AN: This is an partly AU semi-SI/OC story that I came up with from an offhand thought about doing a reincarnation story where MC-kun knows has the memories of watching the show, I don't actually read RWBY anymore so I don't know if this is out of touch with the rest whats being posted but oh well.

A lot of the AU aspects are just going to be the presentation of the world to alter some basic aspects to make it more cohesive and implement more interesting basic ideas- i.e Vacuo is viewed more as the peoples haven from the injustice of the world than just that 'desert place' kinda like Nassau was for the pirates. as well the whole oppression of Faunus thing is going to be a lot more serious and not as flowery as it feels in the show so when people like blake are hiding their features its not as silly seeming with how its presented and stripped away.

In any case I hope you enjoy the chapter, I'm not sure how often I'm going to update this but at the very least its got my interest as an idea.

Chapter 1: Oh to be 17 again.

When I woke up the morning of my seventeenth birthday I felt nothing short of dread and worry for the future.

This was compounded by the fact that I'd spent the better part of twelve years until today learning and training to be able to fight monsters, to become a competent and capable warrior like those you hear about in Myth.

To defend a world full of monsters from a world full of monsters.

I was good at it too or at least I was decent at it, enough so that when I was barely eleven my teacher or master or whatever you want to call them dragged me out to the no man's land that made up a large part of the country between the major cities and towns. Once there I was given a sword and shield, a backpack with some very basic camping equipment and told to survive.

Anyway,

Finally turning my attention back to my room after laying in bed for almost half and hour I threw my sheets off me and climbed out of bed, once out I quickly dressed myself in a grey singlet with a dark blue button down t-shirt over that with the buttons not done and lastly a pair of tan trousers and black sneakers.

Checking myself in the mirror I straightened my shirt a little and patted down my pants before letting out a tense sigh.

Seventeen years and this face still didn't feel quite right, this colour wasn't one I was fond of and these eyes weren't anything like my grandfathers.

Where I used to have dark hair, green eyes and fair skin with a tall yet somewhat rotund but not overweight appearance, now I have auburn brown hair, pale skin with freckles dotting my nose and around my eyes with some on my forehead and cheeks. My eyes were grey most of the time but I'd been told they often changed from shades of green to shades of blue, I was still tall, about 6'2" but not as much as I used to be and my body was far more athletic and carved from all the training and conditioning.

My hair was shoulder length with a split down the middle waving to each respective side with it being shorter in the front than the back and I had a beard that was rather full considering my age, but I tended to shave it off completely.

In any case, after I made sure I was presentable, opened the curtains and cracked the window I walked out of my room not bothering to close the door behind me before I headed down the short hall to the stairs and descended to the ground floor.

The moment my foot touched the carpet on the ground floor of the horse I was hit with the smell of my mothers favourite pastime on birthday mornings, an English breakfast.

It was an odd thing to be sure, but a welcome one.

Moving through the house to the otherside where the kitchen and dining area was, I found my mother standing over the elements, apron on, hair tied up and in the midst of using a pair of tongs to roll sausages.

She was actually my adoptive mother after my parents were killed in some kind of mining accident outside of Atlas when I was younger and when she adopted me she moved us to Vale City or well the greater Vale City area which was the massive residential district that was outside the main walls of the port city. Despite living on our own she insisted on having a home large enough for easily seven people for reasons that I was never privy to, which was made weirder considering how much time we spent elsewhere on trips, but oh well I wasn't going to complain about effectively having a whole floor of a house to myself.

After I entered the kitchen she turned around and greeted me with a big warm smile saying she'd be with me in a moment. I sat down at the counter that looked into the kitchen from the dining area and watched her cook.

"How's your morning darling?" She asked casually while removing the sausages from the cast iron pan to a pair of plates before cracking eggs into it a moment later.

"Its.. ah good, yeah good so far." I answered after a little bit while I was trying to stuff the anxiety and fear that was in my stomach from surfacing.

Today was a big day and I didn't want to psych myself out or what was more likely, convince myself to not go. I had a really bad habit of saying I wanted to do things and then if there was a lot of time between saying it and it happening I would talk myself out of it or convince myself that doing it wasn't actually what I wanted until I was torn between two minds.

Sigh

I really need to work on that, it's like the worst of being committed but then deciding I have commitment issues afterward.

"You don't sound very sure of that." She replied, casting a glance my way with her brow raised.

"Just nervous." I quickly assured her giving a smile and she nodded her head, hair bobbing as she did so.

