Ayo, look who's back.
...
It's me. I'm back.
And here so that I can give you all yet another new chapter of this fanfiction that for some reason you have decided to keep reading. Like seriously, I am not sure why you guys like my dumb little creation so much, but I guess I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. So... ehh.
Anyway! Time for announcements!
Front cover:
I should have a new cover art for the story pretty soon (at least for Fanfiction, I'll just post it in the story for Ao3), as well as a new story blurb which will better describe what I'll be doing in this wacky retelling.
How the idea has changed:
On that note, I'm pretty surprised as to just how far my plan for the story has deviated from the original idea. Just to think, I thought that this would be a fun little 'what if' of Ruby having Rex Salazar's mecha-make powers, and then somewhere along the road that become one of the smallest thing's I've done and now I'm completely redesigning the entirety of Remnant itself. Yeah, I can't believe it either.
Story separation and spinoffs:
I had a little think about it, and I'm going to be separating the narrative of Iron thorn into a few different stories. He's how it's going to work; there will be a different story for each volume of the narrative, and also one large story called 'The Complete Saga' which will have the complete unabridged version of Iron thorn. Also, in the complete saga will be omakes (fun little (usually) non-canonical short stories for those who don't know), but these won't appear in the standalone volumes and instead will have their own story for them.
The other thing is that I'll also be writing a story called 'Remnant with Ruby' which will essentially be my version of World of Remnant. There'll be no requirement to read it, and everything will also be explained in the regular story, but I just wanted to make a comprehensive compilation of all the large changes I've made to Remnant. It may spoil some things in the main Iron Throns, so read at your own discretion (when it's out).
Anyway, that's all I can think of in the ways of announcements for now, so I'll just get out of your way and let you enjoy this next chapter of what I'll hope to be a long-running series.
Let's go.
Vale, Emerald Forest Hunting Grounds: 22/06/137M, 8:26am
Yang had fought grimm before. Back in her old combat academy, they had from time to time brought in cages of weaker tier I grimm. They put them in an arena and allowed the students to fight them with an instructor present. 'To get a taste of how fighting the grimm felt' they had said, keeping grimm combat mainly to theory otherwise.
But fighting grimm like this? Out in a natural environment with more than one grimm and little to no time to prepare for? Now this, this was exhilarating. Yang could hardly think of another time that she felt this… alive.
The crunching of the bear-like grimm, ursa, skull getting crushed under Atlas Prometheus. The rushing of air after narrowly dodging a claw swipe. The freedom of the open and dynamic space.
And even a friend to do it all with.
Mars twirled through the air, her bladed tonfas carving through grimm they passed through like some kind of whirlwind made of angry steel. Landing the other blonde flipped her tonfa around to gain a little extra range which she used to slash the legs of the ursa she had just leapt over.
"This is pretty cool, huh?" Yang called to Mars, gripping an ursa's neck in a powerful headlock whilst repeatedly punching its muzzle, more ichor spilling out each time.
"When you have to either avoid or fight these things on a near daily basis whilst in the wilderness, the novelty kind of wanes," Mars answered, sliding under a paw swipe and severing the offending arm in return.
"You lived out in the wilderness?" Yang asked in surprise as she tore off the jaw from the now pummeled ursa, along with a good piece of its torso.
"More like travelled through it. I've moved around a lot in my lifetime, always by foot." Mars explained, cutting another ursa's side open and stuffing in a primed grenade from her belt.
Before continuing the conversation, Yang pivoted and threw a straight punch at an oncoming ursa, discharging the shotgun part of her gauntlets that went straight through the grimm. "Sounds like a good story. You'd have to tell me sometime."
Mars seemed to grow tense for a fraction of a second before returning to her regular self, an ursa exploding into viscera behind her. "Not… really."
"Oh… Well- Mars behind you!" Yang cut herself off when she saw a final ursa leaping toward her new friend's back. The brawler cocked her fist back, racking a new shotgun shell hopefully in time to blast the ursa before it landed on Mars. But instead, a katana with a bulky guard and thin chain attached to the pommel sprung out of the foliage just above the ursa's neck. The chain was then pulled taut, causing the blade to quickly swing downwards and sever the bear-like grimm's head from its body.
