Art by Z-ComiX
Jaune was only worried about two things in life; graduating from high school and dodging his hated bully. He didn't care about the supernatural, nor believe in it. But a chance encounter with a mysterious girl in red will open his eyes to a world that lives beside our own, a dangerous and deadly secret. But beware, child, for eyes once opened to the truth may never again be closed.
— FanFiction.Net summary
A RWBY AU fanfic written by Coeur Al'Aran. Jaune's in his senior year of high school in the American city of Vale, preparing for a medical career and holding out against his bullies. But a chance encounter while on a run during the nighttime exposes him to a shadow world, intertwined with the real one. Marked for possession by an impossibly powerful creature, Jaune is running low on time before his soul is claimed. Desperate for help, Jaune decides to seek the aid of the girl in red that he ran into that night for answers. But how well shall he take to the lifestyle of the Unseen Hunt, and the dangers that await those embroiled in it?
Due to the work now being complete at 53 chapters as of 14th of October, 2019, beware Late Arrival Spoilers. The Unseen Hunt can be found here on FanFiction.Net.
The Unseen Hunt provides examples of:
- Adaptation Species Change: Several characters whom were humans or Faunus in canon have their species changed around for this AU. Velvet is a human, while Blake, Cinder, Adam and Ruby are all sentient Grimm who can inhabit human bodies. In the same vein, Ozpin, instead of a magic-empowered pre-human human with Resurrective Immortality, is a complete Badass Normal.
- Alternate Universe Fic: Familiar Contextual Reassignment. This fic transplants the characters of RWBY to Earth, with Vale being the name of a city in the United States where most of them reside. The Creatures of Grimm are rewritten as extradimensional creatures which are invisible and unknown to the public, and several of the more powerful ones have human levels of intelligence and sentience; with a group of badass normals who've Awakened (called "hunters" instead of "huntsmen and huntresses") fighting to limit the damage that Grimm can do in the human world
- Animalistic Abomination: The majority of Grimm count, with some exceptions like Ruby (whose Grimm form is a tattered, silver cloak wrapped around an invisible humanoid). Most Grimm in their true forms are shaped like various animals or hodge-podges of animal traits, and the Grimm of this fic's AU are extradimensional beasts whose intelligence levels range from animalistic to above-average human. The Elder Grimm have supernatural powers like a specific elemental manipulation or time manipulation, and sentient Grimm can interact with our world via possessing human bodies as their own if the body's original soul came across the Grimm in the Grimm world before departing. Although Grimm have concepts of mating with each-other, they apparently don't reproduce like terrestrial lifeforms so much as come into being within the Grimm world randomly, and it's apparently coincidence that many of the Grimm have recognizably Earth-like traits and reside in fairly Earth-like domains.
- Anti-Hero: What Blake and Adam prove to be. Justified, given that they are Grimm who've replaced people.
- Badass Normal: What Yang, Ozpin and the rest of the hunters amount to in this setting.
- Bittersweet Ending: After the final showdown between Cinderand Jaune, the Nightmares have ceased, and Vale is now being repaired. However, Pyrrha is now orphaned and her father's been blamed for the destruction caused by Cinder when she possessed him. And Jaune himself? He's stuck as Leviathan in the Grimm world, for the rest of eternity.
- The Cameo: Emerald and Mercury briefly appear among the people trapped in Cinder's realm.
- Canon Character All Along: "Rebecca Farleigh", the kindly teacher, turns out to be an alias used by Cinder Fall.
- The Chessmaster: Cinder proves to be one of these. As evidenced by the two hundred people she has marked for possession, Cinder has resources unlike any other Grimm and is constantly one step or two ahead of Jaune and his allies.
- Cosmic Horror Story: One of the chief inspirations of the work, and it shows.
- Crack in the Sky: A black crack running through the sky, visible only to the Awakened, signals that the barrier between the Grimm and human worlds is currently running very thin.
- Creator's Culture Carryover: This exists in all of Coeur's works to some extent, but becomes a bigger issue in The Unseen Hunt, which is supposed to take place in the United States on Earth, but characters and narration keep using British specific terminology, such as high street (the British equivalent to the American terms "main street" or "main drag"), or lorry/lorries (to refer to semitrucks/tractor trailers). Coeur's lack of knowledge regarding the United States also effects the story in other ways and shows that he didn't quite do the research. For example, Coeur states that the story is set in the United States specifically to take advantage of America's loose gun laws to allow characters to carry guns, but he sets the story in Massachusetts, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States. Also, Jacques is portrayed as a conservative family values politician, which do exist in America. The problem is that he's a New York City politician, and that type political brand wouldn't fly well in NYC. Ultimately, the story would make far more sense taking place in Texas, than where it does takes place, especially since its mentioned that the city in question is located right next to an artificial reservoir (Mass. isn't known for such, while almost every one of the hundreds of lakes in Texas is an artificial reservoir, and they are used to supply cities with water). Also, the city the story takes place in is referred to as "young" even though its at least 100 years old. A city that old wouldn't be "young" in American understanding, especially since the United States itself is only 246 years old (in 2023), but would be considered young in the United Kingdom, whose capital city of London has existed since Roman times.
