Ruby POV

"Ruby, I'll be home on Sunday," Qrow told me. "Don't do anything stupid."

"Sure thing, Uncle," I replied, grinning. Today was Thursday, so that gave me four days of doing whatever I wanted, and all the cookies I could eat. "Happy hunting."

"Thanks, Rubes. Bye," he said, picking up his duffel bag and opening the door. He waved as he left the house, pulling the door closed behind him. When he was gone, I immediately went to the kitchen and got a box of cookies I'd bought at the local bakery the day before. I took them into the living room and plopped myself down on the couch, turning on the TV as I did so. Flipping through the channels, I soon found a show about "ghost hunters" who investigated supposedly haunted locales to experience the thrill of paranormal encounters. This should be good, I thought, settling down to watch. I soon found myself laughing at the amateurish methods of these so-called "professionals". The current episode featured an abandoned asylum in the Midwest. The hunters had actually brought an Ouija board along with their actual spirit detection equipment. The only result they'd get with that is a spirit attracted to them, and they'd have nothing to do against it if it decided to harm them.

"Ya wanna hunt stuff, ya bring salt at the very least!" I yelled at them. Naturally, they couldn't hear me, being television hosts in a pre-recorded show, but I couldn't help myself. Most cases of apparent hauntings turn out to be nothing, but sometimes some genius with a camera goes looking for some adrenaline without the proper precautions and doesn't come back. I've seen it myself, Qrow and I would stumble on some hapless idiot while on a job who'd been driven mad by whatever he'd seen.

I spent the next few days relaxing and enjoying the peace and quiet, not even a bit worried about Qrow. It was only around three o'clock on Sunday that I started to get anxious. Qrow usually calls when he's on his way home or if he's gonna be a little later than expected, but I'd heard nothing. He's probably fine. He just forgot, or his phone died, I told myself. That calmed me down a little, but the relief didn't last long. By six-thirty, when I was eating the pizza I'd ordered for dinner, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to reveal a delivery man holding a parcel.

"Ruby Rose?" he asked, looking at his clipboard.

"Yeah, that's me," I answered. "Can I help you?"

"This was sent to you by express mail earlier today. I need you to sign for it."

"Sure, no problem," I said, taking the pen and clipboard he offered me. I signed my name and exchanged the board for the parcel.

"Have a good night, miss," the guy said, turning to leave. I closed the door and immediately tore open the parcel, full of trepidation. What I found inside made my blood run cold.

Yang POV

Loud music and free booze. Gotta love frat parties. Really, the best part about college. The lectures suck, the work bores me half to death, but the parties… awesome. Just as long as drunk frat boys don't try to make out with me. I was about to take my fourth shot of tequila when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to see my friend Sun, who looked like he was having a great time.

"Yang!" he yelled over the music. "There's a girl outside who wants to talk to you!"

"Okay!" I yelled back, giving him my drink to hold. Frowning, I made my way through the building to meet whoever it was who wanted to see me. When I got outside, the cool night air felt like a slap to my drunken face. Looking around, I was met with a shocking surprise.

"Yang, we need to talk," my younger sister Ruby told me.

"Wha-what are you doing here?" I asked.

"I came to talk. I need your help."

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Qrow's missing. Your uncle, remember?"

"Of course I remember. But if he's missing, so what? He's disappeared before," I told Ruby.

"Has he ever mailed his journal to one of us?" she asked, holding up a thick, leather-bound book.

"The fuck?"

"Exactly. He went hunting last Thursday, said he'd be back by Sunday. Haven't heard from him since, but I got this in the mail," Ruby explained. "I know you and him haven't exactly been best buds lately, but I figured you'd want to know."

"And I guess you want me to help find him?"

"Yeah. I can't do it on my own. Please, Yang. Two years and I haven't asked you for a thing," she begged.

"I have classes, I can't just leave."

"Didn't figure you'd care about school so much as the parties and all the hot girls," she smirked. "But seriously. Don't make me get on my knees."

"All right, you got me. I hate class. I'm here for the other stuff. But even so, I can't just disappear in the middle of the semester."

"Yang, I'm begging you. I will kneel if I have to," Ruby told me, giving me the puppy-dog eyes she always used to give me when we were kids. How the hell they still worked when she was twenty, I had no idea.

"Okay, fine. I'll admit, I have missed killing evil stuff."

"Thank you!" Ruby exclaimed, wrapping her arms and legs round me like she was a koala bear.

"Get off, you're embarrassing me," I told her, secretly not bothered at all. "Let me pack some clothes and stuff."

"Sure. I'll be in the parking lot."

I headed up to my dorm room, thoughts swirling through my brain. It had been two years since I last talked to Ruby or Qrow. What had happened to make my sister suddenly want me with her again? How much help would I be? After two years of living a normal, wild college girl life, my evil-killing skills were probably more than a little rusty. What would Qrow say when we found him? Would he be glad to see me, or still angry that I'd abandoned hunting?

As these thoughts went through my mind, I haphazardly threw some clothes and toiletries into an overnight bag. I then grabbed my nine-millimetre handgun out of the bottom of my sock drawer along with its silver bullets and stuck it in the waistband of my jeans, covering it with my shirt. That done, I got my laptop and put it in my laptop bag, grabbed my wallet and headed downstairs to meet Ruby.

I found her in the parking lot, leaning on the bonnet of a black muscle car. When she saw me, she got into the driver's side and gestured at me to hurry up. I put my overnight bag in the boot and brought my laptop into the front seat with me in case there was a long drive ahead.

"Okay, what was Qrow hunting?" I asked.