Mars and Yang stood in astonishment as the sounds of footsteps now followed the chain as the sword itself was pulled towards its owner. Stepping out into the small clearing was a black-haired girl wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and similar baggy pants that tightened near the ankles. She had no shoes on her feet, but instead a pair of wooden sandals. Her other accessories included a segmented metal arm guard, a heavy belt that held a thick bladed sheath, and a headband that held a bow on top of it.
"Uh, hi?" Yang greeted.
"Hi." The girl returned, sheathing her sword and holstering the chain.
"...Well, I'm Yang Xiao Long, and this is Mars Urinoes. Nice to meet you?"
"Blake, the pleasure is mine."
The three descended into staring at one another in silence.
"Got a partner yet?" Mars asked.
"No," Blake answered.
"Want to come with us until you find one?"
"Sure."
They all stood there for about another thirty seconds.
✇ARWIT✇
Vale, Emerald Forest Hunting Grounds: 22/06/137M, 8:42am
"I told you, you idiot, we need to go the other way to reach our destination! Why is that so difficult for you to understand?!"
Ruby's eye twitched again. It was doing that quite frequently for the past couple of minutes, and if it kept up Ruby might just have some difficulty not cutting her new partner in half.
"Are you even listening to me? Or are you too young to know what that even is?"
Scratch that. Ruby was having a difficult time deciding whether it'd be more amusing to cut them horizontally or vertically. If she cut them horizontally, their head might just keep talking and that'd be pretty funny. On the other hand, they might just keep talking…
"Hey!" The resident Schnee grabbed Ruby's shoulder, stopping the young girl and pivoting her around, "I told you to-!"
"Oh, for the love of Lúrae, can you shut up!" Ruby snapped, surprising the white-coloured heiress. "Look, Snowcone. I am heading for the closest outpost, which I know is in this direction no matter what you say. You, (against my better wishes,) are welcome to come with me. But could you please stop whining!"
Weiss let a long, drawn-out, offended gasp at Ruby, who responded with an eye-roll. "How dare you talk like that to me. It shows just how much you know if you think it is at all appropriate to speak to me in that way!"
"I wouldn't be speaking to you at all if I had the choice but here, we are…" Ruby lamented.
"And if your memory is just that short-term, you'd remember that the Professor specified that our performance grade would be affected by whether or not we stayed with our teammate." Weiss demeaning reminded. "So, like it or not, Rose, but we have to stay together now. I know I certainly am not enjoying this experience." She finished, folding her arms.
"…You actually remembered my name. Huh." Ruby blinked in surprise. "Honestly, I was expecting less of you. Guess I was wrong. Sort of."
Weiss smirked. "Exactly… Hey, wait a second!"
Weiss' impending rant was cut off when Ruby slapped a hand over her mouth, who attempted to slap it away immediately.
"What do you think you are doing you crowned dunc-" Weiss was cut off again as Ruby repeated the motion, this time emphasizing silence by placing a finger over her own mouth and making a frustrated face. Weiss, reluctantly, stopped talking which made Ruby take her hand away and motion for Weiss to follow her to a clump of bushes. The heiress did so, watching as Ruby parted the bushes slightly to reveal a pack of grimm, all appearing as giant black rodents the size of dogs with classic grimm bone growths.
Gnashers.
'This is it.' Wiess thought. 'I get to finally show up this child, and remind them just who has the skill her- wait what is she doing?"
"Geronimo!" Ruby shouted a battle cry as she made a grand leap over the bushes, both her arms shifted into massive silver and red axes with blades coated in green energy. All the gnashers turned and hissed at the airborne Ruby, their backs hunching over as they readied themselves to attack. But before they could, ruby swiped her 'Hack & Slash' axes together in a scissor motion, cutting down five in the front row.