- Deader than Dead: What happens to people possessed by Elder Grimm - their souls get devoured by the beasts they run into, while their bodies serve as vessels.
- Decomposite Character: Ruby Rose is actually split into two characters in this fic: the human Ruby, and the Grimm possessing her body. It's revealed that the human Ruby's eyes were actually baby blue, and the trademark silver eyes in this continuity belong to the Grimm Ruby.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: This is the reaction everyone in the know gets when Jaune kills the Leviathan Grimm with aid from Ruby.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Leviathan seems to be a final boss, but the true final boss is Cinder.
- Elemental Powers: Elder Grimm routinely have them, and anyone who kills them gains said powers. For instance, Jaune develops water manipulation, Weiss has power over sunlight and potentially flight, Ruby can artificially age anything, and Cinder is a fire-breathing dragon with explosion powers.
- Evil Counterpart: Cinder to Ruby. At the end of the first arc, they've both lost the one being they loved more than anyone else in either world (Yang for Ruby, Leviathan for Cinder), and are now focused on revenge and they're also both sentient Grimm who have been inhabiting the human world for a long time. Unlike Ruby, who has Jaune and his friends to guide her through her grief, and is still a huntress dedicated to protecting humanity; Cinder is consumed by her desire to burn everything the heroes love down to nothing and spite them for the death of her mate.
- Killed Off for Real: A number of characters bite it in the fic, such as Yang and Pyrrha's parents, while many others come within a hair's breadth of doing so.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: After many chapters of putting up with his behaviour, Jaune inflicts a nasty one on Cardin and his cronies after they mock him over Yang's death during the Nightmare.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: When Jaune kicks the stuffing out of Cardin and his cronies, Goodwitch (the school's principal) lets Jaune off relatively lightly once she learns why Jaune did it.
- Satanic Archetype: Cinder is an extremely powerful, malevolent and cunning Elder Grimm in the Grimm world who has a direct association with fire, smoke and ash. She interacts with the human world via forcibly possessing various people's bodies, and she traps various humans' souls in her Grimm world domain (which takes the form of a classic fire and brimstone hell), where they wait until it's their turn to be dragged down Cinder's fiery oesophagus and destroyed, and some of them make desperate bargains with Cinder (which she isn't inclined to keep) in the hopes that they'll be spared that final fate. The Terrible Ticking which Cinder's targets hear in their waking hours is even the sound of the souls in her domain screaming as they're devoured, akin to the wailing of the damned in hell. Cinder initially conspires with her mate, the Leviathan, to fully shatter the boundary between worlds and essentially turn Earth into a mirror image of the Grimm world so that they can rule over it.
- Signature Scent: When Awakened smell those who are Grimm possessed (or those about to become so) in the human world, they have a signature scent that matches the powers of the Grimm hunting/possessing them. For instance,Jaune smells like salt water, Weiss smells like a warm summer day, Ruby has an odour of rotting flowers, and every vessel of Cinder'ssmells like smoke and fire.
- Terrible Ticking: Everyone marked for possession suffers this, in accordance with the nature of the Elder Grimm that hunts them. Jaune hears constant dripping, Weiss hears a mirror cracking and breaking, Ruby hears a ticking clock, and Nora hears the sounds of Cinder's victims screaming as their souls burn and die by the Elder Grimm's hand.
- Token Heroic Orc:
- Although they're in it for selfish reasons, Blake (who's a sentient Grimm in this fic) alongside Adam are on the heroes' side. Blake looks out for Jaune while he's one of the residents in her slice of territory in the city, and Blake and Adam actively help the heroes to stop the Elder Grimm from turning Earth into a mirror image of the Grimm world.
- The above aren't the only ones. Ruby is also revealed to be a Grimm who aligns herself with the heroes.
- Tranquil Fury: Ruby towards Weiss after the latter allows Blake and Adam to devour two people. She doesn't raise her voice at all when passing comment on Weiss's actions, and even when she departs the room she closes the door quietly, but it's very clear throughout the conversation that she's furious.
- Transhuman Abomination: Jaune and Weiss, partly: killing the Elder Grimm that were respectively hounding their souls in the Grimm world results in either of them inheriting that Grimm's body and elemental powers for themselves, being able to use the latter even in the human world. Jaune effectively fully becomes a Grimm when his human body on Earth is killed, leaving his soul with only his Leviathan body in the Grimm world.
- Wham Line: In Chapter 30, "Still, had his eyes always been that bright? Had they always shone with that much intensity?" Revealing that Nora has Awakened as a result of what she went through.
- You Kill It, You Bought It: If a sentient Grimm devours the soul of a human that's crossed into in the Grimm world, then that Grimm can possess the human's now-vacant body on Earth for themselves. Jaune discovers that the inverse also applies: if a human soul in the Grimm world manages to kill an Elder Grimm that's been trying to possess them (as Jaune and eventually Weiss do), then the human gains the Grimm's body and territory in the Grimm world as their own, and they'll be able to use the slain Grimm's elemental powers in both worlds.
- You're Insane!: Weiss gets called this when trying to prove the Grimm's existence to her father, and gets shipped off to Vale to "recover" from her "illness".