My mother was a tall woman, maybe 5'11 or 6ft, had long sort of plum red hair, unmarred pale white skin and yellowish-green eyes with sharp slit pupils and most pointedly a long cat tail the same colour as her hair that grew out from above her butt. At the moment she was dressed how she usually did when we were home, which was a light grey long sleeved shirt, black sweat pants and sneakers, though she also wore black leather gloves as well.

The gloves were an odd choice I guess, but she'd been like that since the day I was adopted, she always and I meant always wore clothes that covered her entire body from collar to soles. I honestly couldn't tell you what her legs, feet or arms looked like, sure I could guess but I also didn't care, she wanted them covered and so I never asked.

While I was distracted with my thoughts the food was set down in front of me on a white plate and my mother handed a knife and fork to eat.

"Thanks Mum." I said before diving into the meal, it was good as always, but I also hadn't eaten in hours.

Discipline was a big thing in our household so I could only eat at times I basically allotted for myself instead of snacking constantly because it begat bad eating habits or similar such cases. Ones I'd started this new life with and quickly lost thanks to her.

"Of course dear no problem," She replied with a bright smile before take a seat at the island with me to eat hers. "So have you packed your things?"

"I have yeah, just have to bring them down when we're done and we can go." I answered between bites.

What she was referring to was my moving out, I'd been accepted into the O so glorious Beacon academy, because my birthday fell on the same day as orientation I was allowed to attend 'early' if you will. So all the other first years I'll be attending alongside are likely to be older than me by a few months to a year, seeing as I was mentally as old as most of the staff though I think that balanced things out some.

Oh right, I guess if it wasn't obvious I reincarnated.

But not just any old reincarnation into a bug or whatever on earth for being a good boy, but one into a world that had been fictional, until my death that was.

You can't imagine the panic attacks I was having when I realised where I'd ended up and how much I'd cried about wishing to be in a better fictional setting, but I was here and I couldn't do anything about it except cause problems and have fun.

I know for a lot of people given half a chance in my situation they would be running up walls and para jumping from mountain tops with ideas that they'd try to revolutionise the world with and prevent events from happening, but I found out very quick that was a bad idea. Specifically with my parents, oh my lovely biological parents and their terrible fate.

They died because of my mistake and I wasn't trying to repeat that with my adoptive mother.

Though the woman in question was something of a badass and I doubt any average joe schmo could even get close to her, I didn't want to see it happen anyway.

Anyhow it wasn't long before we finished eating and I brought my things downstairs to the front door while she retrieved my weapon from the garage where it had been cleaned and sharpened the night before by yours truly.

Once I had it strapped to my back we left the house and took a bus to the airbus dock which would take us to the Beacon dock and then the school itself.

While we rode the first airbus to the Beacon dock we talked.

"You said you were nervous earlier, what about?" She asked, giving a supportive smile as we sat side by side.

"Mostly the making friends part and having to deal with homework." I did my normal response of mixing genuine concern with silly comments and the woman barked a laugh covering her mouth with her hand.

"I suppose you had a hard time making friends when we were out training…" Her eyes cast downward as her voice trailed off.

Of course she was right, but it wasn't like I didn't attend schools while growing up until this point I guess I just never found my people. Sometimes that's just the way things are though, I was fine being alone more than most people, even if it felt like my mind was against me half the time.

"That's not the whole truth, I just never found anyone who I could talk and laugh with is all- or well no that isn't right, I did, but they moved away." I half replied as I had a realisation while I talked.

There was that one person, but like I said they moved away, it was right around the time the White Fang started being more militarised and guerilla in their approach, when they stopped wanting to being treated like a proper political movement and party instead of just some upstart gang of undesirables who thought they needed more. My friend Florin and his family, much like my mother, were Faunus, their lives got a hell of a lot worse in the years after the switch of tactics the Fang used.

Many Faunus started hiding their traits and introducing themselves as human to avoid being stopped, questioned or associated with the Nu-White Fang or whatever they were calling themselves. A part of me wished they'd changed their name to 'AWA' Animals With Attitude or 'FWA' Faunus With Attitude mostly because it was funny, but also because their was a Faunus band before I was born that resembled NWA a lot and their name was something boring.

White Fang marketing aside my friend and his family left the country of Vale to live in Vacuo where a lot of Faunus had been moving to escape the racism and terror of the self proclaimed 'Rebels against injustice' all they were doing was harming the reputation of an entire people and making it even worse for them.

This life had been funny like that, the changes in how the world actually was from how I remembered it in the show when I watched it, there were so many things I was dead sure of from memory but for whatever reason they were either more or less extreme versions of what was happening in the show going on here and now.

