1 Chapter 1

…

He was Roman Torchwick.

He was Sasaki Kojiro.

And then, the world would never be the same again.

…

It was a harrowing journey, for a heroic spirit to suddenly be transported into a child's body. It was even worse when said child was currently getting kicked by a lot of… what looked like drunks.

As literal centuries of memories, of swordsmanship skills, and of memories of fighting an African swallow (or was it a European swallow?) flowed into his head, it was literally like his life was flashing before his eyes.

It was just like being summoned by Caster. One second, there was nothing. And in the next, everything.

Sasaki Kojiro didn't exist. Strictly speaking, he was on the throne of heroes as a minor antihero saber servant. However, this was not that incarnation.

This incarnation was the fictional Sasaki Kojiro. The man, who many put very eloquently, killed water in a fight against the gods. The man who saved France against wyverns in a quest against the grand caster in Chaldea. The man who managed to cut a swallow in twain as it was turning with nothing but a simple sword and years of technique.

And he was Sasaki Kojiro, a child currently getting the shit beaten out of him. Of course, being on an empty stomach, he didn't have any solid waste, but… one understands the point of a metaphor, right?

He stood up, brushing his rather long, irritatingly orange hair out of the way. The men laughed and jeered, clutching bottles of beer and wearing worn suits or scratched leather jackets.

There was a pipe next to him, but his fractured arm would not budge to pick it up.

He engaged the skill that he had used frequently in battle against the dragons. When his form as a heroic spirit was charred and burned by the dragon fire and scratched by those phantasmal beasts, the skill, Fade Out aided him in fighting on, regardless of injury.

In that moment, all that existed was the pipe and the three men with their beer bottles.

Kojiro picked up the pipe and arranged his awkward, childlike body into his starting pose.

"The little brat thinks he's a huntsman now, huh?" one man slurred, cracking open the beer bottle on the brick of the alleyway. The shards of glass fell to the ground with an odd crackle.

Almost like the broken shards of the Monohoshizao, shattered in two after a devastating blow from the trident wielded by the brother of the king of the Greek pantheon.

But that was then, not now.

Now, he was facing thugs in an alleyway as a child, like those ruffians in the Shinjuku pseudosingularity.

The beer bottle came down with a swish in the air. A swiftly swung pipe knocked it out of the man's hands, despite the inferior strength that it was wielded with. Kojiro had struck the furthest end of the broken bottle, leveraging the distance from the bottle's jagged shards to the man's hand to exert enough force to wrench it out of the attacker's hand.

The bottle, being glass, shattered after it was neatly flicked out of the man's hands.

Kojiro looked up at the two laughing faces of said thugs and the one enraged one. Said enraged thug's face turned red, and his eyes landed on Kojiro's forehead as he prepared to throw a punch.

A rustle of the clothes indicated that it had been thrown, and Kojiro lightly tilted his head to the left.

The meaty thwack as fist hit brick had already been seen by Kojiro, and the counterattack was already in motion. It was weaker than he'd like, but it still most likely would have bruised. What felt like an aluminum pipe was still rather heavy, after all.

The fist was retracted, and as the pain finally hit the attacker in the… well… arm… he immediately began shaking it furiously.

The other two began laughing even harder now.

"Ha! Beaten by a stupid brat just like that."

"I don't see you shitheads doing anything!" the injured one snarled.

"You couldn't even fucking punch a kid right!"

Kojiro tapped the wall with his pipe.

"Is that all?" he said, tone light and relaxed. Yet, it spoke of a nonchalance. Something like… the men before him didn't even matter.

The three looked at him once, looked at each other, and began walking away.

"You little fucker… any time we see you on this block, you won't be getting off easy the next time!"

A whimper further into the alley finally snapped him out of the Fade Out skill. He sighed, before bringing the pipe to his waist and remembering that the pipe wasn't a sword and he had no sheathe on him; just a dirty white t-shirt and some torn black shorts.

Kojiro turned to see a little girl in the alleyway, a heterochromatic girl with two toned hair.

He shuffled over to her, the pain in his arms and torso now returning as stinging bruises. Kojiro was by no means experienced with children, so he just held out a hand to her, giving her the same look that Kojiro would use to appraise lesser sword skills.

(The children of Chaldea were a volatile bunch.)

It was still enough. The girl took his hand and stood up, one hand clasped over her side.

They just stood awkwardly in the alleyway for a while, looking at each other's beaten forms.

"… Is it not customary to give one's name in these parts?" Kojiro said.

The girl nodded, and tried to make some gestures, but Kojiro could not understand them. Apparently, neither his host nor his previous fictional incarnations had bothered to learn sign language.

"I apologize, but I do not know what you are saying. By perchance, do you know how to write?"

She shook her head.

"Well, this could get difficult…" Kojiro said, leaning against the hard brick wall in the alleyway.

The girl sighed, and nodded.

"Well, my name is Sasaki Kojiro." Kojiro said, introducing himself. "And I do hope you… are in more fortunate positions from now on."

