A/N: This story was originally published as an Aside to the RWBY "Emergence" fanfiction series thread on by XCVG. This same series is posted here on under the username Chris7221, which is so far composed of Emergence (Act 1), Aliens Among Us (Interquel), Those You Leave Behind (spin-off), Convergence (Act 2) and Emergence: Asides, which is a collection of omakes and side stories. This fic has been altered from its original version so as to be able to stand on its own and continue a different, unique story.

I do not own RWBY. Rooster Teeth does. RIP Monty Oum.

Chapter 1: Shadow of Remnant

"Well kid, that was easily one of the slickest jobs I`ve ever seen," remarked James "Jimmy" McGregor, lifting his glass of whiskey to his curling lips, taking a quick sip. Giving a satisfied sigh, he leaned back triumphantly in his black leather recliner. "I mean, if I had known that you coulda done this yourself in the first place, I wouldn`t have hired the other guys in the first place."

"It was only a job, Jimmy," said his guest, who was lounging on the sofa across from him with his feet propped up on the arm. "While yes, I did do more than I was hired for, I simply wanted to get all the money that was being used to pay for this job, and five million bucks is a lot."

Jimmy could not help but wonder how the guy had done it though. Looking at him, Jimmy saw a scrawny-looking seventeen year-old kid wearing some kind of black cosplay which consisted of an open Matrix-style trench coat wrapped with swirling silver patterns, over a dark grey vest and maroon button-down shirt and tie, with silver streaked black jeans and a pair of black combat boots. His right arm was buried in his coat`s deep pocket next to him. The left hand that he could see was wearing a fingerless black glove with gray edges. Perched on his head was a black fedora, shading a cheeky face with cocky orange eyes and covering a head of short black hair.

All in all, all he saw a brat dressed up like a supervillain from comic books, not a professional hitman who killed five high profile targets, all of them members of rival crime families who had been visiting the city for a rare get-together for reasons unknown, all in a timespan of fifty minutes, and in such a way that everybody, from the cops and feds to the gangs and the crime families had no idea what had been going on before it was too late. There was no humanly way it was possible that one kid had done it.

Then again, this kid was shrouded in urban legends.

"I gotta a question for ya, Shadow" Jimmy said, referring to his guest`s given moniker of the "Shadow of the Angel of Death" by underworld circles.

"Are the urban legends about me true?" the boy responded. Jimmy nodded. Shadow started to get up. "I figured that, with my stunning performance, you would be having your suspicions. That would explain my disarmament and the extra muscle, I believe?" Standing in the penthouse suite with the two were also a small army of seventeen goons, all of them armed to the teeth with both pistols and machine guns. Jimmy normally wouldn`t have so many men in one place armed so heavily, since he didn`t want to risk getting caught by the authorities, but his instincts of self-preservation convinced him that the risk would be worth it, to protect him from a potentially hostile inhuman monster. This was also why he the boys take away his two weird-looking pistols and sword, which followed his black motif that he had going on, with silver and maroon embellishments.

"Yeah. Even an idiot who heard about this could figure out that your work was inhuman." Jimmy may have been apprehensive about Shadow, he also knew that it would give him huge street cred if people heard rumor that he had an urban legend on his payroll. His abilities would make him an ideal enforcer in his group, and it might even bump him up a few ranks in the Mob.

"That`s why, not only am I giving you the five million for all five jobs," Jimmy said, getting up and opening the cases that were lying on the table between them, revealing hundreds of bundles of dollar bills, "but I`m also gonna offer you an even bigger deal."

"No thanks," Shadow replied.

"But I didn`t even make the offer yet," Jimmy said, spreading his arms out in a disbelieving manner, although inside he was also feeling a little flustered at the refusal.

"Doesn`t matter," the boy said, walking out the slide door onto the balcony. Leaning on it, he looked up at the shining moon with nostalgia in his eyes.

"Would you like to hear a story, Mr. McGregor?" Shadow asked.

"Sure."

"You know how lots of little kid grow up raised on bedtime stories? I grew up in New York listening to the fascinating stories that my father told me of a distant world populated by heroes that battled the monsters of the dark to protect the innocent, helpless people of the world. And he, of course, was there to see it all, and he himself had even taken part on some of these adventures. They were fantastic stories, I thought. But everyone I told them to simply laughed, telling me that they were unreal. My father was simply your typical office worker who was both overworked and underpaid, working on a long series of muddled and meaningless projects that had no end to them. Also the broken moon he mentioned in his stories gave less credence to it as well."

Jimmy quietly signaled his boys to gather closer, all of them training their guns on Shadow. The boy`s grin got a little wider as he fiddled with his hands in his pockets, and closed his eyes.

