AN: Hey, hi, welcome to this trainwreck of a story. This is my first try at writing fan fiction so if any characters seem OOC tips for writing them properly would be appreciated. Not really sure what else to say.
Onto the story. First question: What the hell is going on here? The answer is simple. I was sleep deprived as hell one night and was hit by the thought of 'Lazy Grimm wants sleep, has to kill all the others for this' and next thing you know... This. Question time done.
I'm sorry.
The first day of any year at Beacon was an exciting time, for new and returning students both. Which was why the silence of the freshly landed airship as it's doors opened and ramp descended was unusual, and unnerving to the few groups of students waiting for friends, and the teachers watching to make sure everyone made it to the opening ceremony on time
Their questioning gazes were answered only a few moments later as a single figure ambled down the ramp. The reason for the silence became obvious to all of the, suddenly armed, students at the sight of red eyes, tar black flesh, and a mask of bone that made up the gangly creature. It spent a moment to look around at them all before shambling to the side and pausing beside a suitcase. At that moment the wary students and faculty took note that the tall, almost human Grimm was wearing clothes. A loose fitting white button up shirt and black jacket atop black, almost formal, trousers, leading down to also black combat boots, the only colour being the red of the laces and lining of it's jacket. The Grimm leaned down to the side, opening one clawed hand and snapping it closed... Around the handle of the suitcase it had stopped beside. After another scant few seconds of stillness it rose back up.
Or at least, attempted to.
Apparently it couldn't lift the suitcase more than an inch or so off the ground, leaving it leaning to the side in a way that would have been funny, were it not being done by the very monster everyone was here to learn to slay. Again, the Grimm remained still for a time before it... Sighed? And if that hadn't surprised the gathered humans and faunus, when it opened it's mouth, most of them were overcome by dumbstruck expressions.
"Yeah yeah... Laugh it up... Huntsgrimm in training can't lift suitcase..." It's voice like a smoker's if they also had a hole in their throat. It didn't wait for a response, shuffling past the stunned students still bent to the side. As it passed and they turned, they all saw the final thing that made someone lose their composure and at last made them speak up.
"Did that Grimm have a fucking gun!?"
Nobody had an answer for the speaker.
The creatures of Grimm were a subject Hunstmen and Huntresses were more often than not knowledgeable of. They all knew Grimm did not need to eat or drink. They all knew Grimm grew larger and more powerful the older they grew. They all knew Grimm became more intelligent with age. They did not, however, know just how far that could stretch.
Apathy Grimm, a name taken purely for the forms he had to fill in, was an outlier. Even amongst the oldest and most dangerous of Grimm fought by Hunters he was considered ancient. Far beyond the age he could be called an Elder, Apathy Grimm was a relic of a bygone age. He was powerful, intelligent, but his most defining characteristic is what led him to be where he now was. Apathy Grimm was lazy. He had not reached such age using cunning or brawn, he had done so by spending almost all of his time either sleeping, or searching for somewhere to sleep. Some Hunters would call this preposterous. They all knew the Grimm did not need to sleep.
They would be correct in saying this. No Grimm in all of Remnant needed to sleep. But a single one, a single Apathy that had grown to be sentient long ago, enjoyed sleeping. It was an accidental discovery, but not one he could bring himself to regret. Being a Grimm, his normal form of enjoyment had been like that of all the others, hunting humanity to feed on their negative emotions. Like all other Grimm, he did enjoy this, but he found sleep was just as enjoyable. That it not only used less energy but even returned it had been the major selling point for him. There were only two issues he had come across in his long, and mostly unconscious life.
Grimm are loud. And he is not a deep sleeper.
Because of these two facts of life, there was nothing he hated more than the Grimm. Which, after a single night being interrupted fifty times by his noisy counterparts, led him here. Beacon Academy. A place you came to learn how to kill Grimm. And that is what he intended. Not for any altruistic reasons, or even because he was a good man... Thing. It was so he could learn to kill every single Grimm, and then finally, FINALLY have a good night's sleep wherever he went. If asked why do this when it seemed like a lot of effort to go to, he would answer the same way he answered the headmaster.
"If I spend four years learning, then maybe a decade killing non stop, I'll be able to sleep as much as I want for hundreds of years. Barely more than a decade of work for that sounds like a good deal to me."
The one thing Ruby took solace in while laying on the ground after her explosive first attempt, and failure, at making a friend was that nobody except the black haired girl had seen her. She heaved out a sigh and closed her eyes, not hearing two sets of footsteps approaching her until a shadow covered her head, even with her eyes closed the change in lighting was noticeable.
