"Life sucks, then you die."
In terms of worsts start to a day, being thrown into the middle of a monster-infested forest in an entirely different body and a different world had to take the cake. Though, to be fair, it could be worse; he could have wholly lacked the bullshit soul magic that let him survive being thrown hundreds of feet. Then again, that probably just meant his death would be more drawn out the moment any of those bastardized things would make the real Beowulf cry out in shame. Their name wasn't even correctly spelled, for crying out loud. Regardless he mused misspelled shameful names or not, the Beowolves in this forest could quickly kill him, and Robin quite liked living. Which meant he should stop laying in the dirt like a newborn giraffe that just got dropped and get moving.
Unfamiliar limbs dragged an equally foreign body to its feet. He had next to no respect for whoever possessed this body before him. Their entire wardrobe was full of some cringe-ass nae nae anime headass shit. Who the fuck actually walks around wearing all black and a trench coat. Robin could only praise God that he wasn't wearing a fedora. No wonder this character never made it into the actual show; he was probably some writer's shitty 'OC donut steel.' He'd have to fix that once he got out of here if he got out of here. If nothing else, despite their shameless weebness, they kept themselves fit.
Blue eyes finally started moving, tracking his surroundings and coming to one invariable conclusion. He was fucking lost. Not like he ever had a good sense of direction in the first place; he could barely make it around his hometown in the real world, much less a forest in the middle of nowhere.
His ears twitched as he distantly heard something that sounded like a nasally voice cursing and slurs. Good, someone stronger he can mooch off of. Entirely too long black hair whipped him in the face as he turned to try and face the source of the noise. Another thing he'll have to fix if he gets out of here.
He walked forward toward the noise. It sounded like fighting, which was good. It meant whoever was there could handle themselves enough to not instantly die. Well, that's the hope, at least, for all he knew, he was about to walk in on Jaune getting nommed on by a Beowolf cause someone thought throwing a javelin at someone falling through the air was the best way to save them.
Instead, he was greeted with a sight that made him wish he had stayed in that patch of forest until he got eaten by a very hungry Beowolf, in the clearing stood one Cardin Winchester, screaming and cursing as he slowly tore through a pack of Beowolves. Blue and indigo eyes locked, and before Robin could slowly slink back into the forest, his brilliant escape plan was thwarted by Cardin once more screaming.
"You!" The orange hair boy's voice cracked slightly.
"Me?!" Robin returned shouting just as loud.
"Yes, you idiot, who else would I be talking to, the fucking Beowolves?" To punctuate his sentence, he brought his mace down on the head of the nearest unfortunate Beowolf. Its skeletal head cracked under sheer force as it slumped.
"Maybe? I don't judge. Also, that poor Beowolf had a family, have you no shame?" Robin tore his eyes from Cardin's rampage toward a lone Beowolf that had split from the pack to approach him.
"Shut up! Help me kill these things, or I'm gonna kick your ass." Another poor innocent Beowolf that probably ate a family of four before it came here was tossed aside like a ragdoll by Cardin's mace.
"With such a generous offer, how could I ever decline." Robin grabbed the katana off his back. Shameless weebery, don't fail him now. The sword itself was simple enough. In fact, it looked like any Walmart ninja katana anyone could pick up. A lump of dread pooled in his stomach, like he had eaten a lead brick. He really hoped he was wrong.
He brought the sword out in front of him, trying his best to imitate a stance from all those movies he had seen back home. His hands shook slightly as the beast approached, its glowing red eyes seemingly staring right through him. How did one even fight a Beowolf? All he really remembered from the show was people just hitting it till it died, but it had to have like weak points or something, right?
The universe seemed to disagree with his attempts at planning as the Beowolf lunged at him, roaring as it did so. He brought his katana up to block, only for his worst fear to be confirmed as the Beowolf chewed it in half and bowled him over. For a moment, he lay in shock as the Beowolf opened its jaws in preparation to chew his head in half as it did to his now discarded sword.
His body acted on pure instinct, hands shooting up to grab the slobbering monster by the snout. Aura roared into his veins as it amplified muscle and bone to perform beyond their normal limits. He would not let himself fucking die because of shitty Walmart ninja weapons. With strength he should not possess, he ever so slowly managed to force the beast's mouth shut. However, he couldn't exactly stop and smell the roses. He took in a deep breath as he shoved the Beowolf off of him to the side.
As he scrambled to his feet, so did the monster. Leaving him with precious little time to come up with a solution to his vaguely wolf-shaped problem. His hands searched through his trench coat; if nothing else, it had a lot of storage space. Eventually, his hand reached something, and out he pulled a small vial of red dust. Dust, that stuff explodes, right? Only one way to really find out. In a quick motion, he tossed the vial into the face of the Beowolf like a baseball. For one dreadful moment, it looked like he did nothing but piss it off as the glass shattered across its snout. That worry was quickly silenced as the tiny dust crystals exploded into fire and heat, engulfing the Beowolf entirely.