Not stopping Ruby commanded her axe blades to rotate ninety degrees on their shafts, orienting the blades in the opposite direction and once again faced at the gnashers. With her axes still crossed, Ruby pushed them back out again, propelling the blades forwards and into more gnashers, but less this time as the grimm scattered out of the way as best they could. Which, considering the sheer size of the almost comically large axes, wasn't very well.
Weiss, meanwhile, was still behind the bushes and staring with stunned amazement at Ruby. The girl was two years younger than anyone else taking this test, and she was slaughtering a pack of grimm that at least required another person or a higher level of experience to do safely.
This led Weiss to a single conclusion; that idiot red child was going to get herself killed like this!
Weiss stood up to take a position, her dust-infused rapier Myrtenaster raised and now poised to strike at her selected target, she repeated what her instructors had taught her in her head, and then she-
One of Ruby's axe blades slammed down on top of her target, scattering a burst of soil and grimm innards everywhere, including some of it at a growingly irate Weiss Schnee. Finally finished and surrounded by gnasher corpses, Ruby retracted Hack & Slash and placed her now free hands on her hips.
"Okay, we can keep going now," Ruby smirked. "Would hate for you to get a bad grade."
It was now Weiss' turn for her eye to twitch.
"You MORON!" Weiss screamed. "What in the Pitch were you thinking? Those aren't some regular wild animals those are grimm! Bloodthirsty monsters that would rip an idiot like you apart in an instant!"
"Excuse me? Did you not just watch me kill all of those grimm, which I know what are, myself?!" Ruby immediately broke her smug demeanour and shouted back.
"Clearly you don't know about grimm since you charged in there haphazardly without my backup! Grimm. Are. Dangerous! Even if those were only tier one grimm, only Huntsmen level hunters should take them on their own!"
"I repeat; did you not just watch me?!"
"You got lucky!" Weiss prodded Ruby's jacket with a finger. "There were so many things that could have gone wrong, and they only didn't because you go lucky!"
Ruby made to respond, but instead, stopped herself and made an annoyed growl instead.
"C'mon." Ruby spat. "We're burning daylight."
Ruby began stomping off, stopping at a thick three and punching it with a Beatdown gauntlet which completely uprooted it, and then continued on her trek through the forest.
It took a moment before Weiss began to follow.
✇ARWIT✇
Vale, Emerald Forest Hunting Grounds: 22/06/137M, 9:01am
Elsewhere in the forest, a blonde and a scarlet-haired girl continued on their journey towards where they believed one of the objective points was located. Jaune thought it was pretty lucky of him to get partnered up with a person as skilled as Pyrrha, someone to help make up for the sheer lack of his own skill. Whilst Jaune didn't (or didn't want to) consider himself inept at the skills a Hunter should possess, he certainly wasn't kidding anyone by saying he was very good at any of them.
Now Pyrrha on the other hand, well. Jaune had known about her less than a day and already was noticing why Weiss Schnee talked so highly about the tournament champion. Pyrrha had caught Jaune in her arms as he fell purely on reflex, taken care of a duo of scouting beowolves by herself in less than a minute, and had been confidently leading herself and Jaune for the entire time they had been in the forest. Jaune was, in a word, impressed. And even despite the fact that he knew absolutely nothing about who Pyrrha Nikos was.
"I still feel as if I should apologize…" Jaune said to his examination partner.
"Please, there's no need to." Pyrrha dismissed.
"Okay. It's just that I feel like you're getting insulted. This random guy from Beacon City just has no idea how famous you are."
Pyrrha stopped to muffle a short giggle. "Actually, it's quite the opposite."
"Huh?"
"Yes. To tell the truth, I've never really been one who's fond of the limelight. It gets a little tiresome when everyone you meet wants to have their picture taken with you or to get your autograph."
"I… Then how did you get famous if you never wanted to?" Jaune queried.
"I guess… it, kind of just fell into my lap," Pyrrha admitted. "I entered my first torment to try and better my skills, sharpen them for when I could enter a Hunter Academy. But then against all odds, I pushed myself and won. And then I won my second, and third, and by that time everyone was already calling me the 'Invincible Girl'."
