Drifters and Strays

Chapter1: The road to Vermillion

Gray Begehren roared down the broken and cracked road that covered the crater. The sun was hidden behind the treeline, sunlight filtering between the canopy of green leaves as he rode. The seventeen year old biker was currently riding north towards the village of Vermillion, the northernmost village that acted as a kind of border for people wanting to enter and leave the crater. Gray was currently on a courier run, bringing messages from the other villages to Vermillion to take advantage of the village's proximity to the kingdom of Vale, making it the only village in the crater to be within range of the kingdom's CCTS tower. Even though the village still had trouble reliably accessing the tower, it was still a popular spot for the people to gather and send messages. The only other form of communication they had in the valley were radios and scrolls that were only able to make short distance communications. But if you wanted to contact a family member in Vale or basically anywhere else on Remnant, you had to use the CCTS. That's where Gray came in. Gray was technically a mercenary, but most of his jobs were courier jobs, with the occasional job to wipe out Grimm that were getting too close to a town.

Gray slowed the bike down to a stop on the side of the road and let it idle. He needed a break, he had been riding all day and he knew the perfect place to relax for an hour or two before getting back on the road. Just to his left was a small clearing in the trees that led to a dirt path just big enough to take his bike down. He walked his trusty bike down the track, slowly walking through the forest until he came across a small stream. Gray parked his bike and turned off the engine and wandered over to the stream. He looked in the water and smirked at his reflection. His face was dirty, of course it was, he had been riding for all day. But even under the dirt you could still see the handsome face beneath. High cheekbones, a well defined jaw that was covered by the beginnings of a patchy stubble, blue eyes, and a strong nose his mother liked to call 'the beak' even though her's was even larger than his own. He took off the baseball cap he wore backwards and let his hair fall free. The neck length, black ,shaggy hair needed a wash, along with the rest of him.

"Hey there, handsome, looking a little dirty there. Can't go into a fancy village like Vermillion looking like this." He said to his own reflection as he began to take his clothes off. The stream was waist deep, which made it the perfect place for Gray to clean up before heading into the village. He slipped out of his boots and left them near his bike, next came his Kutte, his most prized possession besides his bike. The old leather Kutte had seen better days, but he loved it anyway. The symbol of the growling wolf on the back of the vest meant everything to him. The words 'Drifters'' were emblazoned just above the wolf with the words 'Crater Original' were just below it. The Kutte was the last gift his mother had ever given him, and he valued it more than his own life. He took the Kutte off and neatly folded it up before leaving it on the seat of his bike. The rest of his clothes, his holsters, his weapons and his backpack were thrown on the ground near his boots before he waded into the water, a curse falling from his lips as his body was given a hard reset by the cold water.

After he decided he was clean enough he waded out of the water and reclothed. He had barely managed to get his boots back on before he heard a howl, and not the howl of one of the wolves that lived in the crater. The howl was too loud, too angry. It was a Beowulf, and where there was one Beowulf, there were at least three others hiding in the shadows. He quickly hopped on his bike and started the engine, and began to drive back up the dirt track, barely managing to avoid a tree before bursting back onto the road just in time to avoid the claws of a Beowulf. "Shit! Not today you assholes!" He yelled back at the monster as the Beowulf and three of his friends emerged from the forest and gave chase, slowly catching up to him even though he was quickly approaching max speed. He grabbed one of his weapons, a small pistol that could turn into a knife, and slid it out of its holster. He continued to gun it down the road, the snarling of the beowulves were getting closer and closer by the second. He risked a glance behind his shoulder and saw the red eyes of one of the wolves just near his rear wheel. He blindly shot at the beast, somehow managing to get a lucky shot and popping in in the skull. The beowulf died instantly, his body ragdolling as it fell to the ground before quickly turning to dust. The others were still hot on his trail though. He briefly looked forward to make sure he was still safe before taking another look behind him and seeing the other two beowulves getting closer. Wait… weren't there four of them originally? Gray thought right before he was pulled off his bike by the third beowulf that had managed to get ahead of him while he was distracted.