"Need a hand?" a deep and gravelly voice, closer to a growl than speech, came from the owner of the shadow. Ruby opened her eyes and was staring up at a pair of glowing red orbs set behind a mask of bone. Her breath caught for a moment, and the creature flinched looking down at her. They both moved, Ruby blurring into a flurry of petals and landing a few feet away, pointing Crescent Rose in it's compact form at the Grimm. At the same time the monster had jumped back and was holding it's claws up, probably getting ready to pounce figured Ruby.
"Grimm!" "Don't eye laser me!" the two shouted simultaneously.
Ruby paused. Grimm could talk? Since when? Maybe it was a trick, a special Grimm that lured children off into the forest to eat them? She blinked a few times, her brain finally catching up with what it said to her. "What was that about eye lasers?" she asked narrowing her eyes at it.
Apathy watched the little silver eyed girl and visibly sagged in relief at her question. "Oh thank the brothers you don't know..." he muttered before his eyes trailed down and locked onto the weapon in her hands, "Is... That mechashift?" he asked with a deep breath, the slight widening of his eyes followed when he saw the clear signs of a transforming weapon. "What does it change to? What caliber is it using? Can it use dust rounds?" he asked with a previously unseen amount of energy to him.
Ruby blinked again, lowering Crescent Rose and staring at the Grimm that was still staring at her baby. Wait... "Crescent Rose isn't an 'it'! She's a high impact sniper scythe!" she shouted with all of the pride she could muster. To her surprise, rather than retreat at the news of what she held, the Grimm came closer.
"She's beautiful... Can she still be fired as a scythe?" he asked, reaching behind himself making Ruby tense, ready to move again if she had to. She didn't need to as when he brought his hand back around it was gripping his own weapon. It was a bulky pistol, looking like a black box from a bullhead had been stretched out and been given a recessed grip in the back. Lines of red criss crossed along it from the short barrel, converging on a revolver-esque three round chamber a little over halfway along. There wasn't a hammer on the rear, but it did have the clean and obvious lines of a mechashift weapon. "This is Rest. He's an advanced dust capsule loaded hand cannon." he said with just as much pride as Ruby had in Crescent Rose.
The third person in the small plaza, having been ignored by the red reaper and creature of Grimm, continued to go ignored as the pair seemingly moved unconsciously closer together, both gushing about their own and each others' weapons. The blonde boy looked to the sheathe on his hip and gave a frustrated sigh. "Nobody cares about the classics." he thought, sparing one last look, and a shiver of fear at one of the pair before he turned towards the school and started to walk. The opening ceremony would be starting soon after all, and Jaune didn't want to start his career as a Hunstman in training off by being late.
The two new students didn't notice Jaune leaving, or even that he had been there in the first place, the Grimm staring at the now unfolded Crescent Rose that was taller than he was. "She's fucking gorgeous..." he whispered. Had he been able to drool he would have at the marvel of a weapon, looking over the shifting mechanisms with a discerning eye. "She makes Rest look simple..." he says quietly as he lifted his weapon, pushing an unseen button behind the trigger.
Ruby watched as the Grimm's pistol unfolded, taking note of the fact it didn't become a melee weapon of some sort but instead shifted to a compact, bullpup style rifle. The dust chambers were set just in front of where the magazine was, Ruby assumed it allowed the rounds to be charged as they were fired. "That's genius! It must let it swap between what kind of dust rounds are used on the fly! I wonder if I could do something similar with Crescent Rose..." she wondered, looking to her baby with a slew of new ideas on how to improve it. "How do you know so much about weapons? I thought Grimm were all like animals?" she asked before she could think it might offend the monster walking with her
Apathy chuckled as he returned Rest to it's pistol form, sliding it into his back holster. "Yeah, any other Grimm will be that stupid. I'm kinda special." he tells her with a smile that looked out of place on his face. "As for the weapons, well, you Hunters have been using them to kill Grimm for a long time. Doing a lot better than me, too." his smile became a grin that fit him much more comfortably, looking like the expression of a killer, "I wanted to be better at killing those noisy bastards. Saw how you made your weapons, and I can only fight close up with my hands. I started with just a normal gun, but mechashift? I can make a gun be two guns, maybe even three one day!" he says growing excited at the thought of more firepower.
He paused mid step and looked down at her, "Oh, shit, hey I never asked your name."