When the fire cleared, all that was left was a slowly fading away charred Beowolf. He had done it; he hadn't fucking died to his first bog standard grunt enemy. Meanwhile, it seemed Cardin had already fought his way through the rest of the pack and now stared at Robin with a mixture of confusion, disgust, and disappointment.
"You fight like a fresh combat school student; your stance, if someone was generous enough to call it, was atrocious. How the fuck did you even get in here?" Cardin didn't bother to hide his emotions, a scathing tone clear in his voice.
Robin stared back for a moment before he shrugged. "I don't know, academics?"
An awkward stare-off ensued for a moment before Cardin snorted."Academics, alright, I guess. Well, Mr. Academic, stay behind me. It wouldn't look good to let my partner die, despite how terribly he dresses or how incompetent he seems."
"Righto, you got it, bossman." Inwardly Robin cheered, perfect. This is precisely what he needed, someone to let him mooch, get out of here the easy way. The sooner he can finish playing monster hunter in the forest, the sooner he can get into the library and start trying to figure out how the fuck he ended up here.
He bent over to pick up the remnants of his old sword, now chomped in half. Part of him wondered what the fuck the old guy in this body was thinking, running around with a sword like this. Until his hand felt a switch on the handle. It must have been a device for something. Something he wouldn't ever figure out cause he broke it in his first fight.
His musing would be interrupted by the hilt of a blade entering his vision. He followed it up to find Cardin holding a long dagger out to him, looking slightly amused. "Here, it's no fancy sword, but it won't break because you forgot to infuse it with aura."
Robin quickly put the remnants of his sword in a pocket in his coat, then reached out and took the sword. It felt heavier than the katana somehow. The blade was simple, if long for a dagger, almost like a shortsword. The only notable part of it was the small ruby embedded into the weapon's pommel.
"Thank you." Robin holds the weapon somewhat unsurely.
"Thank me by not dying like an idiot, and for God's sake, ditch the trench coat when we get out of here." Cardin turns and begins marching into the forest, leaving Robin to try and catch up hurriedly.
As the two walked, it became clear the other students, wherever they were, weren't being idle to the pair's detriment. Vast sections of the forest were engulfed in flames, blocking their way out.
"Fucking hell," Cardin started. "What idiot did this? This isn't supposed to be part of the initiation, right?"
"Why are you asking me? I'm just as lost as you are." Robin let out a cough. He didn't know if aura protected against smoke inhalation, but he wasn't exactly in the mood to test it.
Before Cardin could retort, the two were interrupted by the arrival of two other students. A plain-looking boy with his eyes almost locked in a squint in tan armor and a tall boy with gray armor and combed-back blue hair.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cardin start to open his mouth, and instead, he spoke, cutting off whatever Cardin's attempt at 'diplomacy' was going to be. "Y'all got trapped here by the fire also?"
Blue hair boy nodded and spoke in a light voice. "Yeah, we couldn't find a way through, and well, now we're here."
"Well. I'm Robin. That giant is Cardin." Robin jerked a finger at the large teen as he spoke, drawing a grunt of what he hoped was amusement from Cardin.
"Dove." Spoke the squinting boy, for some reason squinting harder as he spoke.
"I'm Sky." Said the blue-haired boy with a wave.
"If you're done with the little meet and greet, we kind of need to find a way not to die. We could try and just rush through the fire, but that sounds less than ideal." Cardin spoke, quickly drawing the attention of the other three teens back onto him.
"Right, I'll see if I have anything in my bag of tricks here." Robin turned and began digging around his pockets. Several small vials of dust lay in his pockets. His only issue was having to remember which dust did what.
Eventually, he pulled out a vial filled with blueish-colored dust. Blue means ice, right? Probably. "Behold the solution to our problems." He spoke, taking time to showcase it to each of the boys, somewhat hoping someone would point out which type it was. All he got was silence as each of them stared at him like he was an idiot.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Get to it." Cardin urged as he vaguely gestured at the fire.
"Right, just showing off a bit." Robin reared his arm back, waiting until the last moment to speak again. "If this blows us up, sorry!"
"What!?" Cardin exclaimed, but the vial was already sailing through the air.
Luckily for the would-be team, as the vial cracked and shattered against the ground in the midst of the wildfire, it didn't explode. Instead, it unleashed a sudden deluge of water, sending up large clouds of steam and clearing a path for them to flee.
"I totally meant for that to happen." Robin is quick to claim, despite the doubtful looks from Cardin and Dove.
"Sure you did," Cardin spoke, sarcasm dripping from his voice as the group began to walk.
"Whatever, let's just find the treasure thing and get out of the place. I need some new fuckin clothes." Robin spared a disdainful look at his all-black clothing.
"If you hate it so much, why are you wearing it?" Sky questioned.
"Good question, Sky. One I wish I had the answer to and one I am sure philosophers will debate for ages to come." Robin gave a mournful nod as he finished speaking.
