Rags to Monster
Summary: Jaune's entire town was wiped form the face of Remnant after a Grimm attack. He was saved only by a secret his father's family had kept sacred for hundreds of years. But the monsters aren't the only ones to blame. He spends years bringing those responsible to justice when he gets caught in the middle of a street fight in Vale and a train robbery. What happens next is something he couldn't've dreamed about.
Based off the DC Comics superhero, Ragman, and the TV series Arrow.
Jaune was confused by his father's panic. The man that was his hero was gunning it in their old pickup toward their home town of Haven Rock. Whenever the twelve year old tried to ask what was wrong, his father just told him not to worry and let him focus on the road.
Obeying his father's wishes, his eyes scanned the flyers in the back of the passenger seat that advertised the Arc family's armor shop, one of the best in Northern Vale. He turned his attention to the canvas duffel bag his father had taken him out into the surrounding foothills to dig up. The boy rubbed at the blisters on his hands from using the wooden shovel for an hour.
The truck radio played music before an alert about a Grimm attack interrupted. Jaune's father switched it off quickly.
The trucks brakes screeched as the car halted in front of their shop. His father got out, grabbed Jaune, despite being big for his age, and the bag and hurried inside. The man called out for Jaune's mother and seven sisters when a thunderous boom shook the foundation of the shop.
His father rushed to the window and turned white as a ghost. He spun around and his gaze swiveled from Jaune to the bag and back.
The retired huntsman knew what had to be done. He didn't know if he could save his wife and daughters but he was sure about this. He opened the dirty bag and took out a pile of old, brown rags. Even as he carried them, they let down a trail of dust.
"Jaune, you need to trust me with what I'm about to do." He kneeled in front of his son. "These rags hold a special power, one that my family has protected and kept secret for generations. But the power and the rags need to be respected. I'm sorry I didn't have time to teach you more about them. I love you, son." He wrapped the cloth around the boys body like a blanket and embraced him.
"D-dad? What are you talking about? Dad!" Jaune pleaded for answers, but his father had shut his eyes and just muttered incoherently. "Lozn di nshmus fun di gefaln haltn di gardyan fun dem shtof zikher fun beyz."
The next thing Jaune knew, he was completely enveloped in the cloth as a blast wave knocked down the building around he and his father and he felt blinding heat surround him before there was just nothing.
When he woke up, he flailed around under the old musty cloths. He threw them off and nearly went blind after not seeing the sun for so long. He blinked and squinted before getting reoriented. The first thing he saw were what was left of his father's skeleton, the bone seared and blackened, all the skin melted off into ash. He stared in shock and horror before he got up. He looked around.
The whole town was just a blackened mess, charred bits of building still stood, twisted frames of cars remained where the streets were. He ran to the puddle of rubber and steel that was the company car. He kept running. This couldn't be all that's left. His sisters, his mother, his neighbors. His home.
That's when he saw the first grimm. Two Beowolves fought over a charred human arm. However, their quarrel ceased when they picked up the scent of live prey. One of them licked around its maw and crawled towards the boy.
Jaune could see the blood on its face from scavenging through the remaining bodies. The second grimm tried to flank him when something snapped inside of Jaune.
These beasts were just picking through the ruins of his home like vultures, defiling this now hallowed ground. They deserved to be wiped off the face of the planet, to be torn apart as they did to countless numbers of people. His father, his grandfather and many before them had fought to protect against these monsters. If he couldn't protect his family, he'd at least defend their final resting place.
He felt something move through him... some kind of power. It was like it wanted him to kill these things. He raised his arms and saw that he still had the rags on him. His father's last words told him that they held some sort of power.
The first Beowolf ran at him on all fours. The rags seemed to tighten, like a self-fitting suit, and the strips of cloth coiled around his arms.
The boy decided to experiment and thrust his arms forward. The cloth extended like tentacles and wrapped themselves around the beowolf's body. they tangled around its arms and legs before Jaune moved his arms away from each other. The rags mirrored his actions and split the creature at the waist. Black smoke rose from its corpse as Jaune threw it away like trash.
The second one pounce from his right, so he thrust his arm straight at it. The rags twisted into a braided rope and impaled it through the chest. They then wrapped around it completely and squeezed, small whimpers and growls escaped its throat.
He dropped what was left of the monster. He sunk to his knees and collapsed. That took a lot out of him. He'd have to figure out how to use these things. In the mean time, he had some things he needed to do.
By the end of the day, Jaune had piled up nine sets of white stone in the remnants of his family's home/business. After crying himself to sleep and a morning of more crying, he got up and searched through the rubble until he found the basement. It was accessible through a cellar door reinforced with earth Dust. He was fairly certain there was some kind mixed into the rags, too.
He pried the door open and stepped down the metal stairs. The boy steeled himself as memories of working down here flooded in. But down here was also stored food, prototype weapons and armor, all the things a huntsman would need. and also a computer he could use to find out what caused the explosion.
The brick walls seemed untouched, so did the other stuff. He didn't realize how hungry he was until he tore through two can of pork and beans.
After that, he rummaged through the equipment and found himself a nice set of light armor. It was made up of black hooded robes with various leather straps and belts around it for holding supplies. He liked it. Almost at once, the rags around him shifted and warped around his body, making hims stumble before it stopped.
He walked over to a mirror and found that the old cloth now mirrored the armor he liked, the hood was even up to mask his face in shadow. However, there was also an actual mask that wound loosely around his face like a mummy, leaving just eye holes. He looked down at his hand as he moved it around. The strips of rag moved like snakes around his arm in arcs before he thrusted his hand out again, causing it to hit the mirror with enough force to shatter it.
"Oops." He clutched his throat. His voice sounded... displaced, like he was a ghost. It was all echo-y and whispered. It sounded kind of scary. He kind of liked it.
