RWBY RE:colored

by Royal-Harmonica

This is a re-imagination of the story of RWBY given as a pitch, a review, and a scene-by-scene style of writing. It's purpose is merely to adapt the series into a more cohesive and simple series for teenage and mature audiences. If you're not a nerd, your cringe discretion is advised. I post primarily on AO3, so this might be not be up to date.

3. Volume I (Warriors of the Kingdom)

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VOLUME I

The story starts just like the original, except the intro narration is not the Dust exposition. It actually starts with a small poem over footage of featureless characters fighting black monsters in stone-hieroglyph style. At first, the narration explains that this is a world ruled by monsters and warriors. For five hundred years the humans have been at war with those creatures. In order to survive, powerful men and women from everywhere have united their skills and magic in order to save the innocent and weak. But this story is not about all of them.

It's about a lonely warrior on the way to their demise. She has lived surrounded by suffering and death, and yet there is hope. The story that has been, and the story that will be — memories of the past and wishes for the future move the brave into battle. She faces her doom, not for glory, and certainly not alone. The poem essentially reveals the main themes of the series, and it needs to be just vague enough for people to shrug it off initially, so we can capitalize on its true meaning by the end of the series.

...

The real deal begins in the streets of Vale City, night. We get a nice establishing shot of a lonely road and the streetlights are poorly working. The soundtrack of RWBY dabbles between sweet and wistful instrumental tracks and hardcore butt rock for the fight scenes, and it's at quiet moments like this that we need music to get a sense of the mood. It's dark and mysterious. Eventually we get to see the place of focus on the scene — an armory for Huntsmen, full of weapons instead of just a store that literally sells magic powder. The store is still up and running even at night, because the old man inside simply fell asleep on the counter.

A black van slowly stops in front of the store, and four guys exit from the back. They are all packed with normal guns, and they quickly storm the armory, catching the old man in his sleep. Finally, the boss exits the van and enters; it was Roman Torchwick. His charisma is immediately put on display, treating the armed robbery like a casual mishap. Roman came to steal something very special that arrived that very day. Clearly he did his homework, since he knows exactly where they are, in which room, the color of the boxes, and the code to open them — all before the public ever knew it existed. We are not explained what exactly he is stealing at this point of the story. He takes his men to the backroom along with the old man and leaves just one guy behind to close the store and keep a watch. The henchmen does his job until something unusual happens.

The goon hears the doorbell and turns around to see a girl in black and red, covering her face with a red hood; that's Ruby. She asks if the store is still open, saying that she called earlier and really needed to buy a gift for someone. The goon tries to shoo her away, but Ruby continues to ask even more questions. She knew the old shopkeeper and demanded see him. The goon then draws his gun, and she pulls out her hood, showing her face for the first time. The way she looks fearlessly at the gun, plus the lack of emotional response will be enough for us to understand that this is no ordinary girl. Then we proceed with the classic moment.

"Are… Are you robbing me?" Ruby asks.

"Yes!" the goon replies.

Suddenly she starts smiling with so much giddyness that the man gets mad, and he tries to shove the gun in her face. Ruby instantly demonstrates an insane level of speed, grabbing the barrel before the man could react, pointing it away, and holding it with so much strength that the goon couldn't escape her seemingly light grasp. His only option was to punch her, but Ruby quickly and easily uses a basic throw technique, using his own momentum to slam the guy to the ground. As he lays unconscious, Ruby humiliates him further by explaining basic gun safety, and why he should learn to aim from the hip so then enemies can't easily grab his arm in close encounters.

Just then, Roman and the other three goons arrive in time to see the little girl standing over their fallen colleague. The boxes they carry are white and have the Schnee crest/logo on them for keen-eyed viewers doing their second watch of the volume. They waste no time and instantly start unloading their guns at the little girl, so Ruby jumps behind a display shelf. They keep firing until the entire thing is riddled with bullet holes, and there's silence. Roman takes off his hat and pays his respects to another stupid kid who died trying to play the hero. To their utter surprise, she's still alive, and curses them out for shooting first instead of talking. They try to shoot her again, but this time Ruby is serious.

Using her Semblance, "Rose Dash", she easily zips around the entire store like a red blur, moving too fast for them to properly aim, and making poses to taunt them. Now the whole store was full of bullet holes, and eventually they ran out of ammo. Ruby just stands there, hands behind her back with a smile.

Roman reminds them to use their swords, and so they rush at Ruby with them. This time she decides to bolt out of there, jumping through the shattered window into the dark street. She was about the run, but that situation clicks something in her brain. She realizes this is a perfect opportunity for some action — something she really needed to elevate her mood a bit. And so for the first time she brings out Crescent Rose. At first it seemed like a red metal tablet that fits under her skirt, but quickly unravels into a huge scythe twice her size. The goons rushed at her, believing that thing to be too flimsy and light to be an actual threat. They are quickly proven wrong as Ruby demonstrates super strength, wielding it with speed and precision. She knocks them down on their butts, and they realize she was a Huntress. That realization made them all run away through the dark alleys in fear.

Roman is the only one left. He seems to be shocked at his own misfortune for bumping into a Huntress out of nowhere, after weeks of planning. Next time he'll make sure to pay his goons only after the robbery is done. He grabs the boxes and goes to leave in his van, but Ruby tells him to stop. He ignores her, and so she attacks. But in that moment, Roman shows himself to be special as well. He easily dodges her scythe with speed she wasn't prepared for, and he quickly counter attacks by bonking her in the face with his cane. She's left stunned on the ground after that, and by the time she gets up Roman is already inside his van.

"Thanks for ruining my night kid" he says, flickering his cigar at her at super speed, almost hitting her eye if she didn't dodge. Roman drives out of there with the stolen goods, and Ruby is mad. She felt responsible, she needed to stop the robbery, but above all else she really wanted to fight Roman for real; showing firsthand that aspect of her personality.

And so a chase through the city night ensues, with Roman speeding through the empty streets while Ruby follows by jumping through the rooftops and light poles. This scene is very important. I have a very similar belief to Mounty Oum that motion and character need to be connected. This first chase scene serves as the first taste of the show's animation and energy — since it's the first episode I would argue it needs to be well animated at any cost. Even the way Ruby jumps across the rooftops needs to be filled with her personality; doing useless flips and smiling throughout the chase as she gets excited. Eventually she jumps on top of the van, and starts hitting it with her scythe over and over. Roman is forced to drive into the main street that is full of people in order to try to shake her off. The police are immediately called. Roman does not wish to fight, but it doesn't feel like he's outmatched by Ruby, at all. He just wants to escape.

The chase ends as Roman hears the police sirens approaching. He picks up the two boxes with valuable merchandise, kicks down the door to his side, and jumps out the van just as he passed by a dark alley. Ruby sees him jump off, and the two share a glance in slow motion. Roman smiles, telling her to enjoy the crash. Ruby then looks ahead and sees that the van was about to hit a fire hydrant, and she wasn't fast enough to react.

The van crashes and Ruby is sent flying through the air and rolling on the pavement, next to her scythe. But that deadly impact didn't seem to hurt her at all. A red glow surrounds her body, and so she just gets up with a few scratches. She's not given the chance to follow Roman, as the police arrive after receiving tons of calls about the little red girl riding the hood of a van. The normal officers disperse the crowd watching, while a certain someone just goes ahead and smacks Ruby in the head for all the trouble she caused; that was Detective Braun. Brown trench coat, brown pants, brown fedora, white shirt and blue tie — he was the complete detective package, and he seems to have powers just like hers. He was extremely angry at Ruby, and clearly this isn't her first time doing something like this. Ruby tries to explain herself, but with Roman gone, she's literally the only one left to blame. She's screwed. Braun takes her inside the police car, and they drive away before the news crew arrive.

From a high bell tower near that crowded street, there is a dark silhouette with a cane, watching over the scene with the shattered moon behind him. He looks down upon Ruby, and after she leaves with Braun, he disappears.

...

We cut to later that night, with Ruby at Braun's office, being scolded repeatedly while she looks down in shame. Braun was expecting her sister to do something stupid that night, but not Ruby — he was really disappointed. Ever since Ruby fully awakened her Aura, she's been at the center of a few incidents where she was irresponsible with her powers. There was the black cat "Grimm" incident, the rooftop incident, the accidental bank heist incident, and now this. This bit of dialogue is about Braun throwing in a few names, such as "Aura" and "Huntress", just for us to get a shallow idea of the world building and understand that Ruby is one of those warriors that we talked about in the intro narration, and that's why she has super powers. By the end Ruby was tearing up, which surprised Braun and instantly made him revert his mean tone. Ruby explains that her sister (Yang) will be leaving home tomorrow in order to become a Huntress, and she is sad at the idea of being left behind. She was planning to buy some things in the armory and fix up her father's old gauntlets, so they could give them to her as a gift. She didn't mean to hurt anyone, she just wanted a bit of fun to forget the loneliness.

Braun tries to make the girl stop crying until eventually they hear a knock on the door. Braun opens it, and his face is immediately taken by fear. A man with silver hair, a cane and a green suit; It was Ozpin. He cordially greeted the old friend despite Braun being so weary of him. He asks for the opportunity to talk with the girl, and so he essentially steals the office, leaving Braun outside. Ozpin goes ahead and sits beside Ruby, and she's not aware who he is yet. He was carrying a little box with cookies and two small paper cups of coffee, so Ruby eats away as they talk.

The content of their chat is pretty casual — Ozpin recounts what happened from his point of view and praises Ruby where she deserved it. At first he plays off dumb, thinking she's already a pro Huntress, but then she clarifies it all. That serves so then Ruby herself can explain the essentials of her character on her personal standpoint — how she wanted to become a Huntress like her mom and dads, but unfortunately she's too young to join her sister this year. Ozpin says it a shame, because her skills seem to be enough to even teach other folk how to fight. It even reminded Ozpin of someone else fighting, except Ruby's weapon is way more elegant than his (Qrow foreshadowing). Ruby then gets very excited to talk about Crescent Rose, of which it took her months to craft and few more thousand Lien than her uncle had hoped, but it does function perfectly as she wanted; a built in gun, a giant sharp blade, and compact mode for sunday walks. One of the deadliest weapons ever designed. Finally the two look at each other in the eyes directly, and so Ozpin realizes she had Silver Eyes. His subtle expression of shock confused Ruby for a moment, but he recomposed and stood up before either Ruby or the audience could question it.

The two now introduce each other properly. Upon hearing the name Ozpin Kurtin, Ruby pauses for a second and then screams in surprise. Ozpin is not that famous among normal people, so he was surprised that Ruby knew many stories about his youth. Ozpin was the "headmaster" of the Huntsman Guild of Vale, and also was the principal of the Beacon Academy, not to mention a powerful legendary warrior with many great feats to his name. He doesn't waste any time explaining why he's there — Ozpin came to personally invite Ruby to Beacon after seeing what she did that night. He explains that, apparently, there was no age limit to enter Beacon. Since he witnessed first hand what she's capable of tonight, they can skip Signal Test for Huntsmen training. She can join the academy whenever she wishes; so she can train in Beacon this next year if she wants to.

