Preface: Hello, to those who've found this story!
So I've recently gotten into RWBY, and I love it. There's so much to this franchise to enjoy, and that even goes for some of this show's more controversial aspects. There was one subject however, that I found extremely odd.
During the Atlas arc, Ren and Nora begin to argue for the first time in the show, leading to a strain on their relationship. They eventually get over it, and come back to pleasant terms with one another, but during this period of tension, Nora confesses to Ruby, Weiss and Blake that she doesn't know who she is as a person apart from being Ren's girlfriend.
This is what boggles my mind. There's literally nothing "lacking" about Nora's character. She's a licensed Huntress, and the upbeat, supportive optimist for team JNR. Her shenanigans bring comic relief without even making her any less capable in her own right. Ren can't even convince her when he literally spells it out for her that she's more than just his girlfriend.
Ren is the one who I think is the boring one of the two. His main trait is being an incredibly bland and quiet character so that he can be the straight man to Nora. Granted, this is only most of the time, since he did begin to show some personality during the Atlas arc. Him wanting to hone his skills during the montage of them doing Huntsman work stood out to me. It's also shown what bottling up his feelings does to him, which was a pretty interesting angle to show him in.
I'm still not completely satisfied, even if they did manage to eventually make Ren a bit better. Which is why I've felt the need to write this. I have some ideas on how to expand Ren's character and identity, and I'll be doing so in areas where I feel he could have gotten more, starting early on in the Atlas arc. This'll include establishing him having few new relationships with other characters that weren't present in the actual series, and really going into his thought process must be regarding the events by this point.
This'll begin on a day off that Ironwood gives them, but not the one that they had before the election—in this story, Team RWBY+ was given a day to rest before that one, and that's the one you're about to see. I imagine they would have had one more work-free day to collect their bearings prior to the one we saw. Especially since the amount of time they'd spent in Atlas by the time of that montage was unspecified.
With all that out of the way, enjoy!
Lotus
Chapter One
Breathe.
In. . .
Out. . .
That was all Lie Ren had to do. Breathe.
He sat perfectly still in the lotus position. His hands were placed flat on his knees. He sat up perfectly straight.
This had nothing to do with Aura. It had nothing to do with his semblance.
He just had to keep this up. He just had to focus. If he didn't. . .
Ren's face gave a small twitch.
No! He had to concentrate! This would be important for his days to come! If he couldn't do this, then he could have made any small mistake. . .
Ren winced.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go! He would never grow into a proper Huntsman like this!
Ren let out a growl of frustration, practically jumping to his feet.
He panted, glad that the other members of his team weren't in the room to see or hear him.
Ren closed his eyes. Not in meditation this time, but to think.
None of this felt right.
It had been strange, too strange, to receive that Huntsman license from General Ironwood a month ago. Ren now had the means to legally operate on his own terms, go places where others couldn't, do things that others couldn't.
He'd gone from an orphan kid trying to survive, to a student of Beacon, to a survivor of its destruction—someone travelling Remnant with his friends in the hopes of saving as many people as he could.
And now, he was a Huntsman.
Everyone on both his team as well as Team RWBY, had been overjoyed to finally get their licenses. But not Ren. They may have gotten this far, but it seemed that they couldn't do anything without making some kind of mistake. And a Huntsman was supposed to be better than that.
He should have gotten that license after being properly taught. Ren didn't disagree that they wouldn't get anywhere by not taking the first step out into the world, but he also knew that you didn't take those steps until you knew what you were doing.
Ren didn't hate his friends. He admired the unconditional determination that they showed, the willingness to charge headfirst at anything that threatened to stand in their way. It was something that a part of Ren wished that he had in common with them.
Since they'd made it to Atlas, there were several times where Ren got the urge to opt out. To return his license to Ironwood and instead ask to continue his learning at Atlas Academy. Something close to what had been intended for him. Ren was sure that it would have helped. Their failures had seriously begun to weigh on him, and he would often wonder if he should have even been doing the kinds of things that he had been with the little amount of time he'd spent at Beacon.
But then he'd think of Li Ren. His father.
Ren walked over to the desk next to the bunk beds, grabbing his father's dagger. He hadn't used it since his encounter with the Nuckelavee, viewing the weapon as more of a keepsake than a tool.
In his last moments, his father had urged Ren to take action. In that moment, that meant saving Nora's life. But these days, it inspired Ren to keep his license, to keep this up, as crazy as it seemed.
Salem was trying to gather the Relics. She still had underlings, and she had the ability to command the Grimm. Creatures that Ren could directly counter with his Semblance—the ability to completely hide other living beings from them.