Sky then turned his questioning gaze towards Cardin, who simply shrugged. "He's probably wearing it 'cause he's a nerd."
"Fuck you." Robin bit back.
"Nuh-uh," Cardin returned.
"Fuck you mean nuh-uh." Robin was cut off before he could continue by a nervous laugh from Sky.
"You guys sure are an interesting pair. Did you know each other before this?"
"Nope!" Robin said, popping the p, "I met him in this forest, and he tacitly puts up with my mooching off him because I'm incompetent."
"I feel like you just admitted something really sad without even recognizing it," Dove interjected for the first time.
Robin went silent at that, unable to think of a rebuttal before they came across the ruins of a temple. Around the edges of the ruins were multiple pedestals with chess pieces.
"Well, unless there happened to be some weirdo who lived in the forest and worshiped chess pieces, I can only assume these are the relics," Robin spoke as they approached the ruined temple.
"No shit, idiot." Cardin took no time at all to step forward, grabbing the black bishop pieces off the pedestals. Knowingly or otherwise sealing their fate as a team. In the back of Robin's mind, part of him wondered what the fuck happened to Russel this time around. Does he just get put on a team with some shadow people? Does he fail? It'd be really shitty if he failed. Robin didn't even intend to be here for that long.
Entirely unaware of his inner turmoil Cardin turned from the temple. "Follow me. I think I know the way back to the school."
"You think you know the way? How did you even get us to the temple in the first place?" Robin rattled off questions in some measure of disbelief.
"Sheer instinct, I'm just that good," Cardin said with a straight face.
"Bullshit!" Robin barked out.
Cardin gave no response to his doubt, instead continuing to walk. Dove and Sky quickly fell in line with the tall teen, and Robin, who saw little other choice, also followed suit. The blade in his hand felt heavy, with no distraction to quiet the errant thoughts in the back of his mind.
He had the vaguest bits of something that might be called a plan. Survive initiation, search in the library for any fairy tales about a man who fell into a different world, and hope to God something crops up. It wasn't the most foolproof idea, but given Remnant seemed to operate on fairy tale rules a lot of the time, it might work, and if it didn't, well. He preferred not to think about that. Until then, all he could do was mooch off the actually competent people.
His thoughts were interrupted by running into the back of Cardin. In fact, the whole group seemed to have stopped. He peeked his head around Cardin's side to see a pack of Beowolves ahead of them, almost a dozen of them, each growling at the new intruders. At their head was an even larger one, which stood head and shoulders over the rest of the pack.
"Uh, you got a plan, big man?" Robin glanced at Cardin's face to see his reaction. The taller boy seemed entirely unbothered.
"Yeah, it's simple, we kick their ass," Cardin spoke, then promptly charged at the horde. Dove and Sky followed close behind it. Each independently rushed forward. No plan or teamwork. Which left Robin standing alone, white-knuckled grip on his blade and dust vials of questionable use.
Despite the lack of any plan, it seemed like it just clicked on some level between the three boys. Dove had gone straight for the Alpha, fired a few shots before he clicked his weapon into its sword form, and began a duel with the beast. Cardin and Sky were to either side, using their large weapons to clear off any of the normal monsters who got too close.
It was reassuring to know they could work perfectly fine without him. They might have suffered a bit being down a man, but it was better they learned to work independently than expect him actually to do stuff and stick around.
Unfortunately, another lone Beowolf seemed to disagree with his plan—a straggler who had slipped past the actual fighting trio. It seemed to be sizing him up, staring at him as it circled slowly. All he could do was continue to grip the gifted blade tighter. Then it lunged, but he was ready this time. He had seen this before. Robin hastily brought his aura forward with a mental twitch. It was a strange sensation doing it deliberately and not in a panic, comforting in a peculiar way. Instead of being bowled over like last time, the Beowolf came to a dead stop as it had to struggle. Robin's free hand desperately tried to push it back while his right hand, his blade hand, messily thrust forward, striking true into the Beowolf's neck. Once, twice, and finally, a third time before the monster stopped struggling.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding as the beast slumped to the ground, already beginning to fade. He killed one deliberately. Not by randomly throwing shit in a panic. It was a struggle and would have gotten him killed in any fight against more than one Grimm, but he killed it.
Somewhere deep inside, that rush of adrenaline helped further quiet his thoughts of home from earlier.
Note: Hi, it's me again. Two primary things. First, you may recognize this story vaguely, and that is because this is a revamp or rewrite of my first story, which I had deleted in a fit of self-consciousness looking at past works a while ago. Not too proud of that one. Two, I know I have an extreme tendency to start stories and then just abandon them. This is the reason I am reopening this story, I want to fix that flaw. I make no promises, but I am going to try my damn best to actually finish this story. So stick around with me for that, why don't ya? I didn't have a beta for this chapter, so any grammatical errors I didn't catch, feel free to point them out, and I'll try and fix them. Aside from that hope yall enjoy and have a wonderful day!