Ruby's answer to that proposition was a dense silence… before she jumped at him, and caught Ozpin with a hug by surprise. She was squeezing and shaking him while saying "thank you" repeatedly. Eventually she calmed down and gave a proper response, excitedly promising to be at the castle tomorrow morning along her sister. Ozpin explains a few minor details, and in the end he tells the girl to go home for the night and tell the good news to her family. Ruby hugs Ozpin by surprise one final time, before bolting out the door and exits the police station like a red blur. She disappears into the night, jumping across the rooftops all the way home.

Ozpin and Braun have one final interaction outside the police station, as the detective says, "Something tells me you just did something horribly… horribly wrong. She is still a kid! She barely got out of puberty and you want to throw her into the battlefield?!"

Ozpin replies, "That's up to her to decide… And besides I don't think I could've stopped her if I tried. I've been hearing a few stories about that girl, but I didn't expect… this. She's truly special. The best we can do is make sure she's ready for when that brutal future comes. Good night, Marrow." he finishes, walking away with his cane into the night.

...

The episode only ends properly with a final shot of the cliff's edge of the forest — outside the walls of Vale city. Ruby decides to tell her mom about the big news before anyone else; or rather, her grave. It's an exciting and childish retelling of all that happened in the episode, keeping some facts out to not anger her mom's spirit. In the end Ruby promises to one day become just as strong as her mother was, and now she decides to go back home, ending the episode. It's simple, action packed, and faithful to the first episode.

Commentary (spoilers): I wanted to keep the first episode structure the same as the original, I don't know why. It commits a pretty damning sin in writing for me, which is not showing the titled monsters of the show into the first episode. Imagine if Titans were only mentioned as an offscreen threat in the first episode of Attack On Titan. That's the thing with RWBY (and anime in general). The main enemy of the show is Grimm, but it's much more exciting to have the characters fight other humans; a clash of characters, each with their own personality, goals and aspirations put in place in the fight. Fights against actual Grimm will come in droves to stave off our boredom, but they will almost never be the crux of an important scene. Grimm essentially serves as a plot threat; not actual characters but literally video game enemies that sometimes get in the heroes way. I unfortunately don't have any ideas to make them more compelling antagonists in the first volume. It doesn't help that they will be early into their training, so there's few chances to find strong enemies.

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The first episode was a continuous stream of fluid action sequences and character building all the way to the end. Now we need to work on slow worldbuilding.

The episode starts with a pleasant shot of an early morning and a blue sky. The scene is focused on some kind of train station without any rails, and beside a few background characters, we focus on Ruby next to someone in brown and white. It was her father, Tai Xiaolong. Ruby is carrying a red backpack for herself, and a yellow duffel bag for Yang, since apparently she didn't come home last night to pack her own things.

The scene starts with Tai listing a bunch of important things to make sure Ruby didn't forget anything at home, and she was truly ready. The list eventually ends in very small and useless things, but Tai treats it very seriously — just to make it really clear how worried he is about her, and he clearly doesn't want Ruby to leave home. She says over and over again how she will be fine, so Tai gets down to her 5-feet level and explains how it will be. Tai knows Ruby will be fine, because he and her uncle made sure of that through training. What she really needs to prepare for is the fact she won't be alone. Once she's up there, she'll be part of a team, and they will have to work together, and keep each other alive to succeed. She didn't feel so confident about that, since Ruby went through several school years without making any significant friends. In her class she was just the nut who wanted to be as a Huntress, was hyper-fixated on weaponry and fighting, played oddly violent games in recess, got on the nerves of all teachers with her tomfoolery, and had an older sister that everyone feared. After her father's inspirational talk, she promised to try her best to make friends this time. And even if all else failed, she would still have Yang.

Now that they mention her, they realize she will be late.

...

Yang did a lot of things last night.

She saw this as her last day of youth and freedom before joining true adulthood, so she decided to party all night. She got really drunk, accidentally broke a lot of stuff, and we get a very nice feel of her personality. She's the fun one. She had one last stop to make that night, so she went to the fabled Junior's club — a place where rich people go to, for all the wrong reasons. We get a very quick appearance of Roman, as he leaves the place just as Yang enters it — pretty easy to miss the first time watching. She goes ahead as usual and confronts Junior along with all his goons as the place closes. Apparently she was a known there for years. She proceeds to start a fight with all of them for seemingly no reason. They attack, and Yang uses solely her fists to knock out the enemies in one hit. They tried to shoot her, but either she would easily dodge the bullets, or tank them with her Aura just to show off.

The floor was littered with unconscious goons in the end, and finally she held up the tall fat junior by the collar. She was there specifically to deliver a harsh but simple message to all criminals in Vale City. If by ANY reason, anyone decides to mess with her father and little sister to ANY capacity while she's gone, she'll gladly come back, and break that person's legs. She doesn't care if she has to quit the academy in order to do so. Her eyes changed to a bloody red color as she spoke, and so she dropped Junior to the floor and left the place. Turns out she's also the angry one

She comes out, only to realize it's already morning, and Ruby sent 99+ messages explaining her nightly adventures, and that she's coming with her to Beacon.

...

Back in the present, Ruby and Tai suddenly hear a motorcycle approaching, and soon they see it; it was Yang. She drove over the sidewalk on top of her bike, Bumblebee, staining the road with black marks as she drifted. Ruby was joyful to see her, while Tai just covered his face and sighs (he knew he shouldn't have bought the motorcycle for her birthday). Yang goes ahead and catches Ruby in a bear hug that breaks all of her bones and suffocates Ruby in her breasts, forcing her to fight back to survive. This will be the common way that Yang greets literally everyone in the series. She couldn't be more proud of her little sister, being chosen by the headmaster himself to join the Academy. As the two sisters hug, Tai wastes no time scolding Yang for being a troublemaker and not showing up last night. He points out the clear bullet scrapes in her clothes, which gets him even more mad since this is an important day to keep up appearances. While Tai is soft-spoken and wise with Ruby, his relation with Yang is immediately aggressive and rude. It shouldn't come off as abusive, since Yang fights back with the same energy and tone, underplaying how dangerous her fights are. This man truly doesn't know what he did wrong to make his two daughters so comically different.

Eventually it becomes clear why they are there. The station was actually for a flying helicopter-like ferry, and it arrives from the sky creating a rush of wind. Everyone starts to hop aboard — the destination is Beacon Castle atop the mountain. Ruby is immediately faced with dozens of armored huntsmen with weapons that are very nicely designed, which excites her. Their glances are very confused, not knowing what such a short young girl was doing there. Yang pushes her motorcycle inside and the family finds a place by the window.

The flying ferry scene has a very important purpose, it will be our first establishing shot of Vale City, and the technology level of this universe. The city is by the side of a mountain in the north, the open sea and docks in the south, a huge forest outside the walls by the east, and open plains to the west. It has a big tower in the middle of the city below (communications tower), and a white castle high above in the mountain's plateau. We have scroll-like phones, cars, televisions — all merging to the old medieval European style of the Huntsmen aboard the train. They are very equally divided between male and female, since Aura cares not for the small physical differences of people — once you awaken your Aura, everyone gets put somewhat to the same standard. This scene only has two moments to focus on. One being Yang distracting Tai away from the TV so he doesn't see the news about Ruby's exploits last night. Second is Ruby continuously ogling all the warriors in front of her (most of them will be recurring background characters) until finally she spots someone who's likely her age, standing there all mighty and serious. That was Jaune.

Ruby remembered her father's words, and tried to strike up a conversation with him to make a new friend. But as she tries so, Jaune quickly excuses himself, and goes to vomit in the nearest trash bin, which makes all the Huntsmen around him laugh. Ruby just watched with a complete poker face before she returned all sad to her spot. She sucks so badly at this that people will literally vomit upon hearing her voice.

...

The ferry ride ends, and the Huntsmen begin gathering in front of the doors. Ruby manages to squeeze her way through them in order to leave firsts. The doors open and we're treated to our very first shot of Beacon Castle, with an appropriately epic soundtrack. The only change to its design that I want to make is to give it a very big wall surrounding it (it is a fortress against monsters after all). The people begin leaving as Ruby stands in silent awe of the view, and Tai slowly walks to her side. "It's beautiful isn't it? This brings back so many memories. Every time our old team got back from a long mission, we would always just drop to the floor in relief when we saw the castle. I know you wanna go there, Ruby, but I need you to behave yourself-"

"She's gone." Yang said. Ruby already went ahead and rushed past everyone before Tai could notice. The red blur scared all the Huntsmen who were casually walking to the entrance. Ruby wanted to get a better view of the place, so she started running vertically up the giant smooth wall, which shocked everyone watching. Her Semblance defies physics and allows her to do cool stuff like this, and this serves as a setup to something way more crazy that she will do later.

At the top we will get an even better shot of the castle, and also a very small scene. Suddenly Ozpin appears behind Ruby and says hello, scaring her so hard that she almost falls off the edge. Ozpin's speed is so insane that even other Huntsmen will get the feeling he is teleporting around the place. He was glad to see her there, but it was very rude to so easily climb a wall that took fifty years to build. He allows the girl to explore the castle grounds, but warns her to be on time for the opening ceremony. As Ruby looks away, Ozpin already disappears with his insane speed again. Ruby goes ahead and jumps off, free falling towards the castle.

Yang and Tai watch Ruby go from down there. He tells Yang to go fetch her sister before she breaks something they can't pay for. But before she left, Tai called her again to give his eldest daughter a final gift. He gave her his own weapon, Amber Celica; or the blast gauntlets to simplify. Yang never bothered to craft or learn any weapons, so this is the least he can do for her. Eventually she will find out that some monsters will take more than a simple punch to deal with, and until then, there should be a lot of neat tricks that she can learn from this weapon. Summer actually made and upgraded this a long time ago, and Ruby fixed and polished it last night, so this is basically her whole family handing down gifts for her. Tai has to go meet someone, so he hugs Yang and the two part ways.

...

I think at this point we build enough of our first two main protagonists. Time to develop the third one.

The scene cuts away to the inside of a small but fancy living room. We get a few establishing shots of a girl as she speaks to her butler — her nice shoes, her lower face and the scar under her eye, her crossed arms, and finally her whole body. It was Weiss. The butler, Klein, was telling her a quick summation of everything he had prepared in her bags, which are big and several. He seems to be much more nervous about her day than Weiss herself. Eventually they get notified that they arrived, and so they leave the room.

They were actually inside a personal flying limousine this whole time, and arrived in a separate place from everyone else. Klein unloads all her bags in a little cart, and unfortunately they have to part ways, as her father ordered to only help her this far. The man begins to cry at the thought of Weiss all alone in a different nation, but Weiss shrugs his tears and promises that everything will be alright. This is exactly what she wanted. She hugs him fondly for all the things he did since her childhood, and promises to keep in contact, and survive whatever crap this place has in store for her. And so Klein goes back inside, and waves goodbye from the window as he cries.

This scene is insurmountably important. It humanizes Weiss from the get go — it shows the best of her personality right away. Above all else, it is important because this is one of the few moments of good Weiss we will see this volume. Weiss is gonna be a huge bitch from now on — that's the purpose of her character. We have to demonstrate that a character has what it takes to grow as a person, so then we believe when she grows as a person.

