A RWBY OC Fan-fiction
Prologue One - "Watcher"

"Kris, you're going to be laaaaate!" Meli shouted over the melodic sound of the guitar. From upstairs, she heard a heavy sigh, and then her brother's footsteps as he stormed down the stairs, carrying two duffel bags and his weapon on his back. "What do you have to say about your tardiness, young Leontis?" his younger sister asked, hands on her hips, in her best imitation of their mother's voice.

"I can't take Caramela with me, so I had to say my goodbyes," Kris replied. Caramela was his guitar, and he had spent the past half an hour bidding it farewell by playing his own pieces. "But you had to go ahead and interrupt us!" he added, pinching his sister's cheek in a tease.

"Then, next time, I'm gonna let you be late! You think I care if you're late to Beacon?" Meli punched him in the shoulder in a pretend-pout. "We gotta go now if we wanna make it on time. Dad said he'll be waiting for us there."

"I'm all set. Let's go."

/ / /

"Soo..." Meli began, after a while of walking down the forest path in silence. The skyport was located a couple of miles away from the town center, which wasn't a big distance from their home. But the route through the forest would get them there faster. "Will you come visit while you're at Beacon? I mean, I know you're going to be super busy, training to be a Huntsman and all that, but you'll be able to pay us a visit every now and then, right?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'll get the chance to during holiday breaks. But I'll write to you as frequently as I can," Kris replied, and then fell silent again.

His furrowed expression made the scar over his right eyebrow stand out more. It became clear that something was troubling him, from the way he shifted his glance around, his tail swinging from side to side nervously. His sister wanted to rekindle some kind of conversation, but kept hesitating. She knew what was bothering him. With their parents away on missions, the two siblings had only one another to depend on for most of their childhood and adolescence. Kris's duty had always been to take care of and protect his little sister. He almost lost her and their father once, due to his own incompetence. The root of his ambition to become a Huntsman was exactly his resolution to protect her, and everyone he cared for. But, to carry it out, he had to leave her behind. "Meli..." Kris muttered, halfway through the trip to the airship. "You're going to be alright on your own, right? I won't be able to watch over you from now on."

There was a very short silence until her reply. "Pfft! Of course I'll be alright! I'm not a small kid anymore," Meli beamed. "I can take care of myself. I'm already learning how to fight, so I'm gonna meet you in Beacon in no time!"

For the first time since they left the house, Kris broke into a laugh. "You can catch up?" he chuckled. At three years younger than him, Meli would be able to meet up with her older brother in Beacon during his last year there.

"You bet! I'm gonna-" The faunus girl's sentence was cut off abruptly by a sharp gasp. She froze still, listening, her yellow eyes wide in an expression of fear. Realizing that she was using her semblance, Kris activated his immediately. "There are two Grimm ahead of us... I can hear one more, further away," Meli muttered in a shaky voice, just as her brother spotted the far-off figures of the Beowolves through the lush vegetation. The two creatures, sensing the girl's fear, headed towards their location.

Kris pulled Cerberus out of its holster, the machinery inside the assault rifle beginning to growl softly as it was turned on. His hand lingered over the switches, trying to decide which mode, automatic, semi-automatic or the blades, would be the right one to begin. "Listen closely: I'll fight them off," he said, just as the Grimm stepped out of the bushes ahead, "and you'll run away as soon as their attention is on me. Got it? Wait until I've engaged both of them, and then run to the docking area where it's safe." She nodded. He shot a round in the air, aggravating the two Beowolves; the first one prepared to leap.

Its lunge was cut off by a powerful shot from Cerberus's semi-automatic mode. Staggering on its feet, the monster stepped back; the Beowolf behind it was met with a same attack. Shaking their large heads in pain, both Grimm growled aggressively. Their glowing red eyes were now fixed on the Huntsman-in-training. "Run, Meli!" With a leap the Beowolves would envy, the girl sprinted out of their way, going around the field and further into the forest. The Grimm attempted to go after her, but the one on the front was met with a brutal slash of Cerberus's blades. Despite the force Kris put into it, it wasn't enough to kill it. Sacrificing his peripheral view for a narrow sight with his semblance, he was able to see Meli bolt through the woods, her silhouette outlined by her yellow aura. With the x-ray vision his semblance provided, he tracked the route his sister took until she reached a safe distance; from the left, there were two more Grimm approaching. But with a narrow field of vision to maximize the range of his semblance, Kris was unable to see and dodge the Grimm's claw attack on time.