Despite all the rhetoric around the New Fangs and old Fang Vale actually presented itself as an almost racist free country where anyone and everyone could be who they wanted and live how they wanted without fear for what they looked like or whatever. But it just wasn't the case in reality, because in reality you can't control the people at the front lines of everyday life who fought in the Great War and had their squads decimated by Faunus battalions and couldn't forgive them for the loss of their friends or whatever.

War the great equaliser had scarred this world a lot deeper than the show I remembered expressed.

The damage done by those who demonise and hate all those who aren't like them is near irreversible, sometimes when everyone is waiting for the wall between the east and west to fall, another is built to the south instead.

It's easy to get bogged down by all the politics of Remnant though.

"Florin right?" My mother questioned and I nodded. "He was such a lovely boy, his parents were wonderful too." she sighed with a melancholic expression.

"Yeah, I miss him but I can't do much about it." I sighed, staring off into the distance.

"Oh! I almost forgot to give you this!" She suddenly said in a hurried tone before retrieving a small indiscriminate white box from her handbag sitting in her lap.

She smiled with an excited glimmer in her eyes as she waited for me to open it. I held it up to my ear and sceptically shook it gently before eyeing it some more and then disappointing her completely when I put it in my bag.

The older woman pouted like a grumpy cat,

"You always do this to me Aleks you can't keep me waiting! You know how much I love giving you gifts!" Her excitement was palpable and it only served to make me laugh.

"It's only going to make a mess, just wait until we're at the next stop so I can at least dispose of the rubbish afterward." I sighed again, shaking my head this time.

She was an impassioned woman with a desire to see others smile and share in their joy or more specifically mine, she loved to tell me about how I reacted on my first birthday after I was adopted, but she could never understand it was because I was still reeling from the death of my biological parents.

Anyway,

"Have you thought about what subjects you want to study while attending the mandatory courses?" She asked to change the subject.

Moving on without much thought I hummed as I remembered the list of classes the school offered from language courses to all sorts of trades though most were infrastructure or building related so that people could help out in the case of emergencies as far as I could figure.

"Uhm… I'm not really sure, I didn't really know if they were going to accept me so I never bothered to think to hard about it." I answered with a shrug.

My mother shook her head with a wistful expression "I trained you to Kill Grimm and not much else so I can understand, but you should really take some time to figure out what else you want to do with your life if things don't work out or you find yourself unable to continue at the school- what do I always say?"

"Always have a plan B and if that doesn't work a solid C that doesn't involve just blowing everything up." We quoted in unison, making us huff a laugh.

She was right though, I can remember when I went to university before dying I didn't even end up in the job field I spent years going to courses for. In a way I hoped the curriculum at Beacon was like my Uni so I could breeze through most of it and spend my time hanging out with friends.

"But are you sure blowing everything up isn't a good answer to all my problems?" I joked further and she rolled her eyes.

"If you like it, but I don't want to get any Scroll calls about how you or someone else was turned into smokey chunks because you couldn't come up with something else."

Our conversation died out for a little while after that and before I knew it I was on the final Airship to the prestigious Beacon Academy.

Taking a deep breath in, holding it and exhaling a few moments later I looked around the somewhat familiar looking cabin of the Beacon transport.

My seat was near one of the many windows on the third floor of the four floored ship, originally I had taken to the deck to get a good view of the city but was quickly reminded of my fear of heights and the pure vertigo I felt looking over the side of the aircraft.

I'd spotted a pair of familiar faces from what I remembered already and before I knew it I was forming plans on how to avoid them and make my way through the next school year without being killed in the events to come, assuming they happened as my memory portrayed them at least.

What happened first?

Little Red fights the bad wolves, gets invited to beacon, she and her sister wander around discussing her early enrollment. Dorthy meets the cowardly lion- wait no, red meets snow white and belle- then she meets the cowardly lion or would courage the cowardly dog be more appropriate? Probably not. I'll stick to lion. Anyway then the wizard of Oz fails to inspire the next generation, they get thrown into a forest and fight monsters. Teams get decided, they're based on colours for some reason, then bullying?

Huh, that's weird.

After the bullying part my memory sort of just becomes a haze, but I definitely feel like a bunch of bad stuff happens and I mean considering that was part of why I woke up scared, because I'd have to come face to face with that.

Hrmm…

I couldn't help but close my eyes while I searched my mind for answers which in turn meant I couldn't really acknowledge my surroundings beyond noticing that someone had taken the seat next to me while I chewed through what little remained of my old life memories.