…

Walking in the slums of whatever city he was in, Kojiro winced as his aches and bruises kept on bringing pain to this child's body. Still, why was he here? And now that he was here, what was he going to do now?

Kojiro was an entity that was slightly more, yet slightly less than a normal human. He had "lived" a fanciful life, but he had never actually lived one. It was not like appearing in Chaldea and immediately being drafted to save the world. There were no instructions this time. There were no orders to guard a gate, slay dragons, or go fight Poseidon.

(Yes, that incarnation of him was very weird, and apparently very skilled.)

Still, there was one thing to do. In this childlike body, in this orange-haired, green eyed body, he knew that he was incapable of it.

The Tsubamei Gaeshi. To strike three times within a single breath. The ultimate pinnacle of sword skills that he had achieved in one of his incarnations as a character in a novel.

The knowledge was there, along with the motions and the desired effect. However, this body had no experience fighting at all. It was weak, malnourished, and had no muscle memory at all.

He supposed that this calling would suffice.

A slight pattering of footsteps alerted him to look back, and it was that same girl from the alleyway.

Kojiro shrugged and kept walking. These streets and the old, decayed buildings reminded him of his days as a vagabond. Even if they were fictional, it was still a big part of his life.

The footsteps were still echoing throughout the streets, and he turned to see the girl still following him.

He stopped and looked at her. She looked back.

"Is it just a coincidence that we're going in the same direction, or… perhaps…"

The girl walked up and tugged at his frayed sleeve.

"Well, alright then." Kojiro said, looking up at the shattered moon.

Even if he was fictional, he wasn't entirely devoid of empathy.

…

…(Ten years later)…

…

A door to a bar was opened, and a teenager carrying something that looked like a wicked blade of a folded scythe entered. The patrons edges away from the weapon-carrying youth, the polite conversations dissolving into mutters and whispers.

He leaned down on the bar counter.

"You battle hungry maniacs... you're looking for him, right?"

"Isn't that why every huntsman student comes down here at least once?"

"Kid, I have to tell you something. I can find you the guy, but you might not come out… as whole as you are right now. Even if that guy's only seventeen, he's freakishly good with a sword."

"What the fuck do you know?" the teenager slammed down a hand on the bar, and to the tender's credit, he didn't flinch at all. "I'm Qrow Branwen, from those Branwens in Mistral."

"Doesn't look like it," The bartender said, continuing to scrub his glass with a dishrag. "When did the Branwens come to Vale?"

"For an info broker, you aren't that info… savvy, you know?"

"Shut up, kid. I'll find the guy. Don't say I didn't warn you, though."

"Heh. You think a street enforcer can go against somebody with aura?"

"One of you beacon students challenged him, forgot to put his aura up, and then almost got his heart carved out with a single strike"

Qrow's cocky smile faltered a bit.

"Come back here today at nine in the evening." The bartender said. "And if you get dismembered, remember that the Xiong gang had nothing to do with it."

"Dismember me? Hah. You have got to be joking."

His boast wasn't as boisterous as he was before, though.

…

Qrow came back at nine o'clock anyways, scythe and battle outfit all in one. His simple weapon extended into a scythe that glittered in the moonlight, and he pushed open the door.

The patrons were nothing like the population during the day. Instead of the wealthy, wearing posh suits or dresses and chatting about business, these were the gangsters that resided here during the night. Men in hats and red ties, with machetes leaning against the wall or put in umbrella racks.

"You actually came, huh?" The bartender during the day said, sitting on one of the better benches. In front of him, what looked like a low level grunt was pouring him drinks.

"He's on the rooftop, with that little devil of his. Take the stairs up. And if you ever think about going down into the basement, you won't get out of here alive."

Qrow nodded. The threatening tone was obvious. He knew better than to mess with the… stashes of the local gangs. The stairs were oddly creaky, and on the second floors, there were a lot of beds and messy sheets.

But on the roof, Qrow could see the man that every huntsman student with a bit of "street knowledge" challenging. The orange haired, green eyed mystery enforcer of the Xiong Clan.

Most of the students that challenged him were just a little better than the thugs and bandits he had fun thrashing back at the tribe when he was thirteen.

Carrying an obnoxiously long katana on his back, a figure wearing purplerobes stood with a young girl carrying an oddly pristine parasol and wearing a cream shirt and black, baggy pants. A ceramic cup was in his hands, and Qrow could smell the aroma of tea.

The girl gave him a look, and he nodded, turning while speaking to her.

"Neo, you know why I keep taking challenges."

The girl cut a strange figure. With both pink and brown hair on her head and tall, white boots, she almost looked like… a weird mockery of ice cream?

The tall teenager had orange hair, but still wore purple robes that clashed horribly with his air. It was an abomination to fashion, but Qrow had seen stranger.

Their conversation continued, and Qrow tapped his feet impatiently, fiddling with the switch on his prototype mechashift scythe. He had yet to add the planned sword and gun forms in, but the scythe was his primary weapon and what really mattered in the combination.

"Yeah, yeah. Most of them really are disappointing. But by the look of just how he's standing, he clearly has some training."