The next scene follows Weiss walking down towards the castle as she's lost in thought. Her inner dialogue is basically her hyping herself up. Against her father's wishes, her sister's wishes, her mother's wishes, her entire nation even, she's here. She promises to make her grandfather proud, become a legendary Huntress, and she won't allow anything to get in her way.

Just as she thinks that, someone bashes right into her way.

She turned a corner and collided face first with Ruby, who was doing hardcore parkour all over the castle for the last few minutes. This is the start of a beautiful friendship. Ruby somehow manages to hit Weiss so hard that all of her baggage goes flying into the air, and scatters open on the floor. She immediately grabs Ruby by her collar and shouts on her face in anger, but then she immediately notices her clothes and underwear falling from the sky, and rushes to pack everything back together. Ruby tries to help Weiss even as she continues to insult her in oddly xenophobic ways. The real fight starts when Ruby spots Myrtnaster's case wide open (Weiss's rapier). She grabs it without thinking, because that was the fanciest thing that she ever saw in her life and it mesmerized her. Weiss shouts, "HEY, DON'T TOUCH THAT!" and is forced to wrestle it away from Ruby. Weiss pulls it away with all her strength, falling on top of her baggages and scattering everything again. Weiss is furious, so she starts yelling at Ruby to leave. Ruby gets scared of her, and runs away while begging forgiveness.

With this scene we establish three important things; Weiss' other (and more widely known) personality, her interchangeable love and hate dynamic with Ruby, and Weiss's low opinion of her, which will factor a lot in this volume.

We continue following Ruby, as in her inner dialogue she reminds herself to watch where she is going. While she's distracted thinking that, she trips on a ledge and falls on her face. Or at least that would be the case. Through the first amazing foreshadowing of his character, Jaune suddenly appears out of nowhere and pulls her by the red hood, saving her from smashing her face. But since he is a fellow goofball himself, he proceeds to fall with the momentum and drag Ruby along with him. The two quickly help each other up, and Ruby recognized the vomit boy from earlier. Jaune came to apologize for that — it was the first time he flew in one of those things, and he got sick. The two introduce each other, and Ruby decides to walk alongside him for now; not wanting to blow another chance at making a friend. They immediately hit it off once the two find out that they are both signed into the Huntsmen academy this year. They have a little chat concerning the reasons they joined — both Ruby and Jaune come from a long line of Huntsmen, and it's pretty common that they train their children to fight, or find a pupil. This scene is the first time Ruby talks about her mother Summer, basically being her motivation to be just like her when she grows up — apparently she was a famous hero to Vale, and her team was really strong. While for Jaune, he has a very vague and eerie desire to simply become stronger.

Before he can explain any further, Yang shows up. She suddenly catches Ruby by the midriff so she can't run away, and drags her inside the castle for the ceremony. Jaune follows a little behind, terrified of Yang.

As they head in, we get our first view of the main hall, which we will see a bunch for the entire series. Just a huge open hall, a lot of pillars, and a path going straight for a reception counter. It also has a few other leisure areas, like a small food court and bar, as it's common for teams of huntsmen to hang around here. It has this big holographic notice board on the wall, with tons of smalls and big missions occupying it — all with descriptions and different ranks from D to A. There's a lot of teams talking and discussing, but our focus is still on Ruby, Yang and Jaune as they pass by them. Once they saw the three kids, they wondered how long it would take for them to quit the academy like all the others.

Eventually they arrive where the ceremony is meant to take place. The ceremony room was behind a big door, and there was one happy-looking fat man guarding it; retired Huntsman, Peter Port. The three showed him the entrance documents on their scrolls and he allowed them in — apparently they were the only ones left to arrive. Yang finally lets go of Ruby, and she enters with a big smile, ready to see all the people who'll be part of her class this year… only to be welcomed by a near empty room.

And thus we are introduced to our twelve legends.

Cardin, Russel, Dove and Sky were all together in the corner by the big window. Cardin is standing with his arms crossed like a tower, Russel squatting on the floor, Sky grooming his hair on the window reflection, and Dove just with hands on his pockets, leaning against the wall. None of them have any kind of armor by this point, only dressed like a pack of greasers.

On the other side there were four other people sitting by a few chairs. Pyrrha was constantly dodging her eyes around the room and trying to not make eye contact. Ren and Nora were sitting side by side as she whispers in his ear, and he attempts to meditate to pass time. And lastly, Ruby's eyes met up with Weiss again. She just frowns and looks away. Everyone looks at the three newcomers in silence.

Ruby looks back at Port. "Is this… everyone? There are so few people here."

"Few people? We have 12 this year, this is record breaking for the last ten years!" Port replied. He then closed the door and left everyone alone in there. Ruby tried to awkwardly introduce herself to everyone, but they just looked at her and didn't say anything back. She just got to the chairs and sat there. Ruby confides in Yang that she believed more people would show up, but Yang states one of the most important truths in this universe. Basically, though Huntsmen are critically necessary, fighting monsters is not anyone's dream job. Their numbers only went down as technology increased and people began living in abstract comfort. No one would come to this room today if not for a good reason. Surely, they are few among thousands, and Ruby should respect them.

Eventually, the big door at the stage on the other side of the room opens up, and Ozpin walks in. He tells all the newbies to come forward, and so they do. However, he looked annoyed. He waited a few moments and then he said again, for "everyone" to come forward, as he looked up to the ceiling.

Everyone looks up with him, and they see a pair of yellow sharp eyes looking at them from the darkness above. The last student was sitting in the rafters this whole time, quietly watching all the others below. Eventually she jumps down, giving us the first look at Blake. She doesn't say anything, and simply joins the others from the back. Though they look at her, she ignores them. A completely mysterious girl.

Ozpin proceeds to give his speech as usual. It's pretty ominous — he was using his very serious voice for the first time. He points out how these 12 individuals all came together, from different backgrounds, different cities and even nations. They might have come with an idea or even a desire, not fully knowing what they want to achieve, or what they hope to discover. What they need is a direction to use all that potential. He can give them that, but he won't lie about what they do in this career. All twelve students will thus accept a life of peril, fighting monsters that won't waste a single second trying to kill them. They will experience pain, loss and death; he cannot lie about that. He will train them to the best of his abilities to make sure that won't happen, but by no means this life will be a walk in the park. And so Ozpin invites any of the twelve, who are feeling a little regretful of their choices, to step out of the room this very instant.

…

Naturally, a few glances go around between the twelve, but it doesn't seem like anyone will be leaving. Ozpin waits a moment before saying, "very well."

Suddenly a lot of other Huntsmen start coming in from the stage door behind Ozpin, some being Tai, Oobleck and Port, but they are not named yet. They surround Ozpin to serve as witnesses to the oath these kids are about to perform. With hands over their chests, they repeat after his words. I don't know exactly what the oath is, but it is very basic — protect the people, kill the monsters, use their lives for good until they die. That's it. With that the second episode concludes.

Commentary (spoilers): I honestly gotta do these first few episodes very carefully, they are by far the most important ones. Once I get past them, I'm gonna breeze through most of the plotline aspects. In essence nothing has changed so far, because I truly believe everything all the way to the Nevermore fight is pure RWBY at its core. I just gotta focus on giving the characters a sprinkle of their new personality quirks. And yes, team CFVY are still not here. They entered Beacon a year prior, and they will be introduced later.

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Next we follow Ozpin and Port, giving a basic tour guide to the students about their personal places in the castle. They drop off their baggage and Ozpin finally leads them to the castle's personal armory room.

Now they have about an hour to prepare… for their very first mission.

Everyone reacts in surprise, but Ozpin is not kidding. Their first mission and active combat situation will begin shortly, and he tells the ones who did not come packed to go search for anything that seems of their liking. They will be fighting Grimm today, and so he leaves them alone. Cardin's crew are the first to go ahead and search. Ren is already packing his father's bow and thinks it's enough, but he's forced to go as Nora drags him along to find a weapon for herself. Ruby went ahead to check out all the cool stuff they have, and Yang is forced to tag along to make sure she doesn't literally steal anything. Blake disappeared before anyone noticed, so only Jaune, Pyrrha and Weiss stood behind by the benches and lockers on the wall. Jaune already has his father's broken sword and basic shield, Pyrrha has her spear rifle and Weiss has Myrtnaster. When I say Jaune's broken sword, I don't mean OP (though it is). The sword is literally shattered, broken in half from it's original length with cracks all over, but still sporting a very nice edge, and it still has a pointy tip. All these three have to do is wait a little.

In the meantime, we have the talk between Weiss and Pyrrha. Weiss easily recognizes Pyrrha as the famous winner of some fighting tournament in a city called Argus, which makes Pyrrha really uncomfortable. Weiss tries really hard to convince Pyrrha to be part of her team, as they would be unstoppable together. She promises a life of great riches and fame under her leadership. In response, Pyrrha gives off the most NPC answers possible, trying to exit the conversation as fast as possible. In the end she promises to think about it. Weiss leaves, and so Pyrrha is left alone with Jaune. He's eyeing her from a distance, which makes her worried that every person in here will recognize her, and starts having a panic attack in inner dialogue. In reality Jaune was just checking her out. She was wearing a bunch of armor, and her skirt was quite long so he couldn't pinpoint how hot she was. He did not expect to find so many cute girls here.

We cut to some time later, where all the students who didn't bring weapons have now found their picks. Here we can see beta versions of what will eventually become their signature weapons; at this point in time they are as simple as they come, but eventually they will get a few upgrades until they become what they are in the original. Nora got her big iron hammer, Ren found two bladed brass knuckles that may be useful with his martial arts, Cardin found his big iron mace, Sky got a long spear, Russel found two short swords and Dove got some weird boomerang. Ruby actually tried to leave with fifty different weapons strapped all over her, but Yang orders her to put everything back where it belongs.

After that, the students are guided to somewhere outside the castle walls, and near the plateau's cliff. Down below they can see Foreverfall, a forest of red trees going very far, being surrounded by the shoulders of the mountain. Many miles ahead, at the end of the horizon, Ozpin points at the ruins of the old Beacon castle. It was destroyed hundreds of years ago when Grimm first invaded, and now it is their goal. All students have the mission to arrive there with their new teams. The path below will be full of Grimm — weak and young packs that were personally guided here to be their training dummies. If they can't handle Grimm at their weakest, they can't expect to survive as Huntsmen. Every student here has their Aura awakened, so as long as they are not total morons, they will survive.

Now for the truly interesting part — the first three people that they meet in the forest will be their partners for the next years of the academy, if not their whole lives. This revelation shocks all of them, as it is very unfair and random. They look at each other nervously. Without allowing any discussion, Ozpin will begin the mission. Before that, Jaune asks how they are going to be split apart in the first place. Ozpin doesn't know, since the combat teacher is the one who makes up the first mission each year. Even he is curious to what she conjured up. And so he tells Port to do the honors.

Port steps on a lonely stone that was actually a switch. The students feel the ground shake underneath them. They have a few seconds to talk. Some just take a deep breath. Ruby tells Yang to stand still so she can find her. Jaune was still trying to ask questions. Cardin asked Dove for a plan, and so he whispered something really quick while pointing to the woods. Without further ado, the students are launched in the air by comical spring boards, flying in random directions, making Port and Ozpin laugh together. This is the first silly moment of the show; not necessarily funny, but just silly. Personally I don't have any better ideas, so I'll stick with the original.