While I was doing this though the person next to me chose to voice their thoughts-

"Quite the exciting wait isn't it?" A female voice asked, it was familiar but I couldn't figure why.

I opened my eyes as I answered but the words caught in my mouth as I faced the bright expression of a girl- No. A woman. with beautiful crimson hair, bright green eyes and skin braised with a gentle sun kissed glow. Her clothes were fairly casual which threw me off at first, but noticing the muscle toning she had made it clear I had the right person in mind after not even a second of looking at her.

The recognition must have shown on my face though because she immediately winced as if expecting me to begin berating her with questions, but I didn't want to do that, mostly because I didn't care. But also because that was unfair and disgusting to do to someone who just asked if I felt the same way about the wait to arrive at the school.

"It is yeah, can't get this stupid nervous knot out of my gut- thought that might just be the vertigo I got earlier when I went onto the deck." I replied properly and she released a relieved breath as tension seemed to slip away from her.

"Ah yes! I've not experienced it myself but I know a few other people who have." She said in an overly bright manner, not that I disliked it as much as I wasn't sure if she was being truthful or putting on a face because I'd recognised her.

"Got any tips for dealing with anxiety?" I asked breathing out a sigh as I did so, her face became indiscernible for a moment before her otherwise normally bright expression returned and she nodded her head.

"I find that distracting myself with thoughts of what food I'd like to have for lunch or dinner works and if I can find the peace to ignore the noise meditation helps." Her reply made me smile, there was something nice about hearing her talk in what seemed like a very genuine matter.

"Alright well, I'll give it a go, I've never really meditated before but I guess there's a first time for everything…" my voice trailed off as I closed my eyes and tried my best to act like what I assumed she'd think someone trying meditation for the first time was like.

I actually knew how to and had done it before, so it wasn't new by any means, especially not in this life. My instructor had put a lot of effort into making sure I could be of clear mind when I went into a fight or had to deal with a restless world or mind.

After a few moments of silence between us the woman asked me "Do you need some help?"

I almost barked a laugh but held it back to answer her.

"No I'm alright, I'll just look it up later I guess, well either way I'm not feeling as anxious even if I don't think I did it right."

"There's no need to worry about 'doing it right' your first few times, much like most things it's difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first." She said with an encouraging smile.

I nodded along to the advice, I was sure I'd heard it before but I wasn't going to call her out on it.

"So what was your name anyway?" I asked changing the subject. "I'm Aleksandr by the way, it's nice to make your acquaintance." sitting up I offered my hand and she accepted it as she shook she gave hers.

"Pyrrha." She winced for a moment and I thought I'd been a little uncouth in my handshake but it was just because she'd expected me to jump on her after she's admitted who she was- that or she was worried a passer by would overhear it and do the same. "It's a pleasure to meet you as well Aleksandr."

We talked for a little while longer before a translucent blue hologram appeared nearby of a well dressed woman who began reciting a speech about new generations, prestigious academies and hopes for us all to become something grand as we fight to keep the peace.

Walking off the platform alone with my things I gave a long stare at all the buildings which looked so much larger than I had expected them to be.

"Woah" I couldn't help but voice my awe as I gazed upward to the main tower's top.

"Impressive isn't it?" An older man's voice said from my side nearly making me jump in fright, but I'd become good at not reacting to things outwardly so I just turned to him.

He was about my height, maybe a little shorter, had completely ash grey hair that was cut short, his skin was fair and barely looked like there was any ageing to it. He was dressed in a dark green suit that bordered on black and had a small pair of round glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, in his right hand was a walking cane and on his left was a Scroll in the tablet configuration where it was more like a book than a phone.

Something about him was familiar but I couldn't remember what.

"It is yeah," I answered him after a moment, he offered a gentle smile.

"You're one of the newly arrived first years?" He asked in a fay that made it clear he already knew, but asked for the sake of conversation.

"I am sir, my name is Aleksandr August." I bowed my head to the man in the way my mother had told me to.

"Oh I see…" His voice trailed off before he continued as though his mind was searching for something regarding my name. "I'm Headmaster Ozpin, I hope to see you perform well Mister August, there weren't many students who ranked as highly as you in the practical knowledge section of the entrance exam."

With that he walked away.

It took me a moment to register what his name was before my eyes went wide and I looked all around us, but no one else was around and suddenly I was alone.

Shit! Aren't we meant to be in the auditorium?!

I cursed internally and bolted towards the main buildings where several helpful signs directed people toward the Auditorium.