Sandman: A RWBY Fanfiction

Act I | Chapter 1

Beacon Academy, Vale, Over 30 Years Ago

What defines true huntsmen? Beyond the simplified explanation of "individuals licensed to kill the Grimm," there are very few things that keep huntsmen away from using their knowledge and abilities in self-sufficient ways. Only the moral duty to protect and serve, it seems, exists as the lone blockade for this substantial issue. Even then, this flimsy ideal can be easily broken by the realities of life and its failures.

Courage can only do so much to quell fear. Time has shown the difference between wielding a weapon and being bold enough to take the shot. It all depends on the target, realistically, and how far huntsmen are willing to go to preserve the peace or success they strive for. And in a world like Remnant, where destruction and loss often occur in unprecedented ways, those targets can change at a whim. With this in mind, even the purest of heroes can turn into ruthless outlaws in the blink of an eye.

Such will be the inevitable truth of our journey's end; the harsh truth.

Until then, we must still consider the question at hand: if huntsmen are not defined by their courageous heroism, then what does? There's a multitude of probable answers, although passion has proven to be the most consistent one of all.

Passion drives any living being, whether human or not, toward achieving their goal. Even the Grimm are not exempt from this ruling. Their desire to feed on negative emotion and use it to their advantage is a passionate endeavor, believe it or not. It is this passion that fuels their hunger for humanity's destruction in all shapes and forms. When one's passion is empowered by fear, there is very little that can be done to stop it. How else have the Grimm been able to thrive for this long? And, in being fearless themselves, how else have humanity's huntsmen prevented them from being too victorious in their goal?

Ultimately, it is the most passionate of huntsmen that have kept the Grimm at bay for so long. These individuals sustain themselves as the core reason why humanity has been as much of a menace to the Grimm as they have been to humanity itself. They are the true heroes of Remnant, the ones who fight to achieve what has been deemed impossible. 

And, for Olivia, achieving the impossible was the first of many challenges at Beacon.

Having been born and raised in Vale's capital city, Olivia Florence grew up always looking up at the mountain Beacon Academy has always rested on with ambitious wonder. Vale always maintained itself as a city of passion, where the most ambitious of people can make their mark regardless of intention. A daughter within a family of weaponsmiths, many of whom had worked with huntsmen, Olivia sought to change the course of her family's history and become a huntress herself. Very few people contradicted her decision. 

Olivia's grandfather, a man whose smithing experience stretched as high as Beacon, believed that Olivia held the passionate vigor of a profound huntress. Tragically, her grandfather didn't live long enough to see Olivia reach her goal. Nonetheless, Olivia carried his special words with immense honor, as they soon became the fuel for her very passion. Much of Olivia's early life was filled with the growing desire to become the best huntress possible as a result. She pushed her studies as far as she could, blending her pre-existing knowledge of weaponry into the fighting tactics that made any strong-willed huntress come to be.

When she wasn't pursuing her huntress ambitions, Olivia spent her free time creating the drawings that filled up her sketchbook. Most of the time, however, the drawings revolved around her life as a to-be huntress anyway, often focused on the one particular problem that kept her from becoming one: she didn't have a weapon.

Olivia struggled immensely in the months leading up to her enrollment at Beacon. Finding a weapon that truly spoke to her proved to be harder than she initially anticipated. As it turned out, being surrounded by so many weaponsmiths and weapons in general only made it more difficult for Olivia to choose a favorite. She loved the sleekness of swords, the earthquake of explosives, the kickback of gunshots, and so much more. Each weapon demanded specific skill sets, ones that Olivia would have to commit to if she wanted to excel as a huntress.