Yang POV

"Let me tell you girls a story," the old guy said.

"Go ahead, we're listening," Ruby told him.

"Must've been, oh, about forty years ago now," he began. "Me and three others, we was out camping in those woods. Trip was supposed to be three days. First night, nothing unusual. Second night, we heard something moving outside the tent. We looked out, saw this…this thing, watching us. Well, I say watching. Thing had no face. No eyes, no mouth, nothing. As you can imagine, we were scared shitless at the time."

"Did it do anything else?" I asked.

"Not at first. Then one of the guys decided to throw a rock at it. Damn thing didn't like that," the old guy replied. "Didn't like that one bit. Started walking towards us, real slowly like. What would a few kids do in that situation? We ran like hell. It followed us, but not running. It would appear nearby every so often. I ran for what felt like hours. Eventually, I made it out of the forest. I'd practically busted a lung by then. I turned round, saw the thing standing in the trees. Never saw my friends again. I still don't know what I saw that night, but I never stepped foot in those woods again."

"Can you tell us anything else?" Ruby asked.

"No, sorry. All I know is that these disappearances seem pretty similar to that night."

"All right, well, thanks for your time," I said.

"No problem," the guy replied, standing up and leaving.

"Think it's the same thing now as it was then?" I asked when he was gone.

"Seems like it," Ruby replied. "But what is it?"

"Faceless, lives in a forest, seems to teleport. You know what it sounds like?"

"No, what?" she asked, frowning.

"Slenderman," I told her, cracking a smile.

"Shut up, that's an internet meme," she replied.

"Okay, okay, I was kidding. But you can't deny the similarities."

"No, I can't. We need to find possible inspirations for the legend. It had to come from somewhere," Ruby told me.

"That means research, doesn't it?"

"Yes, Yang."

"Dammit. Haven't missed this part," I groaned, walking over to a computer. While the web browser loaded, my phone started ringing. A quick look at the screen told me Sun was calling, so I answered.

"Hi," I said, raising the phone to my ear.

"Yang, where are you?" Sun asked frantically.

"Dude, calm down. I'm on a road trip with my sister. It's nothing to worry about," I told him.

"That the girl who came to see you last night?"

"Yeah. Look, I'm busy right now, I can't talk. I'll see you at some point," I said.

"Wait, wait, everything okay? You just took off, no note, didn't say anything, what's going on?"

"Sun. I'm fine. I'm just taking an impromptu road trip. I don't know when I'll be back, but just tell everyone I'm all right. Okay?"

"All right, well, see ya."

"Wait, anything out of the ordinary happens, anything at all that no one can explain, gimme a call, okay?" I asked.

"I guess so. Bye, Yang."

"See ya later, Sun." I hung up and went to Google, entering "Slenderman origins" as the search query. After an hour or so, I hadn't found anything other than where Slendy's legend came from, nothing about the inspiration for the character itself. Ruby wasn't having much luck with the local disappearances either. Other than the old guy's story about the faceless whatever-it-was, there was nothing to go on.

"Anything?" Ruby asked.

"Nope. Nada," I replied dejectedly. "You?"

"No, it's always the same. People go out into the woods, don't come back. That old guy is the only person who ever claimed to see anything."

"How far back does it go?" I asked.

"Public records date back to the twenties, but there could've been more before that."

"Huh. If this was recent, I'd suggest a Tulpa taking the form of good ole Slendy, but the sighting is from forty years ago, and people have been disappearing before then. It just doesn't make any sense," I complained.

"It could be a noppera-bō," Ruby suggested.

"Doesn't fit. They only scare people, right, they don't abduct them or anything?" I pointed out.

"Yeah, you're right. But what else could it be?"

"I dunno. I don't like it, but we'll have to keep looking," I told her. I then searched for "faceless spirits" and found quite a lot of stuff, very little of it actually useful. There was the noppera-bō Ruby had mentioned, Japanese spirits who enjoyed scaring the crap out of people for no obvious reason. Then there was "Der Großmann", a German myth about a tall guy who kidnapped bad kids if they went out after dark then made them confess their sins to their parents. No one's quite sure if that's a real story though, because it's so similar to Slender Man that some people think the myth was invented recently to give a historical connection to the meme. Eventually, though, I stumbled upon something that may have fit the bill.

"Hey, Ruby?" I called. She was by my side in a second.

"What's up? Found something?" she asked.

"Maybe. Hupia, a Taino death spirit. Said to appear as a faceless human being and kidnapped people indiscriminately if they went out after sundown."

"There's only one thing. The Taino lived in the Caribbean. What's a hupia doing so far north?" she pointed out.

"I don't know, but can you think of anything else?"

"No," she replied.

"And we've been searching for a long time," I said. "I think this is it."

"All right, how do we stop it?"

"Doesn't say. Think rock salt'll work?" I asked.

"Maybe, maybe not," she replied. "Wait, don't they live in caves?"

"I think so, why?"

"We could track it, chase it back to its cave and seal it in. Plenty of binding spells work on demons, why not hupias?" Ruby suggested.

"Good idea. Trap it, hide the cave entrance so no one accidentally frees it. What do we need?"

"Everything we could ever need for hunting is in the car. Let's go."

