What is strength? I once believed that the ability to crush my enemies was required to prove one's strength... to prove one's worthiness. But I was wrong. There is another kind of strength, one that cannot be quantified. Strength of spirit. Of will. An inner force so powerful, it strips fear, doubt and weakness from those endowed with it, even in the face of overwhelming odds. I have seen this rare power in action. Watched as those with it continue to fight battles long after realizing they could not possibly survive. To refuse defeat in the face of certain death is an act of strength so rare, I have witnessed it but a handful of times... and mine is a lifetime that spans across the ages. For years, I survived on the brink of death, tortured by physical pain and tormented by the failures that led to my defeat. Every day I drove back death and focused my every thought on how I would rise from my own apocalypse. I contemplated that which makes one strong, what makes one worthy to survive. But it was not until my horseman returned that I found the truths I sought. My defeat was a gift, in which my suffering revealed my imperfections. My torment exposed my failures. Death did not destroy but instead restored me the life I gave him ages ago. I am Salem. I am the Apocalypse. Now and forever. And I must return to the world as its destroyer.
My name is Ruby Rose, and I am a Huntsman. I know what you're thinking: "Shouldn't it be huntress?" Probably, but we don't really use that term. We all use the title Huntsman, regardless of gender. Saves time, ya know?
Anyway, I'm sure you already know most of the story, so let me fill you in on the differences: alright, in the version you know, just about anyone can unlock their aura and be a huntsman, but that is not the case in our world. You're either born with aura and a set of powers, or you're not. Now, that might be a bit of an understatement, because your powers and aura don't manifest until about the third grade.
If you have powers, you're kind of expected to become a huntsman. You don't have to, but you'll get a lot of judgemental looks if you don't. You already know about the four huntsman schools of Remnant, so I won't bore you with those details yet again. You already know how I got into Beacon Academy two years early-again, you've heard it a million times-no need to retell that story.
Let's start with something you don't know, like how my friend Jaune didn't fake his way into Beacon. He actually has powers, so he didn't need to. Now, he may not be the best in combat, but we all have things we need to work on. What else is different? Oh, right!
You know how every academy has their own uniform that's so freaking formal that it makes me itch just thinking about it? Well, we have uniforms, but they're a bit… different. Instead of skirts, we wear these really cool, superhero looking outfits! Professor Ozpin even lets us change the look of them!
Every member of Team RWBY has their own look that's similar-because it is a uniform, after all-but also different.
Like, I wear a grey and black jacket with a red X across the chest. The X goes over my shoulders, and flows seamlessly into my cloak. Everything on the jacket above the armpits is black-with the exception of the red X of course! The insides of the arms are also black, as are the wrists-what are those called again? Cuffs? I'm gonna go with cuffs. The jacket also zips all the way up to my throat, not that I ever zip it all the way up because it chokes me and chafes a little. Weiss is always nagging me about that, but I'm in charge, so I can wear my jacket however I want!
Oh, I also have these really cool fingerless gloves with padded knuckles so that when I punch bad guys, it makes a meaty whack! We get to wear jeans too! Sure, they're grey with a bit of black on the insides of the thighs, but I think they look cool. One thing I'm not too sure about are the shoulder and knee pads, I mean, I guess they kinda look cool, but they're small enough that they don't weigh me down or anything. They come maybe an inch up off our clothes, and even an inch is stretching it. The only thing I carried over from my Signal Academy outfit-they don't make us wear uniforms at Signal-was my ammo belt with my silver rose brooch. It helps me carry Crescent Rose on my back.
Weiss wears pretty much the same thing, except she doesn't have a cloak, and her X is white, and she zips her jacket up all the way, and doesn't wear the gloves, but I guess they were optional, so she didn't really have to.
Blake wears something similar, and by similar, I mean she wears the same pants. The pants are pretty much universal. Other than that, she has this sleeveless crop top thing that kinda looks like my jacket-except her X is purple, and then she has a grey trench coat with the same shoulderpads my jacket has.
My sister Yang wears the same jacket Weiss and I have, but hers has a yellow X and is more of a crop top jacket. With that, she also wears a yellow tank top, and again; the same pants as the rest of us.
Right, now that we got the uniforms thing out of the way-we'll get to JNPR's when they come up-what else is different? Blake's still a faunas, she and Weiss still got into a fight at the end of the first quarter, Blake ran away and there was a huge fight at the docks. Again, you know the story. What you might not know is how my powers are different than you know them to be.
Sure, Weiss, Blake, and Yang all have the same powers you know they have, but I don't. I'm a speedster, meaning that I can run so fast that if Ozpin hadn't made these uniforms friction-proof, I'd end up naked at the end of every fight; my clothes would burn up. I also have to eat about ten thousand calories a day just to stay upright. At this point in time, I don't even know the limits of my powers. I'm taking a class on it next semester though, so here's to finding out how fast I can go without disintegrating myself!
A/N: I know, I know, I should be finishing up The Crisis. I know how it's going to end, I have even started writing it, but I just don't have the motivation right now. I have been reading a lot of The Uncanny X-Men, so I took inspiration from that to create; The Uncanny Huntsmen! It's essentially just My Hero Academia, which is essentially X-Men without the racism. This won't be the true format for the entire story, it won't be from Ruby's perspective, it'll be in the third person and it won't just be a recap of everything that's happened up until a certain point, I just needed to build the world, and this was the best way I could think of doing it without having to retell the RWBY Vol 1 story you've all heard a million times by now. I changed a few things… I think… Instead of Vol 1 taking place over an entire semester, it takes place within the first nine weeks of the first semester.
Also, this is supposed to be as close to the style of comic books I could get in a written format. I obviously can't draw up an entire comic, mainly because I can't draw that well. But I'm gonna try and make this the length of a comic-for reference, this chapter isn't even a fourth of the length of what the average chapter is hopefully gonna be. I'm aiming for about twelve pages a chapter, because that's apparently the average length of a comic book script, and this chapter was about three pages, including the A/N.
I'm also gonna try and include a few RWBY versions of famous X-Men storylines, because I love X-Men. But there are only a couple I know I'm doing for sure, and even then, it won't just be a beat for beat remake of those storylines.
I know the question that's gonna get asked is why I went with Uncanny HUNTSMEN instead of Uncanny HUNTRESSES, and that's simply because I think Huntsmen has a better ring to it, and it's a gender neutral term, so it still works. Lastly, I'm gonna try and update biweekly, possibly weekly, but we'll see if I have the energy to write 12 pages a week.