They were not expecting this at all, but a chosen few like Ruby and Pyrrha managed to recompose themselves mid-flight. Huntsmen, even newbies like them, are capable of surviving this kind of crap. Some just fell straight through the tree line, while others managed to use their skills to safely land. It is necessary to make them all struggle a bit to do it, since… how the hell would they ever prepare for this?

Ren lands swiftly, but sees Nora flying ahead and crash with a loud noise. He rushes ahead to help her, finding the girl tangled in the twigs with Grimm hovering under her. These truly are baby Grimm, two wolves that are literally the size of a normal wolf. Aside from the supposed pilots or trailers, this is our first encounter with them on the show. Their creepy dark design, as well as the bizarre sounds they make, immediately make them eerie to look at. They have no white layer on their bodies at all except for front teeth and claws. Their red eyes are deeply ominous. They jump to attack together, but Ren easily kills them with his new weapon. He helps Nora down with the whole boop scene — a sequence that perfectly encapsulates their personality, relationship, and also automatically makes them a duo. It is only revealed to the audience, but they are being watched from blind spots by several people in hoods, all taking note of their movement.

Cardin's crew all landed far apart, but they would follow Dove's plan. Stay where they are, wait fifteen minutes for all the other students to move towards the ruins, and then reunite at the highest tree in the forest they can see. It was a simple plan that worked miracles — team CRDL was the first team to fully form.

Pyrrha landed better than anyone else, and she instantly performed a perfect scouting of her surroundings for any sign of Grimm — her hands didn't shake at all as she aimed around. Eventually she sees Jaune falling far away. She looks on, wondering what he will do in order to land safely. Unfortunately, Jaune didn't have a plan, and he was unlucky. Pyrrha watched as he flew head first into the side of a cliff, causing a tremor with impact, and then another one, as he fell and crashed on the ground. Her face turned to worry and she immediately went to check on him. She found Jaune on a crater, holding on to his shield. That crash was terrible — even a Huntsman would be banged up by that, but Jaune simply was okay by holding his shield up. Pyrrha could sense a huge amount of blue Aura surrounding his body at the moment; a characteristic that is reserved only for strong and old Huntsmen with hardened hearts and souls. And yet, it was coming from this guy, who clearly is a dummy. Jaune points out that their meeting means that they are teammates now.

Soon after, a pack of wolf Grimm arrive after hearing Jaune's crash. He prepares to fight, but it seems his sword is stuck in the sheath. While he was busy trying to pull it out, Pyrrha went ahead and alone defeated the entire pack with the precise and deadly swings of her spear. They were all dead by the time Jaune looked again. He complimented Pyrrha, because holy fuck she's good. But the moment she receives praise, she loses all her confidence and stutters, "uh, t-t-thank you!" Jaune naturally takes the lead, and Pyrrha just has to follow him.

Now for the future team RWBY. The titled leader landed swiftly with the help of her Semblance, but then decided to do the dumbest shit imaginable, and literally ran across the forest while screaming Yang's name. Her shouting attracts a pack of wolf Grimm behind her, and eventually fate strikes as she bashes right into Weiss a second time that day. She immediately starts angrily shouting at Ruby, wondering if she has something wrong in the brain. In one second of silence, Weiss realizes... they are now teammates.

With no time to discuss, a big pack of wolf Grimm finally catches up, and they are forced to fight. One thing needs to be made very clear in this scene — Weiss is really green when it comes to actual combat, and she's too proud to admit it. While the stress of being surrounded is getting to her, Ruby just goes ahead with her scythe and decapitates all Grimm to kingdom come. To her it was easy and effortless — she's not even remotely scared, as it seems she had fought them before. The one instance where Weiss gets her shit together, Ruby jumps in and gets the kill before she does. The entire pack is dead and Weiss did nothing to help. The only way for her to cope with her unexpected lack of guts is to blame Ruby for attracting the wolves and stealing her kill. But this time, Ruby sets her foot down and bites back. She says, "You are holding your sword too lightly," to Weiss's face — an insult that makes her bite her lip. Ruby walks away and tells her to follow. Weiss discharges her anger by cutting a tree in half with a single swing, and walks along.

We cut to Yang, who unsurprisingly was doing the same thing as Ruby — but instead of attracting a whole pack, she managed to bump into a young Ursa Grimm. She toys with it really hard, showing first hand her good dodging and martial art skills. But in the end the bear actually manages to slice off a single strand of her hair, making Yang shift her personality to murderous anger mode. She sends the monster flying away with a single strong punch to the tummy — breaking through a tree as it went. The Ursa was still half alive, but before it could get up, a god damn ninja lady jumps in from the trees and plunges her sweet katana through its head. That is our second introduction to Blake, moving so fast that it caught Yang by surprise. Yang immediately recognizes that the two are teammates, but Blake wordlessly ignores her, turning to leave. "Wait, I need to find my sister!" Yang says.

"I need to find the Schnee…" Blake says, and so she jumps away in the trees. Yang sees herself forced to follow.

Meanwhile, Jaune was a little lost in the woods, and Pyrrha is too shy to speak up against his ideas. They try to cut their way through a small cavern, but they accidentally find an unaccounted problem. They found an elder Grimm, a huge Deathstalker scorpion, and so they were forced to run out of the cave. The thing continues chasing them at high speed, breaking through the cave entrance as well as the trees in its way. Eventually they happen to bump into Ren and Nora, forcing the two to join in a run for their lives. Nora just happily greets her new teammates despite their circumstances.

...

Ruby and Weiss were having team problems. The two are so aggressively antagonistic to one another that they must disagree at everything. When Ruby wants to go right, Weiss demands left. When Ruby wants to scout for someone else, Weiss wants to keep it quiet and calm. Ruby wants to find Yang, and Weiss is adamant about finding Pyrrha (and maybe the scraggly blond boy that looked kind of cute). They were lost and running late, and other teams must have already arrived at the ruins. Ruby wanted to rush, and soon an opportunity opens up. They spotted something new — a young Nevermore Grimm nesting atop a huge tree, looking for prey. Ruby calls its attention, and tells Weiss to jump on its back when the time comes. The thing swoops in, and Ruby manages to lodge her scythe into the monster's beak as they get on top. With that, she was capable of guiding the Nevermore as it flew through the skies by pulling its head. It was a complete brain-rot plan that somehow worked — they were going really fast now. Weiss criticizes her endlessly, and Ruby reveals that her uncle taught her this.

Yang and Blake are the first to arrive at the ruins. Blake failed to spot Weiss, so she decided to head back to the forest. But at that moment they spot the hijacked Nevermore flying in the skies. Ruby recognizes Yang and immediately pulls her scythe, decapitating the young Nevermore. Its body plummets to the ground, what actually cushions Ruby and Weiss on its back. After the dust settles, the two sisters finally look each other in the eye.

Finally the great four are reunited. Everyone was exactly with who they wanted to be, except Weiss, who was teamed up everyone she specifically didn't want. Ruby's decision to kidnap the Nevermore immediately backfires, as they spot an entire pack of Nevermores on the skies who have followed Ruby. She easily switches Crescent Rose to sniper mode, and puts them down with a single bullet to their heads. Weiss continues to be justified for criticizing Ruby, but Ruby points out how Weiss failed to be helpful at all in the last two hours.

Finally, the true spectacle of this show begins.

Everyone in the forest suddenly hears a deafening scream in the sky. Team RWBY turns around to see an elder Nevermore approaching behind the clouds, as big as a house. It has a strong white layer covering its head and beak, making Ruby's bullets bounce off from it. The monster immediately demonstrates even more intelligence by swiftly dodging the bullets once Ruby tries to hit its eyes. Not only that, but it immediately went for a ranged attack. The monster swipes its wings forward, releasing a shower of dark feathers with white tips, which act as huge knives falling from the sky. The team witnesses the dark rain coming towards them in silence, and it was coming fast. Yang immediately jumps in front of Ruby to protect her, but surprisingly Weiss reacts for the first time, and we see her power in action. Weiss's new semblance, Ice Carver. With the power of imagination, she was able to summon a huge wall of magic ice. A glyph appeared from the ground, and from it the huge ice plate rose up to ten feet tall. It was enough to block all the feathers coming their way. The squad is left in silence after this awesome feat.

Weiss turns around says, "Does it still look like I did nothing, dumbass?!"

The monster was still coming at full speed, and it crashed its hardened beak through the wall of ice, forcing the girls to jump away. Now they had a Nevermore in the sky to kill, but that was not remotely the worst part. Just then Blake heard a sound coming from the forest behind them. They stare in silence as the noise gets closer. Suddenly, the newly-formed team JNPR came running from the tree line, as the Deathstalker burst right through the trees. They have been running for a long while, and now team RWBY is forced to accompany them. They decide to run towards the ruins, crossing the bridge above the endless dark ravine. A comedic scene happens, as all in the middle of this chaos and running for their lives… they decide to politely and properly introduce their names to each other.

As they run across the bridge, the Nevermore rams its body against it, breaking the bridge in the middle. The two teams were left at opposite sides — thus, team RWBY has to fight the Nevermore, and team JNPR has to fight the incoming Deathstalker who's crossing the bridge towards them.

Now, the fight between team RWBY and the Nevermore is nearly untouched. I just want to add another layer of amateurism to their team. They met like ten minutes ago, I find it difficult to believe they will have crazy team combos already without even knowing their teams' special abilities and way of fighting. The fight continues as all four girls try to take down the Nevermore in their own way and fail, and so they realize that they need to work together like an actual team. The plan to take it down is much less detailed now — Ruby just asks that Weiss and Blake find a way to make the monster stop moving, giving her and Yang the opportunity to deal the killing blow.

Team JNPR was having a hard time. The Deathstalker had surprisingly fast pincers and didn't allow them a chance to strike. Besides, they can't even see the bottom of this ravine, so falling off is not an option. Pyrrha goes ahead and snipes its eyes with perfect accuracy, but it doesn't stop the monster from charging at them blind. It was going to push them off the edge if it kept up like that. Thankfully they had backup.

Team CRDL finally arrived, after fighting the few Grimm that other teams left behind. Cardin saw the situation of the other team, and immediately ordered his squad to act. The four tossed off their weapons and ran at the monster. They grabbed its legs and tail from behind and stopped the monster from advancing, giving team JNPR time to think of a plan. Nora didn't like thinking, so she rushed ahead with a jump attack. She was going to get hit by the giant pincer, but surprisingly, Jaune suddenly unlocked an unnatural speed and timing, dashing in to block the attack with his shield. That gave Nora the opportunity to get on top of the Deathstalker and start hammering the white layer again and again until it cracked — a crazy feat of strength. The scorpion's stinger was still free and was about to plunge her, but at that second Ren jumped in, got her out of the way, and delivered a slashing strike to the stinger while he was at it. Pyrrha saw the way the stinger was dangling loosely after that attack, and quickly tossed her spear at it to slice it off completely. It was the perfect move. The stinger fell and plunged right through the white layer that Nora cracked, hitting the Grimm directly. The monster was about to die, so it started going nuts and shaking the ground with vibrations. That part of the bridge was about to fall. Team JNPR quickly jumps out as it collapses, and so the monster falls to an endless depth. Ren, Nora and Pyrrha land like badasses, while Jaune falls on his face.