Whether that was used to cloak himself as he slayed the Grimm, or to help the helpless escape from them, he had the power to do something to keep them from attacking the kingdoms and their people.
Salem used the Grimm as a tool to divide Remnant. If she succeeded, it would cease to exist. Ren couldn't let that happen. Everything he and his friends had gone through would've been for nothing.
He couldn't turn back now. He had to keep fighting. To keep moving forward.
That was why Ren had thrown himself into his training harder than ever before. The Ace Ops were happy to help, but they were Atlas' best soldiers with duties of their own, and it wasn't as if he would insist they drop everything just to help him practice whenever they got a moment to rest. So he had often wound up training on his own, practicing his marksmanship, and his combat—both with his Stormflowers' blades and his own raw martial arts.
The General had walked in on him during such an occasion late one night. He'd told Ren that he probably should've been resting up. But Ren had been adamant on training, and told the General that he could've used a sparring partner. Even Ironwood seemed to know that he needed at least one round, and obliged.
Ren had figured that the General of Remnant's most advanced military wouldn't exactly be a pushover, but not even knowing that much prepared Ren for the one-sided beating that he'd taken that night. Ironwood hit like a truck, and reacted to every move he'd made as if he'd seen it a thousand times before. Ren hadn't even managed to land one solid hit on him. It was humiliating.
Afterwards, Ironwood suggested that Ren get some rest. Ren had been too angry to listen, that he needed to continue after being shown just how much he still had to learn. Ironwood told him that he'd appreciated his desire to protect Atlas, but he'd also told him that he'd be doing the kingdom and his friends no favors by working his body to death.
That night, he'd been forced to really think about how worried Jaune and Nora had been for him. How tired he'd actually felt.
Ren had. . .appreciated the General's advice, and actually taken it to heart. Since then, Ren's every minute of free time wasn't spent training anymore. Ren didn't like to admit it, but it felt. . .nice.
But even as he'd decided to go a bit easier on himself, his training was still thorough. Ren still had a long way to go, but he was better than he'd ever been at any point in his life. He wanted to get better, because if he didn't, he'd get worse.
That was something that couldn't ever let happen. Not while Salem was still trying to bring Remnant's destruction.
And not considering the life that was waiting for him after Salem.
Once he and his friends had finally defeated Salem, Ren was going back to his home kingdom of Mistral. And he was going to fight for it.
Mistral was a beautiful kingdom filled with culture, but there were things beneath its surface that weren't pretty. Mistral had the largest black market on Remnant. Criminal organizations like the Hana Guild and The Wave held influence, and that was to say nothing of all of the other shady characters that specialized in making people mysteriously disappear.
During their stay in Mistral, he'd briefly overheard Qrow Branwen, in all of his cynicism, tell Ruby stories of the filth that plagued the kingdom. Ren had distinctly remembered one of the things he'd heard him tell his niece about one of the regions.
'Kuchinashi's a place where the people can be even more dangerous than the Grimm. People have learned not to stick their noses too far where they don't belong.'
But that was just it—Ren couldn't just keep his nose out of these things. He had to do something about them.
He'd barely managed to conceal it, but he'd felt a simmering anger once he, Ruby, Jaune and Nora had reached Shion. The village had been completely destroyed, thanks to a raid led by Raven Branwen. What she'd done had caused the Grimm to come running in, and when they did, they'd killed nearly everyone there and left the village in shambles.
He didn't need to imagine how the few survivors of the incident in Shion must've felt, he knew how they felt. They'd lost their home. Their friends, neighbors and family members had been taken away right before their eyes. Ren wouldn't have been surprised at all to find out that they had been left traumatized.
He was going to stop these things from happening further. And he planned to do it by combating anything and everything that threatened peace in Mistral. Be it organized crime, pillagers looking to cause trouble, or anything else. If it was unwanted in his home kingdom, it was going to be his issue.
But as much as it meant to him, it was going to have to wait. He was in the slow, painful process of handling an even bigger threat, And today was his day off for all of his hard work.
Ren looked at the door. He may as well have tried to unwind, and tea had always done the trick.
It was only one day, right?
Before Ren could think of some reason not to, he left the room and started down the hall.
Author's Notes: And that's it for this chapter!
I hope my version of Ren is looking good so far. Despite him being the least interesting of the main cast in my opinion, I really think Ren has potential and I tried to bring that out here.
I hope the overarching motivation for enrolling at Beacon that I gave him was okay. It doesn't have any relevance to where the cast is by Volume 7, but I did want to give some context as to what Ren wants to do as a Huntsman once Salem is eventually dealt with.
The day isn't over yet! What you're going to see next is another one of those new relationships that I said I mentioned. Hope you're excited!