affliction. Now, however…
He was more than a hunter. He was a predator, lurking the streets of Yharnam, armed with eldritch insight, and the bloody memories of all that he had slain.
When he was hunting beasts and deranged Yharnamites, he didn't think there could be a more exhilarating feeling in the world.
That is, until he began hunting other hunters, and not merely those who had gone mad or abandoned the cause. The likes of Gascoigne and Eileen were merely obstacles, before he truly understood the rush of the hunt.
He reached into his pocket and fingered the sinister bell inside; he was quite familiar with all of its contours by now. The beasts were cattle. To hunt hunters, however, was very different.
The deadliest game. Hunters were the apex predators in Yharnam, and to prey on them was no small task. He would follow the resonance of the sinister bell, and kill them.
Sometimes, he would wait in dark corners of Yharnam and ambush them. Others, he would confront directly in open spaces and fight and kill. Both had their own separate appeal, but also the same end result: the indescribable ecstasy of being empowered by the blood of the fallen.
A fellow hunter's blood had much to offer.
He supposed that Gehrman's blood would empower him even further, but what, then, would become of the Hunter's Dream? The old man had introduced him to this world; would it disappear with him?
He didn't want to take that risk.
"Doll, I will venture into the Hunter's Nightmare once more, and when I return you will have more work to do."
He approached the Hunter's Nightmare tombstone and vanished, sinister bell in hand.
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Jaune Arc looked on helplessly from inside the locker, as Pyrrha ran off to what was surely her death. When the locker landed, Jaune was much too far away to be able to help his teammate.
With shaking hands, he grabbed his scroll and tried calling everyone on his contact list, until he was finally able to reach Weiss and implore her and Ruby to save Pyrrha.
As he threw his scroll to the ground and let out an anguished cry, ignoring the two girls' questions, something happened.
Surrounded by madness, beasts, and death, the broken bell he wore as a necklace… rang.
It had always just been a family heirloom, passed through his family after his great-great-grandfather found it during the Great War. Never once had it worked, and nobody in the family had wanted to fix it, taking its broken state as a reminder of how it came to be in their possession.
Jaune, in his distress, failed to notice the quiet, resonating chime.
The chime was not unheard by everyone.
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He sidestepped the hunter's quick slashes, taking care to avoid the beastly claws his opponent wielded. Surely, one who had resorted etching the Beast's Embrace rune onto themselves would have worthwhile blood.
She howled and lunged at him again, forgetting the patience and agility that undoubtedly had served her well as a hunter. Such were the consequences of falling into the embrace. He quickly sidestepped again, this time planting on his back foot and pushing off into a flurry of attacks, ending with Rakuyo's blades planted firmly into his enemy's heart and throat.
The thick arterial spray splattering onto him was merely a side note to his reward.
Not to say that it was unwelcome. Being drenched from head to toe in blood was something that he was quite used to; he might even say that it was a comforting sensation, a sign that he was still the hunter and his victims the hunted.
Taking in the fallen woman's memories, he reached towards the sinister bell again, prepared to wait patiently as its chime led him towards another victim.
Only to be surprised when the bell's tinkle echoed in his head almost instantly; almost a guarantee that another sinister bell was ringing somewhere.
"Well, it has been some time," he said to no one, a dark smirk appearing on his face.
To make matters even better, the echo in his head was not of anywhere that he had been to; it may even have been outside of Yharnam.
A new hunting ground?
He couldn't wait to get there.
A white light engulfed him, and he vanished.
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Jaune may not have cared to notice the faint tinkling of the bell around his neck, but he certainly was forced to note the white light that appeared not a yard away from him, and the menacing figure that stepped out from it.
The man was absolutely covered in blood, from his tricot all the way down to his boots, and while the man's mask hid the bottom half of his face, his eyes were exposed, showing the gleam within as he looked over the fighting at Beacon.
Gleaming from what, Jaune couldn't tell. But at the moment, that wasn't important. The man looked and felt dangerous, and while he didn't know if he could trust such a figure, especially one who just appeared from nothing…
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
"Are you a huntsman!?" Jaune yelled, hoping with everything he had that the answer was yes.
The man stopped watching the battle to turn and look at the leader of team JNPR, his black eyes revealing nothing.
Huntsman?
"I am a hunter," he answered plainly. After surveying the situation and seeing countless numbers of beasts fighting humans wielding strange guns and blades, he decided that more information was needed.
He would hate for his hunt to be interrupted by beasts.
"Then please! Please save Pyrrha! She's gone to fight a woman – and she doesn't stand a chance! Please, save Pyrrha!"
Interesting. Humans fighting humans in the midst of an attack by beasts.
He couldn't stop the menace from entering his voice, so great was his excitement.
"Very well then. I will save your friend from that woman," he said with a dark laugh. If only this boy had called him when he was still a fool, directing people to safety at Oedeon Chapel.