Regardless of how cool it looked, he couldn't stay in it forever. As if obeying his thoughts, the rags opened and moved away from his body, falling to the floor. Jaune quickly picked it up and hung it on a bare mannequin. Now, he was left in jeans, an undershirt and black hoodie. They were fairly dirty, but two days in ancient rags didn't really bother him much. He went to sit down at one of the desks and booted up the dated computer terminal.
He looked up his own home town, and found a variety of news articles and video clips about the... incident.
He clicked on one from VNN and it loaded to a video.
"Imaging from the military's latest drone cameras show the devastation after the V8 Dust missile was launched from the Atlesian battleship, the S.S. Oprah. When initial distress calls were sent out, any Valean military unit was too far out to reach the small town of Haven Rock. Luckily, a detachment of the Atlesian fleet was en route to Vale when they picked up the signals. The Oprah used its onboard surveillance equipment and, unfortunately, picked up zero survivors. The high concentration of Grimm prompted the ship's crew to eradicate the group of creatures in the most efficient way possible. Both Valean and Atlesian militaries have declared Haven Rock and the area surrounding to be a black zone, permitting zero civilian or military activity in case of more Grimm. The KM08 is the latest prototype in their arsenal and, with the aid of the SDC, is showing promising results in-"
Jaune lashed out in fury and swiped the computer of the table.
Zero Survivors!
There were definitely survivors in Haven Rock before the Atlesian Military blew it to bits! They killed his father, and the rest of his family if they weren't already dead.
He was about to hit something else when he heard voices from the surface. He ran to the cellar door and pushed it open a smidge. Through the crack, I saw a group of people in makeshift, metal and leather armor that would give his father a conniption. Probably bandits. A detached town like Haven Rock was a likely target for such bandits, but Jaune's dad and other huntsman that retired here usually handled them.
Jaune went back and grabbed his new... rag suit? Whatever. He summoned it and made sure everything fit properly before slipping out the cellar door. Jaune managed to figure out maneuvering in the suit by sticking to the shadows.
After a bit of recon, he counted seven bandits. He wouldn't let them scavenge through his town like the Grimm did. He'd tear them apart first. Anger surged through him as he reached out and grabbed the first one, a guy with some kind of axe and shield, and tossed him into the side of a building.
He heard gunfire behind him and turned to see a tornado of cloth strips from his suit move around, blocking the bullets. They whipped around in a frenzy until the gunman ran out of ammo. Jaune lashed his rags out and grabbed him by the legs. He picked him up and repeatedly slammed him into the ground before dragging him along the asphalt. When the man stopped screaming, he tossed the body aside and went to look for the rest of them.
As he passed the gunman's body, he heard a radio go off. "Franky? What was a that shooting? You find any Grimm?" Jaune picked up the walkie-talkie. "Franky's not here right now."
He dropped the radio and stomped it to pieces before he ran into an alleyway. He decided to try something and thrust his arms towards a second floor window. The rags grasped the ledge and pulled him upwards.
He grabbed the window frame with his hands and pulled himself into what was left of the house. A noise from downstairs made him freeze. He heard footsteps come to the stairwell. He quickly vaulted over the charred banister and landed in a crouch behind a female bandit with two swords.
"Shalom." He picked her up and threw her through the shattered living room window. He stepped through the window frame and thought of another idea. He gathered a larger amount of cloth into his hand and started picturing a weapon in his mind. His father's sickle sword came to mind. It had a ten inch handle with coiled leather wrapped around it. It had a golden, ovular guard and a silver, curved blade with a hook on the end.
When he opened his eyes, a perfect replica of the weapon was in his hands, however, it was made of rags and lighter. He touched the blade and hissed in pain when he cut himself. That was a new thing.
He gave it a few practice swings before he remembered the bandits. Speaking of, his last opponent had disappeared. Jaune let out a ghostly sigh. He roped himself up to the top of another tall building and took a look around. He saw a two groups of three bandits, both heading towards the town square.
He looked around the structure and picked up a large slab of concrete and tossed it down toward one. It exploded on impact, sending shrapnel and bits of cement everywhere. The boy swung across the concrete and steel jungle that was once his town. At the edge of the square, he saw that the cement slab had crushed one raider and sent shrapnel tearing through the other two. Five down, four to go.
Jaune spun on his heal to see the last trio. One had a revolver, one some kind of shotgun, the last had a large war hammer. The two with ranged weapons fired while the hammer guy tried to flank him. This seemed familiar.
The rags whipped out and shielded him from the bullets again. Jaune calmly walked forward and thrust his arm towards Hammer Guy. The cloth wrapped around his waist and Jaune held him in front of himself to use as a meat shield. He threw the body at the bandits, they both rolled out of the way in time, though. The boy ran forward and vaulted over a fallen statue before grabbing the man with the pistol and threw him into the other guy.
Satisfied that his job was done, he dusted off his hands and went back to his house before remembering the woman with the swords. Great, now he gets to play cat and mouse.
He swung from building to building like Tarzan and hunted down the woman when an idea struck him. She was the last one. If she gets away, she'd be too scared to come back. maybe she'd even spread the word about what happens when you try to defile this graveyard. He chucked bitterly. It sure beat cat and mouse.
Jaune went to Haven Rock's gateway, where a once giant, dust-reinforced door kept the Grimm out, along with the walls. Most of the walls stood at half their original height. The rest of them were burned or blown off or knocked over by Grimm.
He grabbed another slab of concrete and moved it to the middle of the entrance. Next, Jaune formed a chisel and hammer from the rags and inscribed a message for anyone who was dumb enough to come around here again.
Alright, seconde installment. I've written a few more chapters for this story, so we'll see how things go.
-Fireballmonkey