"Based on the last journal entry, I'd say it was something that doesn't like campers," Ruby answered, opening the journal. On the last page, there was a newspaper clipping of an article entitled "More campers missing – is there something out there?" The article was from a paper in New England.

"We know anything about what it could be?" I asked.

"A Wendigo, maybe?" Ruby suggested. "No witnesses, people disappearing in the forest, it's possible."

"Right area too," I pointed out. "New England, that's where most of the tribes that had some form of the Wendigo legend lived."

"Why would that have given Qrow any trouble though?" Ruby asked. "Should have been easy. Find it, burn it. I don't get why he hasn't come back."

"We don't know for sure that that's what it is, or if it's why he's missing," I told her. "Either way, it's a start. Let's go."

"Yeah," she replied, starting the car. A throaty engine roared to life, rumbling so strongly it caused the car to shake. Ruby navigated out of the parking lot and headed towards the highway

"So how've you been?" I asked when we were well on our way to the destination.

"Not bad. Killed a bunch of stuff. Nearly died a couple of times," Ruby replied. "You know, the usual. You?"

"Meh. All right, I guess. Truthfully, it's been a little boring."

"Seen anyone?" she asked, smiling somewhat.

"Yeah, couple of people. Nothing serious," I told her. "Why?"

"Just wondering. I know what you're like."

"Shut up," I said, hitting her playfully. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You want me to explain or shut up? I can't do both," she told me, smirking.

"Touché."

"We still haven't found what killed Mom," Ruby said. "Don't suppose you've heard anything?"

"No," I replied. That information struck a nerve. When Ruby was three and I was five, something, probably a demon of some kind, killed my stepmother and Ruby's mother, Summer Rose. Our father, Taiyang, sort of shut down when it happened and we were raised mostly by our uncle Qrow. He trained us to hunt down and destroy evil stuff, always vowing that we'd eventually get revenge for Summer's death. Seventeen years later, he still hadn't fulfilled that promise but the three of us had killed a lot of other things, saving a lot of people in the process.

For a long time, I hunted along with Ruby and Qrow, never questioning anything involving the supernatural. But two years ago, I got tired of following my uncle's orders and not finding anything related to Summer's death, so I decided to stop. Qrow and I had a huge argument while Ruby watched silently, then I left and went to college. Until today, I hadn't seen hide nor hair of either of them since.

I decided to sleep through the journey, not looking forward to the hangover that would ensue. When I woke up, the sun had risen and we were trundling through some sleepy New England town with lots of colonial buildings. My head was pounding and I didn't want to deal with paranormal stuff.

"Oh, you're awake. Wanna get breakfast or find a motel first?" Ruby asked.

"Don't care," I groaned. "Whichever one's quieter."

Soon, we were in the parking lot of a diner. As Ruby opened her door, the smell of food wafting into the car made my stomach rumble, and I realised how hungry I was. We entered the diner and sat down, Ruby wanting to talk to the locals and me wanting everyone to be quiet. After ordering a large plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and just about everything else, I put my head on the table and covered my ears, trying to block out the sound. Ruby wisely didn't try to talk to me.

When our food arrived, I wolfed it down. It helped immensely in relieving my hangover and my brain was ready to process information.

"Ready to talk to the locals?" Ruby asked. I nodded as the waitress came to take our plates away.

"Anything else, ladies?" she asked with a friendly smile.

"Can you tell us anything about these disappearances?" Ruby asked her.

"Well, it's always the same. Group of people go out camping and don't come back. The campsites are always undisturbed, but clearly abandoned in a hurry," the waitress told us. "No one knows what's been happening, but everyone thinks they're connected."

"And no one's seen anything?" I asked.

"No, not that I know of."

"All right, thanks," Ruby told the waitress. "Could we get our bill?"

"No problem," she replied, walking off.

"Still think it's a Wendigo?" I asked.

"Maybe. But we can't make solid conclusions until we know more," Ruby answered. "We'll gather more information and figure out what we're dealing with before we do anything else."

"Okay. Maybe we could check the library, see if this has happened before," I suggested.

"Good idea. Local legends and stuff should give us some clue if this thing isn't a newcomer," Ruby agreed. After paying for our breakfast, we drove to the library where we asked the librarian to pull all the public records on unexplained disappearances in the area. When we sat down with a box full of official papers, we were approached by an older man with uneven stubble and unkempt grey hair.

"You ladies investigating the disappearances?" he asked us in a grizzled voice.

"Yes, sir. You know anything?" Ruby asked him.

The man pulled out a chair and sat down as he answered, "let me tell you girls a story."

A/N: So that was the first chapter of my new story, the name of which I do not yet know. Technically, if you're reading this, I do know the title, because it's been published, but at the time of writing I do not. Anyway. This fic is heavily inspired by the TV show Supernatural, but you won't need to know anything about the show to understand the story. If you have seen the show, you'll undoubtedly see resemblances throughout, but I'm not going to directly follow any of the plotlines. I'll make my own using inspiration. There might be shipping, because I almost never write stories without Bumblebee (other ships can go to hull [got that joke from a guy on Reddit, don't remember his username. Person who made that joke originally, if you're reading, sorry I couldn't credit you properly]), but only if I can logically work them in. I'm not gonna do it for the sake of doing it. Just gonna clarify something: if you were paying attention, you probably noticed "bonnet" and "boot" when referring to the car. If you're not from the UK and you're confused about what they mean, the bonnet is called the hood in North America and the boot is what you'd call the trunk. Anyway, nothing else to say here, so leave a review and follow/favourite if you want. Thanks for reading.