Before he realized that in a life made by the hunt, there were only predators and prey.
"Where is she?"
Jaune ignored whatever unease he felt from the man's laugh; every second he wasted was time that could be spent saving his partner. He pointed at a tower not too far from where they were. The path from their location to the tower, however, had quite a few Grimm in it, wreaking havoc.
The hunter said nothing more. Instead, he produced a mace, before attaching a buzz saw onto the end of it.
As he hefted the Whirligig Saw in front of him, he took care to give it a brief spin, just to build up his own excitement. He didn't bother paying attention to the yellow haired boy's startled recoil at such a cruel looking weapon.
It was time to kill beasts for the first time in a long time. And then, after he had let loose his cruelty on the beasts, he would take everything he could from the blood of these huntsmen, as they called themselves.
Although the question remained: what weapon would he use on the huntsmen? So much variety, such little opportunity to use it all.
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Ruby ran up the side of the building as fast as she could, only to see Pyrrha on her knees, a broken arrow sticking out of her heel.
Cinder was pointing an arrow at her friend, point-blank. Ruby wasn't close enough to do anything- but she couldn't- she had to save Pyrrha!
As Ruby willed her body to do something, anything to save her friend, Cinder pulled back her bowstring. The leader of team RWBY looked on in despair when suddenly…
A boom rang out, and Cinder found herself recoiling as something struck the hand guiding her bow, throwing her aim off course in the process.
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Staggering a hunter as they attacked another was something he hadn't had the chance to do in a while.
The hunter called on the power of the Old Hunter's Bone and used the agility boost to rush forward, untransformed Moonlight Sword in one hand, Evelyn in the other. He only had a moment before she recovered from the recoil of his shot.
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Ruby was equally shocked by the turn of events, but before she could look to see who had arrived, she saw a figure in a dark, long coat dashing at Cinder, sword in hand. He wasn't any huntsman that Ruby had ever met or seen.
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In the second it took Cinder to regain her stance and turn her head to her attacker, he was already upon her, reaching his arm back…
Before she could process that the man's hand had transformed into a beastly claw, he attacked.
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However powerful this woman might have been, her dress offered no protection against the savagery of such a visceral attack. He impaled her on his claw, using its razor sharpness to reach up and hook before tearing it back out and flinging her to the ground in front of him, bathing him in the woman's blood.
Taking a second to drink in the sight of his prey going into shock from the sudden blood loss, he took a step towards her, and levelled Evelyn at her temple.
Why wait for Echoes, when he could have them now?
He pulled the trigger.
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Pyrrha, Ruby, and Cinder all let out a shocked gasp simultaneously when the man struck out with his claw, although the two girls obviously had a very different reason from Cinder.
The two students were torn between gratitude for his saving Pyrrha's life, confusion at the man's transforming arm, and revulsion at the brutality of his attack.
Ruby took a second to vomit bile before stumbling over to Pyrrha's side.
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As the hunter took in her memories, he could see that her last thoughts were of him.
Good. As it should be. Ignoring the light that rose from her corpse and dispelled in the distance, he turned to the two girls behind him.
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Doing her best to keep down her disgust, Pyrrha let out a short, "thank you," to the mysterious huntsman.
He had saved her life, after all.
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He contemplated striking the two down where they were; one of them was clearly crippled by injury and the other was too distracted tending to her to properly defend them.
Although, the one who he had saved from being shot had at least one more friend- the boy.
Ah, it appeared that she was thanking him.
"Don't thank me," he replied, putting on an air of humility, before asking the question that would determine whether they died now or later.
"I was directed here by a yellow haired boy. Do you have other companions here?"
The two girls' eyes widened.
"Jaune!" Pyrrha exclaimed, as Ruby remembered that Weiss was still at the base of the tower.
"Weiss! Oh! She's still at the bottom of the tower!" Ruby made to dash off, before she heard a voice say.
"You should tend to your injured companion here. Allow me to help the other; simply tell me what she looks like. We hunters must stick together," he offered.
In Yharnam, anyone he came across was immediately on the defensive; there could be no assumptions when the cursed blood ran through the veins of every living being in the city.
But here, they didn't seem to know anything. They even went so far as to thank him when they should have been preparing their arms to defend themselves from him.
And if they led him to even more? Well, he supposed he hadn't wet the Beast Cleaver's teeth for some time; a crowd would speed up the process.
He always wanted to play the wolf in sheep's clothing.
Without giving the girl a chance to respond, he made to move down to the base of the tower.
"Tend to your friend. I will help the other and slay these foul beasts. After all, a hunter must hunt."
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Like I said, super short. Just the bare idea I had. Visceral attack, Whirligig Saw, transformed Beast Cleaver into unsuspecting group.
I initially played with the idea of using the transformed Whirligig Saw's L2 attack to go to town on somebody, but I shelved it because trying to just rev the saw up on someone in PvP leads to certain death.