"Thanks for the help, guys," Jaune said.

"You better!" Cardin said, grabbing him by the collar. "Now, how the hell do I kill that damn thing up there in the sky?!"

"I think they got it… probably" Jaune replied.

Blake had managed to do some badass shit with her grappling hook sword, climbing on the monster's back as it flew, and slamming the Nevermore against the side of the mountain by strangling it with her cord. Weiss promptly jumped in, and used her Semblance to create ice chains that locked the Nevermore down to the ground. Ruby and Yang got into position.

"How about we do the fast ball special?" Ruby suggested. Yang thought it was too childish to try and kill a monster with a technique from a comic book, but she had to comply now. She grabbed Ruby from behind and started spinning around really fast. Then she used all her muscle to throw Ruby at a crazy speed towards the Nevermore. Her scythe and its hardened neck collide, but she fails to decapitate it with the swing, so she's forced to improvise. The wall of the plateau was right in front of her. Just like she did in the second episode, Ruby uses her Semblance to defy gravity and run vertically towards the top of the mountain while carrying the giant Nevermore on her scythe. As she arrives at the top, the bird's head comes off, and red rose petals fly everywhere. As per original, the track "Red Like Roses Part 2" (the version with orchestral backing) will be playing through this whole section. The entire Nevermore fight is the big set piece of this volume. Normally that would be reserved to the finale of the volume, but this is a special occasion. Here is where we burn all our budget. If this fails, the show fails. And as we know, it didn't. The show goes on.

Ruby stands atop the mountain looking down. Everyone below has the "oh shit" face. The little red girl was actually really fucking cool — who would've thought? She gives a thumbs up… and immediately the consequences of overusing her Semblance kick in. She falls off the edge without the energy to stand up, but Yang jumps in to catch her with a hug. The battle is won.

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Finally, the 12 students reunite at the entrance of the ruins, all with their teams formed. Inside they found three golden chess pieces over displays. Ruby took the cute little pony, Cardin caught the bishop, and Jaune the rook. They hear a ticking sound echoing in the ruined hall, until it finally stops. Suddenly they realized that a woman with blond hair was standing behind the huge door with a watch on her hand; it was Glynda.

"Two hours and twenty minutes to conclude the first mission." She said, "The worst time ever recorded, but… You twelve managed to completely clear the entire forest of all Grimm, and even take down the two elders... That's rare."

Glynda presents herself as their combat teacher, and the one who created the first mission they just completed. They would get to meet properly next time, for now she reveals a flying vehicle hidden behind the ruins, and rushes everyone inside. As they leave, even as Ruby hangs to Yang's shoulder to walk, she asks, "can we do it again?!"

Glynda is pleasantly surprised by her tenacity, but immediately wipes the smile off her face and slaps the wall with her wand to immediately show off her commanding personality. "Just get inside the ship already, we don't have all day!" she replies. With everyone sitting exhausted on the flying ride, the first day was concluded.

...

We cut to later, in Beacon castle. Ozpin was discussing with the same few Huntsmen who were there at the oath ceremony. Apparently they were the ones watching the mission play out from the shadows — put there to protect the students in the worst cases, but also to rate their performance. They have ranked the students accordingly:

Pyrrha in first. not a single mistake noted, and her fighting ability seems to go as far as high B class despite her age. Clearly she received extensive prior training.

Blake in second. Stealth so good that even the trained Huntsmen lost track of her for most of the mission. Lack of communication is the only flaw noted.

Cardin in third. He managed his team perfectly, probably due to their previous acquaintance. He seems strong and determined enough to fit the role.

Ren in forth. Well trained, well behaved, and well fought. He remained calm and collected despite the several misfortunes that fell upon him.

Yang in fifth. As expected of the daughter of Tai, she can swing like a beast, while all other attributes seem average. Anger issues seem like a problem though.

Dove in sixth. His plan worked perfectly and his awareness is impressive. He seems to have realized they were being watched. He's not that skilled of a fighter, though.

Weiss in seventh. She shows potential and strength as they expected, but that bratty attitude is her downfall.

Sky and Russel in eighth and ninth. True level undetermined, but since their squad caused the least problems, they could go above Weiss.

Nora is tenth. Clear impulsiveness and clumsiness would get her in some real trouble if she did not have Ren tutoring her every step.

Ruby in eleventh. Despite showing superior fighting skill and creativity, her decisions were so comically shitty that she single handedly made the mission ten times more difficult to her team. Thus, she was demoted seven places.

And finally, Jaune is dead last. Despite being the son and supposedly trained by his father Cyrus Arc (a legendary Huntsman of his time), the boy's only good characteristic seems to be good morale and initiative, while having an embarrassing showing in combat, with just a single strange highlight. He has an unnatural amount of Aura for someone so green.

Strange how the two kids they expected most of ended last, and the kids they didn't know a thing about were in the top three. Before they end the day, Ozpin just has to assign the teams on paper. They stand together in a line as Ozpin states their team names and leaders. Team Cardinal, leader Cardin. Team Juniper, leader Jaune. Team Ruby, leader… Ruby. The decision of ladder two left Jaune really confused and Weiss really outraged. They tried to argue against it, but Ozpin's word is final. He has his reasons for such a decision.

The episode ends with this new squad of wildly different personalities coming together as a group. One that refuses to communicate, an overly-jovial mommy with anger issues, a spoiled brat with a chip on her shoulder, and a battle-hungry autistic girl. Ruby couldn't be more happy. Crazy adventures await them.

Commentary (spoilers): Pacing wise, we might have to cut this episode into two parts just like in the original. Precisely after all the teams had met, so we can dedicate the entire second episode to the fight scene. Episode length also varies wildly in the original show so I'm not that specific about that. It's kind of crazy to think about it. RWBY is so strangely popular and profitable despite being so… bad. Imagine how much it could truly achieve if it was actually good and well planned. I'm gonna try and find out. I'm gonna shotgun through story ideas because this next list of episodes are generic in nature. They will serve the series world and characters, while a few fights might bring low brain entertainment. I still have no reason to instill true change in the plot, since the things we change won't make a difference until Volume IV. Since we are adding an extra volume before the fated tournament, we have more wiggle room to introduce and develop fan favorite characters. We can also introduce them later to give them a better spotlight (such will be the case of Sun and Penny, who won't appear in this volume). There are just a handful of characters left to introduce now, one being team CFVY. We get there when we get there.

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The next episode follows the follow-up plotline from the last episode. Weiss is really disturbed by having Ruby as a team leader, and that generates conflict all throughout the episode. Here we get to meet the other teachers at Beacon, namely Oobleck and Port, and also new character I added.

It begins the next day after the first mission. After being served spare beds in the castle's infirmary, today they were assigned their new rooms. Team RWBY meets a blond lady in a maid outfit, called Miss Lucy, who shows them their new home for the next couple of years. We only get to see team RWBY's room for now (Team RWBY HQ as Ruby will refer to). Instead of just regular bunk beds, I suggest a new layout for the room.

Like I said, character can be defined by the little things, so hear me out. Ruby and Yang still have bunk beds for the two — but while Ruby's is cute and has a cartoon character blanket, Yang's bed is a mess and with her clothes scattered in the sheets. Thanks to the bunk beds, Weiss is able to unpack her personal bed that she brought from home, being uncomfortably large and round, occupying most of the room and most commonly being used as a couch by the other three. As for Blake, since she doesn't need much, she literally just pinned a hammock to the ceiling and will sleep there just fine (cats love high places). As the series progresses we can add a few trophies of their previous adventures here and there, so then our stupid soy wojak fans can point and clap.

...

It takes them a full morning to organize the room, and Ruby has to constantly battle with Weiss for the layout decisions. Eventually they are done, but realize they will be late for the first normal class with Port. This version I don't plan to have them wear school uniforms, but characters who have a lot of armor like Cardin, Pyrrha or Jaune will have most of that stuff taken out (characters will have a casual costume and a fight costume, maybe the pajama version too). That's just fluff, so if we have it or not doesn't matter.

The classes usually serve to give a small worldbuilding of the universe, but now they are just used to introduce the teachers personalities. The plotline of the episode is about Weiss getting progressively more annoyed with Ruby's shortcomings, which eventually escalates into a fight halfway through the episode. Ruby is trying her hardest to be positive like her father wanted, but Weiss is simply too much of a bitch. The two start a heated discussion in the corridor, which is actually really hurtful for both sides, because even Ruby has her limits. Weiss eventually "wins" and the two walk away, putting team RWBY's destiny on hold.

Ruby goes directly to Ozpin's office and asks for Weiss to become team leader. Ozpin thus explains why he put everyone in their proper place. Those who have to grow can only do so once they get a new perspective and adapt to their situation, even if they have to work in a way they dislike. He expects the same for Ruby, hoping that taking the role of leader will help her mature faster for the battles she so strangely loves. Essentially, Ozpin doesn't see a single wrong thing with his decision, and promises Ruby that Weiss will come around to it — the night is darkest before the glorious sunrise, or so they say.

At the same time, Yang tried to talk with Weiss and explain a little bit about Ruby. She has a lot of issues, she never had any friends, she lost her mother at age seven, but at heart she's just a nice girl trying to get by and make friends. Weiss is not touched or impressed, so she shoos Yang off. But then comes professor Port. And you see, he is a boss motherfucker behind that jolly face of his. He directly states everything he saw flawed in Weiss the same way she did to Ruby, but in order to force a change of heart in her, he appealed to her sense of pride. Her attitude was unacceptable for someone of her degree, of her lineage too. Port was old and had the honor to meet her grandfather, and that man wouldn't approve of her behavior today. How can she become a warrior worthy of her name and legacy if she so easily throws fits like a spoiled little princess?

For whatever reason she wanted to become a Huntress, in the end she can only achieve that goal by working with Ruby — by learning, by understanding, and ultimately becoming an unstoppable unit that would make her grandfather a proud man. If she wants to make it easier or harder, it's up to her, but first she needs to apologize. Port leaves, leaving Weiss shell shocked by the harsh and direct truth. In the end it seems like she heard someone else for once.

...

That night, as Ruby was studying shit she slept on during the day, Weiss woke her up with a cup of coffee. The two sit side by side on the top bed and they talk. Weiss recognizes her own flaws and apologizes, because at the end of the day she realized that they need each other to achieve their dreams. Both want to become great warriors, and she hopes that Ruby can help her in some way. She'll put faith that this team can work. The night ends with the two promising to be nicer to one another, and Weiss decides to lay off some precious sleep to help Ruby finish her homework. Thus the episode concludes.

The episode also has a little bit of a side plot that I didn't mention. It's basically Yang being overly friendly to Blake in order to make her talk with them, but it doesn't work. Blake spends the entire episode wordless, often not even looking at Yang as she talks to her. Weiss just deems her a lost cause, but Ruby is optimistic that eventually she'll stop being shy.

Commentary (spoilers): Don't take this as law, these two will continue to bicker constantly, but they will never get as hurtful as it was in this episode, and from now on it serves more of a comedic role than a character arc role. Weiss is essentially the second opinion and second in command that balances Ruby's craziness with her educated and methodical ways. This pressured friendship will eventually become a very good rivalry.

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The next episode is one of which I have very little conception of, but it is very important. It's gonna be their very first combat class, which they have sporadically through the week. This will be our true introduction to Glynda.