"That's, well, I don't even know what to call it."
"An incredible string of events that led me to become one of the most famous teenagers in Remnant." Pyrrha supplied.
"Well, I guess that's one word for it…" Jaune agreed.
Before walking getting hit in the face by a branch he didn't see coming.
"Owch!" Jaune exclaimed as he instinctively massaged his face.
"Oh! I am so sorry Jaune!" Pyrrha apologized, implicating that the branch hitting Jaune might have been her fault.
"No, no. I'm fine. Just a gash, see?" Jaune removed his hand to reveal a slim cut on his cheek.
"Uh, Jaune? Why aren't you using your projection?" Pyrrha asked.
"Uh, well, you see…" Jaune tried to look for an excuse but gave up in the end. "Look, I'm not very good at using my aura. I can't really project constantly, only when I focus."
"Really?" Pyrrha asked, giving a doubtful look.
"Heheh… Yeah." Jaune chuckled weekly, rubbing the back of his head. "My father taught me the basics of aura projection, how it's an energy made by the soul that people can use to enhance themselves and all that. But it just never really clicked for me."
"Hmmm…" Pyrrha pondered. "I think I have an idea to help you, Jaune."
"Really?"
"I believe so. Perhaps we could use the technique I used when first learning to subconsciously use aura. Now, I want you to use your projection."
"Okay…" Jaune nodded, and a few moments later a shimmering golden field appeared around him before it faded just as quickly as it had appeared.
"Now, we keep walking. And, also talking." Pyrrha giggled at her own little rhyme.
"A-and that's it? Nothing else we have to do- OW!" Jaune recoiled as Pyrrha hit him on the head suddenly with a karate chop.
"And that's the other part." Pyrrha stepped back and put a hand on her hip. "Every so often I'm going to strike you without warning. If your projection is up, you won't even feel it."
"And the point of this is…?"
"It helps make using aura projection as a second nature. The talking gives experience with using it without thinking, the strikes give reinforcement to keep it active."
"I guess that makes sense?" Jaune agreed halfheartedly.
"Wonderful!" Pyrrha clapped her hands together once and smiled. "We should keep moving now, there's still our objective to complete."
"Oh, yeah! I almost forgot about tha- OW!"
✇ARWIT✇
Vale, Emerald Forest Hunting Grounds: 22/06/137M, 9:35am
Ruby flicked the chamber out of what could only be described as a 'giant revolver arm cannon', letting the arm-sized bullet shells clatter to the ground and disintegrate before flicking the cylinder back in. Six new shots rapidly grew inside the barrels as Ruby herself swung the oversized gun around and towards a new target that just so happened to be a boarbatusk grimm.
Normally, a Hunter would need to somehow flip a boarbatusk onto its back so that they get a good hit on their stomachs, but not Ruby's Jötun. It chambered such a large size of physical ammunition that Ruby had to design a special way to fire it, and also that nothing that it hit could resist its damage.
In fact, not a single boarbatusk had been flipped over since Ruby and Weiss had encountered them a few minutes after the gnasher. Ruby, because her bullets (or more accurately, tank shells,) would simply cave in the grimm's naturally tough hide. Weiss, on the other hand, because she for some reason wasn't even attempting to make the pig-like grimm flip over.
Again and again, Weiss just kept going for stabbing strikes against their backs, stubbornly refusing to try any other form of tactic. Ruby had even pointed it out to Weiss when they engaged to aim for the belly, but she still refused to listen to reason and instead doubled down on her tactic. Whether it was out of ignorance or spite Ruby didn't know.
Putting a head-sized hole into the last remaining boarbatusk that Weiss was readying to hit the hairy hide of again, Ruby retracted the gargantuan revolver back into her body and stared exasperatedly at Weiss.
"Really?" Was all she said.
Weiss scowled back. "What is it now, Dunce?"
Ruby rolled her eyes at the nickname Weiss had affixed to call Ruby. "Why weren't you going for their stomachs? Boarbatusks' backs are known to resist blades and light gunfire."