Ruby stopped a few steps ahead of him and turned to be facing him, hugging Crescent Rose against her chest. "I'm Ruby, Ruby Rose." she says giving him a cheerful smile
"Apathy Grimm. Not creative, but names aren't my strong suit." he says nodding to her. "So... Any idea where we're going?" he asks.
"Uhh... No? I was following you." she answered after a second of hesitation. They shared a look with one another before they took off running, heading for the main building that was, thankfully, visible from anywhere on the campus thanks to the tower. Without another word spoken they had reached the same conclusion in their heads.
"I'd better not be late on my first day!"
Something was wrong in the hall, or at the very least something was out of place. Apathy turned his head slowly scanning over the crowd, considering there was a clear area a few feet around him it was easy to do so. He had tuned out the headmaster's speech, something about wasted potential. Even as a Grimm, he thought the speech was a bit depressing.
He couldn't put his finger on what was wrong, but the feeling he got when he entered the room wasn't going away. It wasn't the other hopeful students avoiding him, nor was it the dozens of eyes that turned away just as he turned to the owners of them. It was something deeper, something decidedly out of place.
A head of hair as white as his mask made him pause for a second. He looked at the girl, who was in his certainly professional and experienced opinion quite beautiful, and the pale blue combat dress she wore didn't take away from that. The snowflake symbol and her perfectly white hair made him think he should recognize her.
He narrowed his eyes at her but shook his head after a few more seconds of studying the white haired girl. She wasn't the source of the feeling of wrongness, so he moved on.
After a few more uncertain leads he spotted the one person he knew in the room, and the mane of golden hair beside her. He watched the hair as it moved slightly, the way it tilted making him think the owner of said hair was speaking to Ruby, and paying as much attention to the speech as he was. But again, she wasn't the source of the feeling. He again looked away.
A much shorter head of blonde stopped his search again, and upon focussing on the boy he saw what the cause of the feeling of wrongness was. With the extra senses granted to him by virtue of being a Grimm, the room was a kaleidoscope of auras, mixing and shifting, acting, ironically, like a beacon to him. Seeing an area of empty space where there should be light? The boy may as well have been advertising himself as a prime target for any normal Grimm.
Apathy was many things, but he was not cruel, and contrary to belief, was not a monster. If nothing else he could prove that much by getting the kid out of here before he died. Which Apathy was sure he would, considering what the lessons at Beacon entailed.
He was too busy thinking of a way to convince the kid to leave he didn't notice the speech end, or a new voice speaking. He was broken from his reverie when the students started moving past him, still giving him a wide berth as they left the room. It was at this point Apathy realized something important.
He had no idea what was going on right now.
A muttered curse later and he started to look around again, this time trying to pick Ruby out of the crowd to ask her what the hell was going on, and if he had missed anything important while he wasn't paying attention. "I hope she has some idea of what we're meant to be doing... I could go ask that teacher... Gladwitch or something right? Whatever..." With his decision made he started moving with the flow of people, and stopped once the stream of students reached a locker room. He patted his pockets a few times, searching for his scroll to check what his locker number was.
A few minutes of searching later and he was swiping his scroll on the door, then pulling his suitcase out. He tried lifting it but was met with the same result as at the docks, staggering towards the changing rooms and pausing once again.
"Son of a bitch, where the hell do I go!?" he yells internally, thinking back to what he had put on his Beacon entry forms. A short nod and he dragged his case into the men's side, finding a free space to set down his suitcase. "It's not even that heavy... Stupid fucking balance..."
After a shower and getting changed into his sleeping clothes of a pair of pajama trousers and a tank top that hang off his emaciated frame, just following the lead of the teenagers in the room with him, he shambled into the ballroom behind a few who seemed to be posturing for the Huntresses in training. In his mind it was pathetic, but he didn't speak, instead passing them to find somewhere to set up his possibly stolen sleeping bag.
"That wasn't so bad. Still, need to find that kid and talk to him... Should probably ask for help with that." He turned his head slowly, pausing when he spotted Ruby and the blonde she seemed friendly with, now seeing her properly for the first time. One look at the girl and he found himself unable to blame those weirdos in Mistral who made those messed up comics. Were he able to, he would have no issue recreating such debauchery with this new girl.
He started walking over, raising an eyebrow when the white haired girl he felt like he should recognize stomped over to the pair before he could get to them. Considering how the others parted ahead of him that was an impressive feat, and as he got closer he caught the middle of the conversation, or maybe argument was a better word? He was unsure.