We left the library and were about to drive to the forest when we realised hupias don't come out in the middle of the day. Instead, we decided to check into a motel and get some proper rest before we went after the thing.

The room was nothing special, just a couple of queen size beds, a TV and a microwave, but it would do for the day or so we'd be there. When we got in, I collapsed onto one of the beds. The extensive research I'd done at the library had brought my headache back, and I wasn't in any sort of mood to do anything for a while. Ruby apparently had other ideas, because she decided to strike up a conversation.

"Heard from any of your college buddies?" she asked.

I let out a vaguely affirmative-sounding grunt.

"Who?"

"Sun. Asking where I am," I told her.

"What'd you tell him?"

"Told him I'm on a road trip with my sister and that there's nothing to worry about. I also said to call me if anything weird happens that no one can explain."

"So he's not gonna be suspicious?" Ruby asked.

"Oh, he's suspicious as fuck right now. I just told him not to worry and hung up. Hey, do you have anything for headaches?"

"Yeah, sure, hold on." She rummaged round in her bag, eventually retrieving a small bottle of pills which she threw to me. I got a couple out and, being too lazy to get some water to take them with, swallowed them dry. "Better?" Ruby asked after a few minutes.

"Much," I replied, glad of the relief. "So, what do you know about hupias?"

"Not much," she admitted. "Just that they're from the Caribbean and like certain tropical fruits. Why one's in New England, I have no idea."

"Qrow's journal say anything?"

"No, he hasn't even mentioned them. I don't know if he hasn't heard of them or if he just doesn't think they're worth writing about."

"If it's supernatural and he hasn't written anything, it's probably the first one, right?" I pointed out.

"Yeah, probably."

"Anyway, did I miss any good hunts?" I asked.

"Cleared out a vampire nest once. That was fun. Most of the time it's been pretty tame though."

"Well, I'm known to liven up a party, why not a hunt?" I asked, smiling.

"Just as long as you take it seriously."

"Hey, come on, sis! When don't I take stuff seriously?" I exclaimed, making a big deal out of throwing my hands in the air. Ruby smiled before answering.

"You really want me to answer that?"

"Fair point," I shrugged. "Should we make a plan or just wing it?"

"You mean for the hupia?"

"No, I mean the other thing we need to do soon," I told her sarcastically.

"Sorry, just making sure. But yeah, we should make a plan."

"All right, I'll fight it then drag it to the nearest cave. You just bind it once I'm done," I suggested.

"Yang?"

"Yes?"

"We'll need to be more specific. How are we gonna find it?" Ruby asked.

"I don't know. Maybe taunt it? Spirits hate to be taunted," I said.

"Probably shouldn't taunt it directly. Maybe have a loud conversation about how spirits aren't real and that all the disappearances have a different explanation. It might want to show itself to prove us wrong."

"Well, right, technically, if it is actually a hupia," I pointed out.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do. Anyway, mind if I take a nap before we go after the hupia?" I asked. "I wanna sleep off the headache."

"Go ahead."

"Sweet. See you later," I told Ruby, before turning over and falling asleep immediately.

"Yang?" Ruby asked, gently shaking me awake. "It's ten o'clock. We should go."

I groggily opened my eyes and looked around. Sure enough, it was dark outside. I followed my sister out of the motel room and into her car, still not quite awake. The roar of the engine soon changed that, startling me out of my grogginess as soon as Ruby fired it up. It was a short drive out of town and up to the forest, where the tree canopy was so thick there was virtually no light reaching the ground. We parked and got out of the car, heading round to the boot to get our stuff to hunt the hupia. Ruby opened the boot then the hidden compartment which contained all our highly illegal equipment no one can ever know about. Immediately, something caught my eye which brightened my spirits immensely.

"You...you kept them?" I asked in disbelief.

"What, those?" Ruby replied. "Of course we did. They were custom-made, we weren't just gonna throw them out when you left. Then when I decided to come get you, I figured you'd want them."

"You're damn right I do," I told her, grabbing my gauntlets and putting them on. At first glance, you might think they were part of a costume of some kind. Closer inspection would reveal that they were in fact designed for offence as well as defence. They contained shotguns which were always loaded with rock salt, great against spirits but not lethal to humans. Getting hit would still hurt like a bitch, but you'd survive. They were called Ember Celica. The "ember" part is because it means small flame and I always used to be the one to burn the bones when putting spirits to rest, and the "celica" part comes from the Latin word "coelica", meaning heavenly or celestial. They also worked as armour plating for my arms, in case a spirit or a person under demonic possession happened to attack me with a sharp object. They were some of my most prized possessions, but I hadn't brought them to college for obvious reasons.

"You ready?" Ruby asked.

"Yeah," I told her. "Let's go find this son of a bitch."

A/N: There's chapter 2. Sorry about the wait. Hope you enjoyed. Anyway, they're not taking down a Wendigo. So obviously, next chapter they're actually gonna do the hunt. Someone on Reddit brought up a good point about there being four main characters in RWBY, as opposed to two in Supernatural, so Blake and Weiss are gonna show up at some point in the future, just don't ask me when or how. I know how Blake's gonna show up, but not when. Haven't worked it out yet for Weiss. Anyway, that's all I have to say, so thanks for reading, leave a review and follow/favourite if you want.