"Pah! I don't need grimm lessons from some little girl, I've been trained by the best tutors from around the world." Weiss snipped.
"And you still didn't go for the belly… why?"
"Well, I didn't see you going for it with that monstrosity of yours."
Ruby gasped offendedly. "I'll have you know that Jötun is a masterpiece of gunsmithing, designed to deliver sixty-three-millimetre payloads fired by a-"
"Oh blah, blah, blah. Big words don't make you smart like the grown-ups, brat. I bet you wouldn't even know a good weapon if you were hit by one."
That remark snapped Ruby. Forget if she was her partner, Ruby was going to smack the prissy bitch with Beatdown so hard it would rearrange that pretty little face of hers.
Ruby raised an arm, green lines glowing across it signifying that she was just about to sprout a metal hand the size of a person. But it was stopped short by the sound of rustling branches and faint voices.
"I told you, I heard it coming from this way!"
"Okay, Yang, but are you sure that it's…?"
"Yes! Positive! There's not a sound like Ruby firing off her 'custom sixty-three-millimetre rounds' I've been lectured by her enough times to know."
"I-I-I'm sorry… d-did you s-say sixty-three?!"
"Yeah! She keeps saying something about an alternate launching thingy or something."
With the voices now clearly audible, Ruby could recognize them as Yang, Mars and Realien. Ruby felt a little bittersweet at the last person. On one hand, she had been Ruby's first friend who wasn't a family member or friend of her family and she had bonded with her over her favourite subject; weapons. On the other, however, Ruby knew just how uncomfortable Weiss made Realien, even if the latter was either too afraid or polite to say so.
Unfortunately Ruby had no more time to make that decision as her sister, friend and sister's friend stepped out into view along with what looked to be some sort of ninja girl.
"Red!" Yang and Rea exclaimed happily upon seeing the crimson mechanic. However, Rea's face immediately dropped upon seeing Weiss there and having already noticed her. Ruby grimaced a silent apology to her friend for leading her to the last person they wanted to see. Fortunately, Rea's opinion wasn't alone as from both Mars and Yang's expressions, they were not happy with this situation either. The ninja girl remained impassive.
"Oh! Realien!" Weiss cooed; the voice sweet enough to kill someone back in her mouth. "How good to see you, found a partner yet?"
"Uhhhhhh... y-yes?" Rea answered, shrinking away. "This is Blake."
"Hi." The ninja girl greeted.
"...Oh. That's. Fantastic." Weiss grit out as a vein appeared on her forehead. She clearly wasn't happy with the situation, probably believing that she could've ditched Ruby for Rea.
"So, uh, why are you four together?" Ruby asked, trying to deviate from the conversation.
"Oh, Yang and I ran into Blake there earlier whilst fighting ursa and decided to stick together. Then we met Rea along the way and didn't really see any point in separating at that point." Mars answered Ruby.
Ruby nodded, her mouth opening but never forming words as Weiss rudely shoved her out of the way.
"Oh, then we should stay together too!" Weiss suggested, a certain off-putting sparkle in her eyes. This unexpected action immediately caused three of the four newcomers to flinch back in shock at the Schnee's forwardness and... friendliness!
"Uh, Well..."
"Y-y-you s-see..."
"Umm..."
"..."
Despite their scrambling for any excuse for them not to be with Weiss, nobody was able to come up with one. That, and the thought of having Ruby with that slightly balanced out the prospect of having to put up with Weiss.
"Fantastic!" Weiss clapped her hands together, not even letting anyone make a decision. "I'm sure we'll do great!" She chirped, walking away and expecting to be followed.
"I'm not the only one worried about her one-eighty in personality, am I?" Yang asked in a whisper to the other girls.
"C'mon guys, it's this way." Ruby sighed, sliding her goggles back down over her eyes and trudging off, giving a wave of her hand to follow her. It took Weiss close to ten seconds before she noticed that everyone was leaving with Ruby and not her.
"H-hey!"
And That's all I'm gonna write for now.
If you see any mistakes I've made, please tell me so that I can fix them.
Till next time!