He came crashing to the ground, his body bouncing along the road, every time he hit the road he could feel his aura shudder, until finally he hit the ground right before slamming into a tree and his aura finally gave out, cracking like ice before disappearing. He groaned and slowly pulled himself up to his feet, only to be tackled by one of the monsters. He hit the ground again and barely managed to avoid the jaws of the beast as it tried to literally bite his head off. He reached down to his second holster and pulled out his second weapon, his mothers weapon. A sawed-off shotgun that could transform into a battleaxe. He jammed the barrel against the beowulf's stomach and pulled the trigger, the grimm was blown off of him, but it didn't take long for the beast to get back up, limping its way back over as the other two monsters joined the battle. Shakily, he managed to get back on his feet and pushed the barrel against the limping beowulf's head and finished it off, leaving him alone with the last two monsters. He reached for his pistol only to realize that he must have dropped it while he was bouncing along the ground like a rubber ball. He then reached for his back where he kept his ammo, only to grasp at thin air and slowly realize that the bag, like his pistol, must be laying on the road somewhere. "Brothers damn it." he cursed as he pressed a button on the shotgun and it shifted into a small axe. The barrels of the gun split and shifted into double sided axe heads. It wasn't the most sophisticated or pretty of guns, but it would get the job done. He hoped.

The closet beowulf threw itself forward, he ducked underneath it and used his axe to split its stomach open. He barely avoided the second monster as it swiped at his head, but he managed to roll away in time to watch the claws slice into the tree beside him like a hot knife through butter. He swiped at the second beast, but it was smart enough to jump away from him. He yelped in pain as he felt daggers pierce his left leg, he looked down to see the beowulf that lunged at him earlier clamping down on his thigh. He quickly slammed one of the axe heads into the beast's skull, splitting it open. It fell to the ground dead, but the damage was done. He cried out in pain as he jumped out of the way of the final beowulf, his leg felt like it was on fire, and blood was starting to soak through the denim. He needed to end the fight quickly or else he was dead. He laid on the ground and played possum, axe held tightly in his left hand. Like all beowulves tended to do, it leaped at him the moment it saw him on the ground. He brought the axe up and managed to catch it in the face, but it didn't reach deep enough to kill the creature of darkness. He used his forearm to try and keep the monster's teeth at bay as he struggled to pull the axe out of the beowulf's skull, he could feel it's somehow cold breath on his face as it desperately tried to end his life. He struggled with the monster for a few seconds, the beast's fangs managing to nick his chin a few times before he was finally able to rip the axe out of the monsters skull and with a desperate yell, slammed it back into the beowulf, this time the blade reached deep enough to destroy whatever the equivalent of a grimm brain was. It slumped on top of him before turning to dust a few seconds later.

When Gray managed to limp his way back to the road, the sun was beginning to set. He felt weak, like he could collapse at any moment, he managed to find his bag on the ground, the strap had snapped, probably when the beowulf tore him off the bike. He found his pistol not far from the bag, broken, somehow stuck in between its knife and pistol form. He emptied the bullets out of the weapon and placed it in the bag, he didn't want it accidentally going off and shooting him while his aura was broken. Looked limped towards where he thought his bike would be, only to see it laying on the ground about ten minutes away from him. He must have gone flying when he came off the bike. He limped over to the bike, almost falling over a few times before finally reaching it. He struggled to get the bike to stand up, sweat running down his face as he heaved it back up onto its wheels. He looked in the bike's saddlebags and breathed a sigh of relief, the letters were safe. All forty of them were safe and sound, he could still complete his job. He grabbed some bandages and wrapped them around his bite wound. The blood didn't soak through the bandages which he thought was a good sign. He slowly pushed the bike onto the side of the road and looked for a bush to sleep in. There was no way he was going to be able to get to Vermillion tonight. When he found a bush big enough to hide him he grabbed a can of vegetables, a can opener and a torch from his saddlebag. He ate his canned vegetables and climbed into the bush, groaning as his body was jabbed by sticks. "Fuck." was all he said as he laid in the bush. It was going to be a long night.

Authors note

I hope you enjoyed this first chapter of my new story. I've always wanted to do a RWBY story, but I wanted to write something more unique than just having my OC be part of a different team or even the fifth member of team RWBY that other people like to do. I'm not sure how often I'll update this story, simply because doing a longfic takes time, a lot of time. But hopefully you won't have to wait too long for chapters if you decide to follow this fic. This chapter also comes with some bad news. My Young Justice story has been put on permanent hiatus/up for adoption. Being Australian, I only ever had access to the first two seasons of the show, but last month I finally decided to just find a website to watch it and I found myself not liking the newer seasons and it completely killed my motivation to write anymore of the story. So if any of my *Check's list* three followers want to take that story and make it their own. Feel free. Anyways, to anyone that decided to check out the story, thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I'm not sure If I want Blake and Gray to be in a relationship yet. I'm leaning more towards yes, but I don't want romance to be the main theme of this story so I'll probably just wait for a while and see how I feel.