"Then, one day, while he and I had a rare opportunity to have some quality father-son time by camping in the Appalachian Mountains, we stumbled across a bear in the woods, probably some angry mama, and she, in a very unusual decision, chose to try to make us lunch. She came charging, and I simply froze, scared stiff. Then, my father yelled some great battle cry, charged, leaped, and straight up kicked the bear`s head off with a backwards roundhouse that Chuck Norris would be proud of. That night, he told that his stories were all true. Some of them had been passed down to him by his father, others he`d heard firsthand by the people who saw them, and some he himself had indeed experienced firsthand. He told me everything about Remnant, the Grimm, and, most importantly, Aura and Semblance."

There was a yelp as one of the men suddenly collapsed. Jimmy and his men turned briefly to see him with a knife buried in his back. They turned back around and Shadow was gone.

"That night, he activated my Aura, and he promised to train me to be a Huntsman like him. The Grimm might not have been here in this world, he said, but there was still a lot of darkness, and all Hunstmen battle it. And so, for years, he taught me his particular brand of martial arts and weapons fighting. I couldn`t quite match the speed and strength he utilized, not just because he was older, but also because, although he was Remnan, my mother was Terran, meaning that hybrids aren`t as strong as pure-blooded Remnans. But still, the Aura did give me quite a boost, and the day I discovered my Semblance was one of the best I ever had. Despite all of the awesomeness that I experienced though, I kept it all in the dark, not telling a single soul."

His voice came from everywhere. There was no telling where Shadow was. Jimmy was sweating like a pig. His men scoured the suite looking for him. One of them looked where they had stashed Shadow`s weapons. They too were gone.

"But then, three years ago, there was a fire at the apartment complex that my dad was visiting, where an old friend was living. He died there. My mother died of heartbreak soon after, leaving me an orphan. I grabbed my dad`s trusty weapons from Remnant and decided to hit the streets. I`ve been training myself even harder since then, and trying to figure out what to do with myself in that time. Then, one day, I came across some random group of thugs terrorizing a grocer. When they threatened to burn down his shop, I decided to use my special talents to slaughter the whole bunch. Later, turns out they weren`t some random thugs, as the guy leading them was a bigshot in some gang, something I found out when his buddies came for me. After I killed all of them, and took a bit of damage doing so, I met a member of some crime family or another, who paid me handsomely to procure my services."

The lights suddenly went out, and the suite plunged into darkness. Sounds of gunfire, blade slashes, breaking furniture and screams ensued. When the lights came on again, Jimmy saw that the whole suite had been transformed into a scene that wouldn`t have been out of place in a Quentin Tarantino film, with bodies, blood, bullet holes, slash marks, and broken items everywhere. And Shadow stood in front of him, with a double-bladed staff in one hand, and a rifle pointed at him in the other. He had blood on him, the vast majority of it not his, and a few scuffs and scratches on him, that his Aura was handling.

"Soon I had gotten enough money from them for killing other worthless crooks, so I decided to strike it out on my own. I take jobs and bounties that I consider worthwhile, as I try in this dark world to uphold as much meaning of being a Huntsman as I can, by only going after those who truly deserve to die. When I took up your offer, I did so not only knowing about the targets that you had named, but also knowing what kind of monster you are. Racketeering, extortion, larceny, drug- and human-trafficking, and murder in spades. You know what else I found out about you, Jimmy?"

Jimmy gulped.

"You`ve also committed arson one time, trying to get rid of a material witness. One of your victims was my father. Funny, after all this time, I had always believed that the fire had been an accident, when all this time he had actually been murdered. Knowing both this and the urban legends that surround me, I decided to take the job and go above and beyond in doing it, making me someone you simply couldn`t resist meeting. The universe has an amazing sense of humor, don`t you agree?"

Jimmy wished he had listened to his self-preservation instincts better, which had told him before all this that meeting him was a bad idea. But Shadow was right. Morbid curiosity is both an amazing and stupid thing.

A rifle blast rid Jimmy of his self-preservation instincts.

On the rooftop across the street, a man wearing navy blue was watching with a binocular and listening to the bugs he had planted. He saw the spray of blood from Jimmy`s head in his binoculars, and heard the gunshot from his bugs. He touched the comm link in his ear. "Harbinger, this is Herald One. Horseman One is a confirmed Fragment. I repeat. Horseman One is a confirmed Fragment."

"Excellent, Herald One," a suave male voice said in his head. "Pack it up and move on to Phase Two."

"Roger that." They both knew that Horseman One could make for a very valuable asset against dangerous Remnans, should they succeed to recruit him for Project Fairy Tale.

A/N: Review and open to OC suggestions!