The entire episode takes place in the castle's danger room, where literally everyone can train to their heart's content. The girls are excited for the first action they had in the last few days, only to meet Miss Lucy in the corridor again. Lucy gives some essential exposition about Glynda's past as a teacher. Apparently Glynda's way of training the students is so harsh that most potential Huntsmen students have given up after the first training with Glynda — a trend that has been going strong for the last several years. She tells all three teams to prepare for the worst.

Glynda was the second strongest Huntress in Vale, admittedly behind Ozpin himself. Inside the danger room, Glynda offered them the most diabolical training structure imaginable. Two hours of sheer exercise, a few minutes about theory teaching, and then the rest of the day focused on practicing the theory — against live Grimm that she kept in cages, of course. Glynda had one of the most powerful Semblances in the world, that being Psychokinesis. The danger room itself was pretty simple — it was a huge square room made out of other big and small squares. Literally everything in the danger room was in her psychic control, and the room's design allowed her to craft challenges for the students on the fly. She slaps her wand on the floor and boom, fifty feet tall rectangle rises out of the fucking ground — climb it fifty times in thirty minutes, or lose dinner privileges. She was cold, but the students didn't give up. Cardin took the most shit because he believes a real man would never give up her challenges, and she exploited that. Yang's anger would boost her strength, so she also exploited that. Ruby's enthusiasm, Weiss's pride, Blake's indifference, Jaune's stupidity — she exploited the best aspects of each of them to push them harder.

In the end the 12 were able to barely meet her standards. Even the good ones like Pyrrha, Blake and Ruby were left breathing heavily on the ground at the end. Ruby did manage to ask Glynda in the end, "Why does the first day need to be this hard, miss?"

"Because I want you to survive." Glynda replied, and since they survived, she decided to come clean.

She saw so many of her comrades dying that it is honestly pathetic. She was strong and talented, but not everyone else was. One by one she saw them fall — unprepared for the mission they were given. Glynda became a teacher to make sure no weaklings ever left this castle. She hates death so much that she's willing to make all the students work to their bones so they don't have to experience it. Glynda promises that they will only have to do this training once a week, but they will have to train for the training itself. The difficulty will increase every time, because by the end of this year she expects to have the greatest warriors of all time under her wing. She will not accept anything else. With that, the episode concludes.

Commentary (spoilers): Glynda is important, not because she will be that much of an influential character, but because we need to establish the grounds of these kids' training. They will eventually get stupidly strong, and they can only become so in short order by the hands of the right character. Glynda was antagonistic, but not to this level here in RE:colored. Whenever we get to new weapons or new strategies that they learn, it always goes back to Glynda, since she's the one who taught them the most important things.

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I guess now we can proceed with Jaundice (horror movie scream).

First off, we changed the name of the episode. Literally anything is better than this shit. This is the episode that sets Jaune as a main protagonist in his own right, so we need to be careful. This is the first episode I truly remade from the ground up, but kept the original premise as it is.

It starts in combat class, with Glynda explaining how Grimm's senses work, and how they track down humans. Cardin is bored out of his mind, and Glynda catches him not listening. Since he wanted action, she ended up making the next part of training about him. He would be everyone's fighting dummy for the rest of the day. Anyone who wanted to fight him was free to do it, and he couldn't refuse. Somehow that excited Cardin.

The first one was Russel, who tried to beat him every other weekend to try and claim the role of strongest in the crew. He was really agile and played dirty, but Cardin was used to his shit, and knocked him down after several bashes to the head. Next it was Nora, who wanted to have a strength contest against him. They just kept hitting each other with arched strikes of their weapons repeatedly, having fun while doing it. Cardin was so psyched up to not lose to a girl that he gathered more strength out of his ass, and won out of pure endurance. Ruby wanted to fight him, but Glynda forced Ruby to do extra hundred laps around the room to exploit her enthusiasm.

Lastly, Glynda forced Jaune to fight him, which greatly offended Cardin since he judged Jaune to be the most pathetic out of all of them. Jaune pulled up with his shattered sword, and Cardin literally beat him with one hand — just one swing of his mace, and he didn't even have to move. Jaune would tank the hit and get back up, but after the same thing happened seven times, Glynda just called out the match. Jaune still wanted to try, but then Cardin said to him, "Jaune, nothing personal, but if you don't have the strength to match those words, you're going be the first one to die here."

Those words had a deep effect on him, but even more so what Glynda said next to him in private. She said Jaune was the average student, but he was unlucky to enter the same year as absolute prodigies who clearly received prior training. She understands how he must feel, but if he wants to catch up to the rest, he'll have to run for it with all he got. After training is over, his team tries to cheer him up, but Jaune is not that kind of man. He looked down, but not demotivated. They can feel his Aura flaring up unnaturally as he understands what he must do to become stronger. Right now he's dead weight. He needs to make himself useful, at any cost.

And so begins Jaune's self torture arc.

Jaune suddenly became extremely active in class, which surprised everyone and even the teachers. He literally let go of all his free time in order to study, he didn't even have time to talk to his friends. In the morning, in class, in lunch, and before sleeping, he had his face shoved in books all the time. Strategies, leadership, history, Grimm anatomy — Jaune was researching anything that he judge would make him a little bit better, and at night shit got really crazy.

Team JNPR HQ was a little different from RWBY's — it was more espacious. Jaune slept in the center bed, unaltered as it is. Pyrrha would sleep using her sheets like a tent, and cover her third of the room with screens to get as much privacy as possible. Ren and Nora would stick their beds and sleep together, quite like in their old orphanage as Nora never grew out of it. Ren sleeps all perfectly on his back, while Nora would slump sideways and spread her arms and legs over him. That night Jaune would skip sleeping, sneak into the danger room, and practice his sword until dawn. He was just practicing the power of his swing for hours; he didn't know any better.

The next few days he would try to invite Cardin for another training match, but at that point he still didn't see Jaune as worth his time, so he refused. His friends started noticing dark circles under his eyes. Jaune was physically tired, but his will kept burning up with the same intensity regardless. He was not strong, but he erradiated a strong Aura. Even the teachers could feel something was wrong with him, but he refused the help of anyone.

Eventually came the night where Jaune noticed Pyrrha watching him train from afar, sneaking behind a corner. She wasn't that good at talking yet, but she insisted that maybe he was training wrong, and that she could maybe help him if he wanted to (maybe). Jaune simply tells her to go back to bed and don't lose sleep over him. This is his training and he doesn't want to drag no one into it. His ultimate goal was to win Cardin's respect back by becoming a worthy foe to him — that will be his first step towards becoming strong. Pyrrha hesitantly does as he says.

The next day Ruby tried talking him out of his torture, as he looked absolutely miserable due the lack of rest, but Jaune had a will of steel. He came here to become a strong Huntsman, and he can't expect to do achieve that by just being his usual average self. Ruby doesn't have an answer against that, but she advises him that, at the very least, he shouldn't have to be alone.

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The climax of the episode occurs a week later in the next combat class. This time Glynda had other plans after the exercise — a mission without their weapons. Their goal was to infiltrate the red forest in stealth, and collect a rare sap from the trees that was really fucking good on toast. Many times in the field they will encounter situations where fighting is not an option; either due to circumstances or to avoid an unwinnable battle. For that reason, this session will train their abilities to remain undetected by the Grimm. If they are spotted by the monsters, it's game over. All teams went in, with Blake basically carrying team RWBY offscreen.

Team JNPR was doing the job pretty well, if not for Nora eating the stuff they were supposed to bring back. Shit hits the fan as they spot team CRDL coming out of the tree line with a pack of Ursas on their tail. Before even a word was said, everyone knew it was Russel's fault, and it was. Everyone runs, but they decide to split up to get a better chance to escape. We follow Jaune and Cardin as a single Ursa Grimm follows after them. Eventually they run into a corner by the mountain side. The monster catches up, and here Cardin shows some guts by sacrificing himself — telling Jaune to run away since he's a useless warrior, while Cardin would stay as bait. Jaune does as he says initially, but halfway to saferty he realizes he's being a little bitch. He has to prove his worth, and so he rips off a strong and pointy branch from the tree and returns.

He used that tree branch as an improvised sword to help Cardin. For once Cardin appreciates him and agrees to Jaune's plan of battle. Jaune had studied Grimm a lot, and he came out with a strategy to fight Ursas. Apparently they lack vision in comparison to Grimm with eyes on the side of their heads. He told Cardin to circle the monster from behind to disperse its attention. Once it attacked, the other could jump in. The plan worked, and the monster went straight for Jaune. He took a heavy hit, but gave the chance for Cardin to jump on the Ursa's back, and hold its jaws open with his hands. That created the perfect moment — Jaune uses all of his strength to shove that huge tree branch right into the bear's mouth, impaling its body to the core.

The two sit down out of breath, as the Grimm melts into the floor. Cardin admits that he was a little wrong about Jaune. He has the strength to become stronger, and that is one of the best forms of strength there are. Soon Glynda arrives with the rest of the two teams. She couldn't even begin to understand how they killed ab Ursa with only their fists. Maybe she did underestimate the two of them… they still fail the test though.

...

That night, after recovering surprisingly fast from the punch the Ursa gave him, Jaune went to train in the middle of the night, still with bandages on his shoulder. This time he learned his goddamn lesson. He spotted Pyrrha spying on him again, but this time he actually accepted her help to train. She's much better than him, so she probably knows what he's missing. This is one of the very few times that we see Pyrrha smile so far. She explains that he needs to improve his technique instead of just strength, and so she shows him. She starts kicking his ass for the next hour until it's time for bed, teaching him basic swordplay and dueling. Ren and Nora were also spying from afar and commenting on them. "They are strong! We totally lucked out by having them around!" Nora says.

"We have to get stronger too, Nora. It is our job." Ren replied.

"Can we please at least do it at any other time that is not midnight?" Nora asks, ending the scene.

The episode truly ends on the next day, as Jaune is truly exhausted from the night training, since Pyrrha was expectantly good at kicking his ass. He meets up with Cardin, who was holding his mace really menacingly in the hallway. He states that from this day forward he's going to accept Jaune's challenges, but he won't hold back anymore. At least once every two weeks he intends to beat up Jaune during combat training, since he can't allow him to just keep on getting better without consequences. Cardin leaves, saying, "Be ready, vomit boy."

With the guy's life getting harder by the second, the Jaune Arc arc concludes.

Commentary (spoilers): Just like I explained previously in the character revision, it's hard to like a loser character if he doesn't try to become better. In the original Jaune went so far as to "fake his papers" to enter Beacon, which not only doesn't make basic sense but also is never touched on again. His struggle in RE:colored is being just the average student while in a class of geniuses and people who were strong from the get go. Jaune doesn't want to be left behind; he doesn't want to be useless, and that theme will carry over from his new backstory. Another big change comes from Cardin. I made him a bastard but not a bully; he's not the sweetest guy but he's fair. He doesn't take advantage of Jaune since I excluded that plot point, and his intimidation often overshadows his good traits. The only aspect of Cardin that I plan to develop is making him less standoffish of the other three teams over the three volumes, until he goes so far as to hang out with them. He's gonna have his badass moments because that's what he wants to do; he wants to be the badass.