The teenager put the cup down on the windowsill, and Qrow felt his semblance writhe as the cup tipped off the edge. He was going to apologize, but he didn't have that much respect for gangsters.

A hand blurred into motion and caught the cup, before gently placing it on the windowsill.

"Thanks, Neo."

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here, damn it!" Qrow said, unfolding his scythe.

"My apologies. My name is Kojiro. And who are you, to challenge me upon this fine night?"

"Qrow Branwen." Qrow said through gritted teeth. "Are you keep going to throw out fancy words, or are we going to fight?"

"All of you who seek to challenge me are so brash and full of empty boasts. Let's hope that scythe is worth the metal it's forged with, and that you can give me at least a decent fight."

The impossibly long sword was unsheathed, and an intense look appeared in the face that was just taciturn.

Kojiro and Qrow nodded at each other, and the fight was on. The girl called Neo vanished and then reappeared to sit on the edge of the roof.

Qrow advanced regardless, Scythe held in front of him defensively as an aura boosted kick to the wall behind him cracked the bricks a little and made him rocket forward. Kojiro sidestepped the charge, and raised his katana just as Qrow turned his scythe in a vicious downward swipe.

Kojiro's wrist gave a light flick, and Qrow's arm found itself upon the point of Kojiro's katana. His red aura flared, and he quickly abandoned his attack, settling in a mobile stance a couple of steps away.

The two combatants circled each other, slowly walking in a ring. Neo watched with a bored expression, still sitting right by Kojiro's teacup, heterochromatic eyes only half open.

"At least you had the sense to retreat." Kojiro said, a bit of excitement creeping into his voice. "Most other huntsmen students just flounder about until their aura is drained."

"I'm not just any huntsman student." Qrow growled, "I'm the one that's going to beat you."

"Such competitiveness." Kojiro said. "Frivolities such as being better or worse are not what one considers when seeking the path of the sword."

Neo rolled her eyes.

"Your name… is that of a bird, correct?"

"Is it not obvious?" Qrow snarked.

"You are not a swallow, but I suppose you may be something worth cutting down."

"What the fuck is a swallow?"

Neo shrugged, before sparkly pink words appeared out of midair. They read:

I don't know either. He always says it's a bird that lives near the tops of mountains, but I've searched it up on the scroll and nothing comes up other that the verb swallow.

"Your limited knowledge of birds aside." Kojiro said, ignoring Neo's words. "The depth of your technique is shallow. It shows that you are merely a student, which I know to be true."

Qrow said nothing, but prepared himself to lunge again, anyways. He then dashed forward, scythe behind him and ready to swing.

Kojiro positioned his katana perpendicularly to his body, and muttered.

"Hiken."

Qrow's eyes narrowed, but continued his charge, already too dedicated to his attack to stop it.

"Tsubame Gaeshi."

With those words, Kojiro's sword burst into action. His blade spiraled in the air with such speed and dexterity that Qrow could barely react before the sword blade slammed into his chest and sent him flying. His aura flared as he felt his ribs crack. Qrow's scythe clattered to the ground, the sound of metal on concrete echoing throughout the night.

Kojiro looked at his katana with an irritated expression.

"If only there were swallows around to practice on… I still cannot perform that technique."

"Again, what the fuck is a swallow?" Qrow said, spitting the words out as he struggled to catch his breath.

"A bird that lives on top of mountains. They may not be the fastest birds, but they do turn faster than even eagles or nevermores"

"And though you are fast, Qrow, you are no swallow. This is your loss."

Neo gave a halfhearted clap, before glaring at Kojiro.

"I suppose you can leave, if this really bores you that much. I don't recall inviting you up here, though."

Neo looked at the teacup, and then at Kojiro again.

"You did save my teacup from shattering, and I have already thanked you for it. And no, you cannot get ice cream again. Last time, you already wasted all of our money on that neapolitan flavor."

This time, there was a look that was accompanied with some crocodile tears.

"I know it does match your name. But that doesn't mean you have to waste everything we have on it."

The girl huffed, before shattering and disappearing.

Qrow finally got to his feet and retrieved his scythe, before trudging down the stairs. This time, the room on the second floor wasn't empty. Neo was currently rummaging through the minifridge, expression slowly souring as whatever she was looking for was not in the appliance.

He wisely walked down the stairs, looking mournfully at his slightly ripped clothes. This challenge was a bust.

But to be only seventeen and beat him so soundly with nothing but an absurdly long sword… even the professors at Beacon couldn't do that.

Up on the roof, Kojiro continued practicing his sword strikes. A mindless machine, honing his body and perception to match his own expectations.

Because Sasaki Kojiro couldn't do anything but achieve the Tsubame Gaeshi, he obsessively practiced. It was his only purpose, to reclaim the title as "unmatched beneath the heavens."

But what did that even mean? There was no sense in thinking about this, and Kojiro resetted his stance to began swinging his sword again.

Nobody wanted to understand him. They couldn't understand him. How could somebody like this exist, to be so aimless in this chaotic world filled with monsters?

Yet Kojiro did anyways.