With a fierce swing of its arm, the Beowolf pushed him back, but his aura took most of the damage. "Come on," he muttered, a half-smile spreading on his lips, "you're going to make me late." With Cerberus still in sword mode, he jumped back into the fight, focusing on the wounded Beowolf. After two more slashes the creature vanished into black smoke, and Kris moved on to the next one just as the other two entered the fray. Switching back to automatic, Kris made a few steps back to assess the situation. With his semblance he spotted two more coming his way. Meli was unarmed and afraid, though the heat of the battle seemed to attract the Grimm more than her emotions. If anything, it secured her safety. He kept his semblance on to track the movement of the Grimm, and returned to the fight.

"As if you'll ever make it," said a voice in his head. "You're not good enough. You're going to fail just like last time." It caught him by surprise, causing him to almost fall victim to a Grimm's vicious bite. In close-range combat, the sword mode was his best choice. He sliced and cut through the black creatures surrounding him, but, even though he felt like he was winning, the little voice of doubt in his mind grew ever louder. One voice became two, then five, then ten and more. The kids from the school, the scornful townspeople, the bullies from Signal, they all chanted the phrases in chorus, joined every now and then by his own voice as well. He gritted his teeth, focusing all of his strength into defeating the Grimm in front of him. After a point, it felt as if even the Beowolves were chanting along. He'd given up on counting them as they entered the fight after the eighth one. He cut them down, one by one, but their dying snarl sounded like "You can't." Cerberus's momentum was interrupted violently when it hit the bone plate of the last Beowolf, which was more heavily-armored than the others. Unable to get the blade unstuck on time, Kris could only brace himself for impact as the monster threw him at a tree behind him.

Waves of yellow aura bolted through his body as he tried to recover from the attack; thanks to his parents' rigorous training and his own physique, his aura could last him a few more attacks of this magnitude. The chorus of voices had given their place to a horrible ringing in his ears as soon as he got back on his feet. Cerberus was lying next to the Beowolf, which was preparing its next charge. The creature lunged forward for one more strike, but missed when Kris jumped and climbed on top of its spiky back. Before the Grimm could free its teeth from the tree, he sent a shock wave of aura through its spine, then run to retrieve his weapon. Not giving the Beowolf any time to recover, he delivered the finishing blow with one last blast from the rifle in the semi-auto mode. The chorus of doubts and insults lingered for a while, and then disappeared along with the smokes from the Grimm's body.

/ / /

By the time he got to the skyport, all the other new recruits were there, while the airship was waiting with its engines on for the last of the cadets to come aboard. Since the people of the town seemed carefree as usual, and with no apparent evidence of any recent Grimm activity anywhere near the take-off site, none other than Kris and Meli seemed to be aware of the Beowolf attack in the woods. It wasn't hard for the disheveled lion faunus to find his sister and father; they were the only worried-looking ones among the crowd. Meli was the first to notice he had arrived, and tapped her hands excitedly on her father's shoulders to get his attention. They rushed over, with the girl on the verge of tears.

"I'm okay. I'm not hurt, my aura took most of the damage. Cerberus is not broken, and I have all my luggage with me. Everything's fine," he said, giving an answer for every question that he was expecting his father to ask. He was telling the truth, but even if he were to lie, the veteran would notice in an instant.

Since Kris had covered most of his inquiries, Ares handed him an envelope. "Your mother really wanted to be here to see you off, but she couldn't leave halfway through the mission. This is from her. You must read it after you've formed teams, she told me. Don't open it before that," he instructed, placing the envelope in one of the interior pockets of his son's jacket. Kris's "Okay" could hardly be heard over the sound of the pilot's announcement for the take-off.

With a deep sigh and a trace of a smile, Ares combed Kris's hair back with his fingers before placing his forehead on his. After exchanging a quiet "goodbye", it was Meli's turn. The girl wasn't tall enough to reach her brother's face even on the tips of her toes, so she buried her face into his shirt, squeezing until the next and last announcement from the pilot. They let go, and Kris picked up his duffel bags and run to the airship, its gate closing in behind him as soon as he stepped inside. There were nearly twenty new recruits in the airship; most from other regions of the kingdom of Vale. His hometown, Nemea, was sending off just four cadets. Among them, there had to be...

"Kris," a familiar feminine voice came from the other end of the passengers' lounge. Locating her amidst the crowd, Kris broke into a smile and made his way toward the petite purple-haired girl that was calling him. Leaving Meli on her own was painful, no doubt; who was going to protect the girl from now on, until she was strong enough to fight for herself? It troubled him, yet there was comfort in the expression of the purple-haired girl, who had used her two enormous suitcases to save him a seat. There was one more person he had to watch over, and she was coming with him.

"Sorry I'm late!"