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The next episode is something I stole from volume 2 of the original. "Food Fight."

It begins with the three teams eating at the exclusive student cafeteria, with Nora describing a senseless dream that she had. Eventually stuff starts going down when they see the main door opening, and in comes a girl in brown. She didn't seem to notice them at all and went to talk with Miss Lucy who was the lunch lady that time. They seemed to know one another, what made it weirder. Who is this girl? Suddenly Cardin gets up to talk with her — the worst person for the job. They could already feel aggressiveness in him. He walked silently behind the girl and towered over her. He said, "Hey, this place is for students only. Get lost-"

Suddenly, two brown bunny ears popped up from her hair, and they scared Cardin. The girl involuntarily screamed and jumped to deliver a spinning kick at Cardin's face in pure fearful reaction, putting him flat on the ground. It was so shocking for everyone that they stopped eating. That girl was Velvet. Upon realizing what she just did, she stood over Cardin and apologized continuously. He didn't seem okay though; his expression was emotionless blank as he stared at her. Everyone else expected him to explode in anger and start a fight, but he just lied there.

In his head he was literally having a montage with sweet music as he looked at her. It seems that kick shook his brain, and suddenly this random girl seemed so god damn cute to him. Her perfect face, smooth silky hair, peachy lips, small buck teeth, rabbit legs, brown eyes, long brown ears popping out of her– wait, what?

Half animal, half human…

Cardin realizes this girl was a Faunus, looking her up and down in silence. He has never seen any of them personally, but he would often be told about people in the outside world who were born with random animal parts in their bodies. He was expeting them to be some ugly sons of bitches, not... this. In the crude reality outside of his mind, things were soon about to escalate. Suddenly Russel got up and started screaming at Velvet while she tried to apologize. He threatened to cut her in pieces and put her on a stew, making her back away in fear. However, this girl wasn't alone.

Suddenly another girl kicked open the huge door, and she looked pissed. It was Coco. Everyone just quietly kept on watching as she made an elegant stride towards Russel. She heard Velvet scream and immediately and demanded to know who made her cry. Russel tried to give her a mouthful as well, but Coco just slapped Russel so hard that he was sent flying through the window, shattering it. Now everyone gets up, ready to fight. The two sides didn't know each other — they both recognized the others as intruders. Maybe given the time they could've gotten an explanation… but then Nora threw the first pie in Coco's face. She quickly wiped it off, and saw that it got to her clothes. That meant war.

From then on began the food fight, with everyone else joining one by one as things got more heated. These two girls were impressively good. Velvet was as fast and skilled as Ruby, while Coco had the most accurate throws she had ever seen. The new students were getting their asses beaten, and now even the serious ones like Weiss and Ren needed to step in to help. Eventually the two other members of team CFVY show up; Fox and Yatsuhashi. Food was flying everywhere, there's like twelve strangers in their personal quarters, and no one was listening to reason. They had no idea what was going on, but Fox just saw this as too good of an opportunity to pass, so he joined the fight. Yatsu tried to stop everyone, but the others tried to fight him as well, so he had to defend himself.

This fight scene is good but essentially silly, so we can still have all that stupid stuff like Nora's watermelon hammer, and Weiss using a baguette as a sword. The new students are being humbled by these four. Fox was so good at martial arts that was able to take on Ren and Weiss at the same time. Yatsu was strong enough to surpass Nora and Yang, even as she was enraged. Russel eventually finds a way back into the lunch room, only to get absolutely blasted and friendly fired on the spot, being sent out the same window again. Cardin remains the entire episode on the floor with the same pose and same shocked gaze towards the wall. Lastly, we have one cut of Pyrrha, Blake and Dove sitting exactly where they were, ignoring all the food flying everywhere as they peacefully eat. Funny as shit.

The battle is left undecided as Lucy found Glynda before anything else was destroyed. She arrived and used Psychokinesis to stop everything in place, and so everyone slowly turned to her in fear.

Glynda clears out the small misconception. Team CFVY is actually the other students of class 144th, they joined the year prior (the only four people, in fact). They've been on a mission outside the city for the last weeks, and that's why they weren't present. With that settled, the teams actually introduce themselves nicely, and it seems like they'll get along more than fine. Coco herself was excited to finally see some new people around here; her underlings, no less. The episode ends as Glynda forces them to clean everything up, promising that she's gonna use all their pent up energy in the training they will receive right after cleaning.

Commentary (spoilers): The beauty of having a lot of characters is that you don't need to have every character in every episode. But having a lot of characters will allow you to tell a lot of different types of story, with different themes and consequences that don't mean much to the world, but are still worth reading through. Need to fill in a volume? Have you completed the main story and you need extra episodes? These characters are not important, but they are still fully conceptualized characters. Just from this one fight scene we can grasp enough of their personalities through fighting and talking. Not only that, but after this episode they should start appearing in minisode skits. At first I thought about having team CFVY joining the others in the same year, but that would force me to change too many things for characters that still won't be that present.

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By now we had character moments and worldbuilding through lectures, and a few fights. That's what this volume is all about, so we need more.

The next episode starts with the students being accompanied to the great hall by Ozpin and Glynda, where they will be taught how the jobs work. Everyone is given a small D-rank badge on their scroll phones, and told to pick D-rank jobs with the objective of paying for the cafeteria damages. Team CFVY already got the B-rank badge, so they are allowed to pick actually dangerous missions in the wild. They wish the newbies good luck. If they took on Glynda's training, D-rank jobs should be a piece of cake.

Team CRDL goes ahead and picks a boring job, escorting some rich douche over a safe area in the nation. Jaune picks a well paying but literally shitty mission for team JNPR, searching for the suspicion of young Grimm in the city's sewers — everyone agreed it was gross. Team RWBY tried to get a job, but Ruby's insistence in getting an action-packed mission led to literally everyone rejecting them. Weiss gave a shot with her business-oriented approach, but she ended up rejecting the job itself for not being up to her standards. In the end they only had one D-rank mission left for them. A farm boy wanted someone to check for Grimm in his house. That was Oscar Pine.

He has been in the castle for days — too scared to come back home and having only pocket change to pay for the job. The promise of fighting a Grimm was enough for Ruby, so they took the job. His farm was not too far off Vale City, they arrived in an hour. The following episode is mostly about the girls searching for Grimm in the weirdest places of his property, looking ominously to the water well, while also uncovering a bit of Oscar's backstory. He's sixteen years old just like Ruby, his father died as a Huntsman, and his mother was killed by a Grimm years ago. Oscar has been alone in the farm for a long time — his only family being an aunt that comes once in a blue moon to see him. Unlike his father and mother, Oscar is a huge coward. The fate of his mother left him deeply afraid of Grimm ever since, and he fears not being able to run the farm that his mother died for. Despite the girls finding nothing, he still has chills over his spine all day, knowing something is nearby. Ruby decides to trust him, and so they spend the night on the farm just to be sure.

We get a lot of comedic scenes this episode, with Weiss absolutely hating the place through and through due to the lack of technology and the lack of cleanliness. Eventually the plot shows up. The menacing water well on his farm (that we focused on for a long time) was actually the hiding place for Grimm. They came out at night and started blasting through the walls and windows to kill them all, but the girls fought them off. The fight goes outside, and eventually inside the well. What they find down there is very shallow water, but also something really sinister. The Grimm had dug a tunnel underneath the earth, all the way from a cavern far away. This tunnel would allow them to slip through the scouted areas, so team RWBY had to destroy it. They fight through a few waves of young Grimm, until a big boy comes out — an elder Fenrir Grimm (big wolf). It was impossible to fight him in the close quarters of a tunnel, but then Ruby had an idea. She told her friends to attack the walls and ceiling, until the cave started collapsing. They make a run for it, and manage to escape as the elder ends up trapped inside. The hole was effectively closed, and a huge problem was solved despite being initially a D-rank mission. Oscar blushes as he sees the four jumping out of the well, looking like absolute badasses.

The next morning the girls are ready to leave. Oscar gives them an insane sum of money for the job, as apparently his farm was quite rich from apple farming, and he had kept all his money in the house. Ruby tells him to call team RWBY for any of his future Grimm-related problems, and so the girls depart, knowing they will get scolded really hard for staying the night away from the castle without warning. The episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): Like I said in the Character Section, Oscar's role in the story has been considerably reduced to recurring side characters. The reverse damsel in distress that will eventually learn how to get his shit together and fight on his own. This episode is also important for introducing the ranking system of the Huntsmen, which effectively works as our power level plot tool. Besides that it's just another episode with a long fight sequence in it — the standard.

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Apart from this I do not have any other ideas for episodes in mind. We can still use other episode slots for world building or develop the friendship of the four main girls (specifically class related episodes to showcase the other teachers, and concepts of the universe that we talked about in the revision section, like Glynda teaching them about Semblances), but I don't plan to introduce any new characters at this point anymore. All that has happened so far will be enough to characterize the entire cast. Like all first seasons of most shows, it has this "filler" vibe to it, since we write it without expecting to get a season two. Now we just have to finish this up going full circle back to Roman. But first, let's talk about Minisodes a little bit more.

For the first volume, I plan them to be used for simple comedy or explanation of concepts that we either forgot or didn't find time for in the actual volume. This is where we put most of the jokes we came up with, essentially we are developing our character's relationships and personality through comedy. Like I said, Chibi RWBY but actually canon.

We should focus on characters who don't get that many lines so far, like Ren and Nora, or the rest of team CRDL, or even the teacher's perspectives sometimes. Stuff like: Ruby being late for Oobleck's class; Yang trying to make Blake interact with the team; Nora messing around with Jaune and Ren for fun; Cardin being mad at everyone all the time; Weiss adjusting to a commoner life style; Russel being a fearless moron; Coco explaining Velvet's half bunny anatomy while she is embarrassed; Glynda finding new and creative ways to torture her students; Ruby and Yang's previous adolescent crimes before joining the academy; Ozpin being everywhere all the time like batman; Fox using his blindness as an excuse for being a pervert. Anything that is fun to joke about or will generate clicks is worth making. We can also use it to explain their Semblances if we haven't already, or if it wasn't clear enough. These Minisodes will be released for free on Short streaming platforms, and I don't think we have to worry at all about competition. As a matter of fact, currently this would be the only show to attempt such a thing. Considering that we will be against cringe teenagers dancing and sigma edits with copyrighted songs, I think we're in the clear.

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Once we meet our average quota of around 12 episodes, with a few basic filler ones here and there, we finally arrive at our final episode climax of the volume.

Every once in a while we get a small background check on what Roman is up to — stuff like TV news, newspapers, or simply background characters talking. We know he has been related to a series of robberies all over the city, all being closed off by the police. Finally we come full circle in the actual plot.

Effectively a good couple of months have passed in canon time, and we pick up with the girls on a mission right in the middle of the city. They are all in hiding, speaking to each other from black intercoms in their ears. Ruby calls everyone by codenames until Weiss gets angry and tells her to stop doing it. Their target was spotted, and so they began the operation. Ruby starts chasing this black creature that we think it's a huge Grimm, thanks to clever camera work. At every corner one of the girls jumps in to try and catch it, only to fail. It all came down to Blake, but as she appears, suddenly the creature jumps in her arms… and starts licking her.