As Apathy stopped behind the white haired girl, he noticed the blonde's eyes widening before she stepped in front of Ruby, white hair still going on at the small girl in red. "White hair... Superiority complex... Voice like a banshee... Ohh, that's it... A Schnee..." He nodded fractionally to himself, content to have solved another mystery that had been annoying him. Now for the part he felt he would regret, if for no other reason than his ears would regret it.
"This girl bothering you, Ruby?" he growled out, hearing a huff from the Schnee before she rounded on him and froze with her mouth open, clearly ready to start berating him. He opened his mouth to speak again but was cut off by a shriek from the Schnee.
"Grimm!" the little business girl's voice shattered any form of calm as she staggered back, reaching for a weapon she didn't have. Apathy put a hand over his non existent heart and pointed at the Schnee. "Teenage girl." he deadpans in response, letting her stumble through an attempt at responding as he looked away from her. "So anyway, Ruby, I need your help with a thing."
It took a few seconds for his words to hit home, but once they did the little reaper poked her head out from behind the blonde. "Oh, hey Appy." she said with a sheepish smile, ignoring the feeling that the Grimm had raised an eyebrow at her even though he didn't have any, "What's up?"
Opening his mouth to speak again, Apathy was cut off again, by the blonde instead of the still stammering Schnee this time. "Hold right the hell up! Ruby, why is the Grimm," "Rude." "Talking to you?" she asks, still keeping herself between the two
"Oh! Right... Remember how I was telling you about that cool friend I made..." Ruby started, the groan and muttering of the blonde going ignored, "This is my cool friend... He said his name is Apathy and he's really cool and has a gun that's two guns and-" Being cut off by a hand over her mouth wasn't a new experience for Ruby, and escaping was as easy as ducking back and to the side. "This is my sister Yang by the way!" she added rapidly to her maybe friend.
Apathy slowly blinked and turned his head just enough to look at the now named Yang. "Charmed." he drawled before turning his head back, "Anyway Ruby, I need your help with an important thing. I was looking around during the speech, there's a guy here who doesn't have his aura. Is that normal? And if not, can you help me talk him out of being here?" he asks, speaking faster than normal so neither Yang nor the Schnee could get a word in and interrupt him again. Once more it took a few seconds for his words to sink in, but when it did all three of the girls flinched back from him.
Surprisingly it was Yang who spoke up first. "Hold on, run that back for me. You want us to believe someone got accepted into Beacon without aura? That's ridiculous!" she exclaimed, waving her arm around the rest of the room, "Everyone here has training, you need to have transcripts from a combat school to get in. No way could someone get through that without aura, they unlock it for us."
"I didn't go to combat school and I'm here." Apathy said turning to wave his hand behind him. "Is it so unbelievable that a human would lie or cheat? I mean, you guys literally came up with the whole concept. Some kid without training or proper perspective might do that. Fame, money, power, being around hot girls, any of those would be reason enough for some hormonal teen to risk his life." He looked around again, trying to spot the boy so he could point him out to the girls. He growled a bit when his attempt to find his target failed, twisting his head back and looking at Ruby. "I want to talk to him, and show him how important aura is. Pretty sure if I go alone then it'll just be a Grimm trying to stop him. Cause not gonna lie, you all seem pretty racist towards me. Except Ruby." "Heck yeah."
The Schnee had finally gotten ahold of herself, huffing and folding her arms while giving Apathy a glare. "Enough of this nonsense." she turned her back on them, flipping her hair over her shoulder before she sauntered away. She was saying something else, but the Grimm stopped listening as soon as she turned away.
"So... Gonna help me Ruby?" he asked, glowing red orbs boring into silver eyes.
Ruby took a deep breath, looking slightly lost for a few seconds before she nodded. "In the morning, before initiation, we can go talk to him. Right now I'm exhausted." she said, plastering what she hoped was a reassuring smile on her face. Apathy gave her a thumbs up, then ambled away waving over his shoulder as he went. He took himself over to one of the corners and unrolled his sleeping bag. He stared at the ceiling once he was comfortable, drifting off with a small groan.
"Need to find that kid in the morning... That idiot dies I know somehow they'll blame me..."
AN: So that happened. I'm still sorry. I'll be trying to update weekly, possibly with a flashback to Apathy's life every now and then. Not sure, would that be good? Will weekly updates be feasible? Eh, who knows.
Any advice or criticism will be appreciated. I know I'm not that good of a writer, so this will likely reflect that, but hey it could be worse. This was originally going to be unashamedly crack. Small mercies. That's enough from me, remember to use lower temperatures to avoid colours running in the wash.