The girls were supposed to be on a D-rank mission going after a small Grimm spotted in the city, but it was actually just a black cat with white spots on it's face. Blake easily bonds with it for some reason — at this point she has grown past the complete indifference for her team. She won't talk, but she's willing to cooperate and listen.

The girls give the cat back to its rightful owner and return to the castle. The students were capable of fulfilling all their missions and successfully paid for the cafeteria damages they caused. They have kept average to good grades and endured Glynda for longer than most people, so Ozpin decides to throw them a bone. He gave all of them the permission to leave the castle and go to the city whenever they wish during their free time from now on, so they can enjoy their youth. Team CFVY went to Velvet's family farm for some much needed rest and good food. Team CRDL simply left on the spot, as Cardin said that today they would set their reputation in the city, cracking his knuckles. Jaune and Pyrrha went with Ren and Nora back to their orphanage, since the two didn't have anywhere else to go, and were promised to taste Ren's cooking abilities if they came. As for team RWBY, Weiss and Blake were not from around, so Ruby and Yang decided to give the two a little tour of Vale City. We see a bunch of important, recurring places in the city — mainly the park, the communication tower, the different districts, and a few stores. Everyone in there seems weary of Ruby and Yang, which in turn gives us an idea of their messed up childhood and reputation.

The last point of the day was Ruby recounting to her friends how Ozpin found her, and so she returned to the town armory that day. The old man greeted her with kindness, since Ruby was a regular, and spent months crafting Crescent Rose with the tools of his armory. She was glad that he was okay after all (she kinda forgot to untie him in the back rooms that night). Finally the old man tells her everything we don't know yet. He explains who Roman Torchwick is and why he's dangerous. We also finally discover what he actually stole that night. Apparently, the Schnee Dust Company had expanded their business into the arms race, having discovered a new interesting use for their prime material. They were capable of developing some kind of ammunition that is many times stronger than all others. Not even the old man knows what those Dust Bullets can really do, or what Roman intends to do with them.

Following that, we see Weiss having a sort of breakdown.

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In a brief flashback, it is revealed that her father (we only see his chair and hands from behind) has allowed her to join Beacon under three conditions. Number one, she will keep a low profile. If the news came out about an Atlas elite fleeing the nation to study abroad, it would tarnish their reputation, and there would be consequences to their business. Number two, she will keep in contact. If anything goes wrong, Jacques will bring her back home, and they will pretend like this stupid little excursion of hers didn't happen. And lastly, he had a favor to ask. He will start shipping something big to Vale soon, and he fears the inside news was leaked. Weiss will be sent along the merchandise in a secret route, and has the job to use her skills and destroy the people who try to steal it. If he gets the news that something bad happened to it, the blame would fall on her. With that, she is allowed to leave his presence.

...

Back to the present, suddenly Weiss is really adamant about catching Roman at all costs. She was acting off character, so she lied and told her team that her pride as a Schnee was on the line, and wouldn't allow this scum to have his way with their family's business. Even more shockingly, Blake speaks for the first time, totally uncalled for. She also seems interested in this dust ammunition, and judges it too dangerous to be in someone else's hands. Yang got all giddy from the simple fact that Blake decided to be active for once, and accepted the mission. As for Ruby… she just really wanted to fight Roman again.

And so team RWBY made up their minds to track down and find Roman Torchwick. Yang had the connections and the plan to make it work. They had to go to Junior's club (the biggest hive of scum and villainy in Vale City), since they are bound to know something about the strongest crook around.

Ruby and Weiss wait outside since they were not old enough to enter, while Blake and Yang confront the goons in there. Yang was acting extremely casual and friendly again, but this time Junior is serious and prepared. More goons and a lot of guns everywhere. He tells Yang to get lost if she doesn't want to end in a ditch, but she doesn't take the threat seriously. One of the goons pulls out his gun, and Yang intends to tank the bullet as she often does.

But... something is wrong. Suddenly she got a weary feeling looking down at the barrel. As the man pulled the trigger, she saw a white light, and felt the sudden instinct to dodge. The bullet came out of the barrel like an actual white laser beam, almost too fast for her to step away. The bullet grazes her arm, and she quickly grabs Blake to jump behind the counter. The man kept firing at them until the gun barrel literally exploded from the pressure of the bullets. Yang looks at her arm now to realize she's bleeding. The Dust bullets are strong enough to cut through their Auras like butter, and so these normal joes are actually capable of killing them. These things are far too strong — unlike anything they have ever seen.

Ruby and Weiss rush in after hearing the bizarre gunshot sound, and suddenly all the girls are trapped in different parts to hide from gunfire. The bullets even went through their hiding cover — they had to keep moving. Using the intercoms that they still had, the girls make a plan to individually take down each of the shooters. Despite having powerful weapons, they were still average humans incapable of perceiving their fast movements. They win, and by the end they have Junior with a scythe to his neck. They demand to know everything, and so he tells all.

He and Roman worked together to steal all the Dust ammo from Vale City, even from many different places other than the armory. While Junior kept some, Roman intended to sell his lot to an organization known as the White Fang — being the original employers who hired him to steal it in the first place. The four girls don't even recognize the name, but all things considered, Ruby guesses they are probably more bad guys. Roman was gonna meet them this same night on the docks in order to make the exchange. The girls were running late. Ruby messages detective Braun as he was napping in his office, and they make a run for it.

...

We cut to docks of the city, late night. Roman is smoking a fat cigar as he looks at the waters. Soon a small boat starts passing under the darkness of the night, and it stops nearby. Three figures jump out at great speed, covering their faces with masks and wearing hoods. They demand to see the product, and so Roman opens up the container he was leaning against. It was filled with useless things on the front, while the back had dozens of Schnee white crates. Roman demanded to see the money, but they wouldn't show it until they saw if the ammo worked or not; they looked just like any other bullet. Roman proceeded to draw a revolver from his breast pocket, load it with a Dust bullet, and point it back at them. "If they are fake, I'm sure you'll survive, right?" Roman said menacingly, so they folded and took his word for granted. The White Fang members start packing boxes into the boat.

Just when everything seemed to go perfectly, team RWBY arrives, doing some cool jojo pose atop the dock warehouse with the shattered moon behind them.

Ruby confronts Roman by addressing him as her old enemy, but Roman is like, "Do I know you?"

The four immediately jump to action — Ruby goes to fight Roman, while Yang, Weiss and Blake go in to take the cargo from the White Fang members. Those guys were no joke — they had their Aura awakened, or something close to it. They try to run away by fleeing in different directions with the boxes, forcing the girls to chase and fight them individually. Their battles don't actually conclude. For some reason, the White Fang members fighting Yang and Weiss instantly change their minds about the deal, after receiving a message on their scroll phones. The girls were confused, but Blake insisted about letting them go and focusing on Torchwick.

Ruby was taking Roman on her own — having trained like hell since their last encounter, but it doesn't seem like that changed much. Once in a direct battle, he showed actual skill in fighting that he refused to use before in the first episode. In a 1v1 he still kicks Ruby's ass, but to conclude the main theme of this volume, Ruby's friends return from having their fodder matches. They all face Roman as a unit, working together to fight and for the first time showing synchrony while doing it. Roman is skilled, but he couldn't fight overwhelming odds. With their combined powers they are able to give one powerful strike to send him crashing against the ground, taking his hat off.

Roman gets mad for the first time, asking Ruby's name as now he deemed her stupid enough to be his serious enemy.

"The name is Ruby Rose! And we're team RWBY!" She answered.

"Were…" Roman said with a smile, unbuttoning his white coat. But efore Roman could fight for real… someone appears.

A tall girl with full pink hair suddenly flies down out of nowhere with an umbrella. Roman recomposed himself as he saw her, and she showed him something without saying a word. It was the mallet full of cash from the White Fang. Just now the three White Fang goons looked on their boat, only to realize it was stolen. Team RWBY had the two surrounded, and from far away they could see the red and blue lights approaching the docks. The strange lady picked up Roman's hat from the ground and gave it to him, preparing to leave. She blows team RWBY goodbye a kiss, and the two simply vanish out of thin air. Their bodies break off like glass, and so they are gone. Roman got the money, but team RWBY successfully got the Dust ammunition back.

Soon the police closed in, with Detective Braun at the helm. This time he wasn't there to scold Ruby and Yang — for the first time she did the right thing. She stopped the motherfucker, called the police and didn't risk anyone's lives while doing it. For that he pats her on the head, and tells the kids to scamper while the officers retrieve the container with stolen goods. As they leave, it seems like Ruby stole some Dust bullets for personal use later, just to get a feel for how cool they were. Perhaps she didn't grow all that much — still a little bit of a psycho.

The four return to the castle that night, tired as all hell, only to be caught by Ozpin as they try to sneak inside unnoticed. He was drinking a cup of tea by the gates, looking at the moon. To him it seems impossible to keep Ruby Rose out of trouble, but at the very least she's improving, and she has friends to keep her in line. He expects to see much more like this for the following year, and so he lets them go to bed.

As the girls walk past the empty courtyard at night, Ruby pulls them all together for a hug, expressing that having friends is the best thing that ever happened to her. With Casey Williams killing it at that piano solo, the same one that plays at the end of the original volume, the last episode of Volume I concludes.

...

At the post-credit scene, we see a clear female silhouette, looking at the same moon Ozpin is. We only get a shot of her body covered in shadows as she leans against something. She seems to be in some sort of balcony, when suddenly a hooded guy (the White Fang captain who fled the docks with his buddies) appears kneeling to her, referring to her as "my queen". He says that the mission was a failure. They didn't get arrested or found, but their money was stolen by the thieves they hired. They won't be able to steal the Dust bullets from Vale. His words made the woman sigh in frustration, and so she tells him to leave her alone.

"Taming this nation may be harder than I expected," she says. We see a pair of ears rising out of her head as she looks back. Her yellow eyes are sharp.

And so, cut to black.

Commentary (spoilers): I didn't go in depth at all about this volume, probably because I wanted to start safe and kept most of the contents present in the original show. The first volume establishes RWBY RE:colored as a series full of action with fun characters that in truth has some messed up themes. The school setting is something we will look back fondly once shit really starts rolling. In fact, the reason I created an extra volume between two and three is to have more time at it. I want to balance out the "haha we're a goofy show about high school girls fighting monsters", and the "but seriously, our plot is cool, don't stop watching". I also wanted more time to develop characters and introduce them separately at a snail's pace. In the original, we met Sun and immediately Penny right after. But here we don't even know they exist in volume I, and they will be introduced in two different volumes after that. Fuck, we don't even know Blake is a cat yet. The girls don't know what the White Fang is. Dust bullets are a brand new thing. I want time to develop, because by Volume IV all the tournament and invasion crap will hit much harder if we're familiar with the characters, both heroes and villains. I plan to rework a bit of this volume in the future, just the first episode mostly. Here at the ending I gave a bit more context than it had previously. Before it was just about a woman talking nonsense. A lot of people thought it was supposed to be Cinder but it's actually Sienna Kahn, and the post credit scene was just supposed to leak her involvement in the next volume along with the White Fang. As for the rest, I plan to integrate the four "original" trailers as prologues to the first four episodes of this volume, so they lead up to the girls finally teaming up at the end of the 4th episode.

Anyway I have nothing else to say, let's move to the next one.