Ruby

A few months had gone by between the first day that I had joined the Huntsman, and now I was really starting to get used to my powers. Jaune was too, though he was having a harder time of it than I was. Dad said I probably got that from my mother, apparently she was one of the most talented Huntsman that ever existed. Now that I'm here, Dad has been talking with me more and more about all the things that he did with my mother while they were a part of this organization. He really was dead set on keeping me away from this line of work after Mom died, though he never outright said it to me. I could tell though, he's still worried about me, worried that something is going to happen to me that I won't be able to escape from.

Oh, I was given the chance to pick out my codename today. Everyone around has one and it's really cool that I get to pick one out for myself. I ended up going with Blur, because after looking through the footage of my training matches, I move so fast it's like I'm just a blurry image to the camera, even when it's going frame by frame. Polari-I mean, Pyrrha, said it sounded like a nice name for me to use.

I really have to get used to calling everyone by their real names. They've been so nice to me so far, well most of them at least, and they've been very understanding of why it's hard for me to get used to. Only Weiss gets annoyed that I haven't picked up on real names completely. On instinct it's natural for me to just use everyone's codenames, since that's what I'm used to referring to them as before I joined up here. Out in the field, she has no qualms with it, probably because it means I won't be giving away any secrets by mistake.

Jaune's been having to do twice as much training as I have in order to get by. Somehow, he's still struggling with it all, but no one's really giving him too much of a hard time. I saw that one mercenary, I think her name was Coco, I saw her give Jaune a couple of lessons in hand to hand combat on occasion. In all honesty, I think there might be something going on between the two of them, even if they don't know it yet. Actually, that's a really good thing for Jaune, Coco's pretty attractive, and it'll definitely help boost his confidence.

He ended up going with the codename of Archangel. I find it funny that it's really close to Arch Mage, which is Weiss' codename. Pretty sure she isn't too much of a fan of it, but people pick up the differences between the two quick enough to notice. She certainly stopped grumbling after a while, though Velvet certainly helped with that. The amount of time they spend together, it's almost as though the two are dating or something. I tried to ask Velvet about it, but she never gives me a straight answer, always skirts around the topic. Probably none of my business anyways, but if I'm gonna be working with everyone, I figure it's best that I know about them.

There was a few other people that I met here as well, some of the other mercs, as well as a few more Huntsman. Strangest of them all was Nora Valkyrie. She's one of the mercenaries that works with Yang, but she's pretty crazy if you ask me. Very open about the kind of things she enjoys and doesn't enjoy, most of the things she enjoys involving some sort of explosion, or her boyfriend, Lie Ren. Speaking of Ren, he's another one of the Huntsman, Lotus as it turns out. As soon as I found out, I was thanking him for at least two days before he finally asked that I stop, saying something about how he understands, and asks that we start to treat each other as equals instead of me kissing up to him. I apologized probably for another few minutes before he just laughed and asked if I could help him with some training.

I've definitely got the chance to spend more time with Yang though, seeing as how we live together. She's told me all of the crazy stories that she's gotten involved in. Between her and Dad, I probably got about 300 stories within the span of a month. I'm not complaining, in fact I love the stories that they tell me, but it's gotten quite overwhelming at times. Yang's been helping me with my fighting practice, helping me keep up with the drain my powers put on my body. It sucks that she herself doesn't have powers, but that's just the way the world works. It doesn't bring her down though, nothing seems to do that these days.

She's been talking to me about some of these other Huntsman out in the different kingdoms, one in particular that had caught her eye during some of her recent trips. Goes by the name of Poseidon, and apparently he can control water, make it bend to his will. Don't know how useful it is, but hey, I'm not gonna be the person that judges others based on what kind of powers they have.

What's been fortunate for me is that I haven't had to do much in terms of fighting during the time I've been around so far. It's not that I don't want to fight, I just know that I'm not the best at it right now. I have been getting better though, I'm not completely useless to everyone else. Plus, I have a really awesome uniform. A black corset across my chest with a black pleated skirt, specially designed combat boots to help with keeping my ankles from rolling or something like that. Black leggings underneath the skirt, and a black and red shirt under the corset that practically hugs my skin. I got a special hood attached to the shirt with a mechanism inside to help keep it from falling off of my head while I'm running. I would've asked for a cape, but both Professor Ozpin, and Weiss said that it would just slow me down. Something about air resistance and the possibility of getting my neck snapped if it were to get caught on something while running at high speeds. That certainly put a damper on my idea in a hurry.

So, now I could look cool while I was out patrolling the streets, though that's not what's important. I looked down over the side of a pretty tall building and saw the life within the city as people were mulling about. It's so different, being up here now instead of down there among the crowds. I always imagined what it would be like to run up above the people, now that I'm here, it's still all too surreal to me.

I sighed and leaned back over the edge, taking my gaze away from the crowds and replacing it with that of my partner for the day. She was certainly a nice person, a bit weird though, but like I said earlier, who was I to judge. I hadn't heard much about her before, she stayed relatively off the grid, yet she's done so much for the people I couldn't help but feel in awe. Apparently, she's known as Matrix, but her real name is Penny Polendina.

She wore a pair of black slacks with a green stripe down the outside parts of the leg. Her shoes appeared to be just normal formal wear, and she wore a white shirt with baggy sleeves that covered part of her hands. She had a gray vest over that that had some intricate patterns on it, and the vest connected to some sort of backpack. She had a specially crafted mask on that covered her face and helped to conceal her identity, and it had the usual voice filter built in.

"It sure it beautiful out today," Penny said to me as I walked over to her.

"Yeah," I said as I turned around and stared out at the horizon. It certainly was a wonderful sight to see. "Just another reason why we need to keep fighting. Don't want this beautiful view to be covered in smoke as the city burns down around us now, do we?"

"One of these days, we won't be needed to keep everyone safe," Penny said. "I know it seems a bit too unrealistic right now, but I like to think that it'll happen someday."

"That would certainly be nice," I reply. "To see that everyone can get by without having to worry about whether or not they're gonna have a gun drawn on them the moment they make a wrong turn, to know that a person will have enough food, water, money to survive and live comfortably with their family. That's the kind of life I would love for everyone to live."

"Well, then we better work hard to make sure that dream does come true, don't we?" Penny said, placing a hand on my shoulders. "Come on, we better keep checking the city. Our patrol goes for another few hours at least, and we haven't gotten to the bad part of town just yet."

"Ok, yeah," I agree, it's time to move on and get back to work. Time to get back to the reason why I'm able to stand up here on this rooftop. "Let's get-"

Right before I finish my sentence, an explosion goes off next to the building we're standing on. We were nearly knocked off balance by the bomb, but somehow still stayed upright. I looked towards Penny and we both silently agreed that we needed to investigate what was happening. I ran towards the edge and looked down to see what was going on, and I saw armed White Fang troops in the streets, heavy bags in their hands as they appeared to be robbing the bank that was next to us.

"White Fang," I said. "And it looks like a lot of them too. You think we should call for some help?"

Penny looked down with me and saw what I was looking at, no local law enforcement, and plenty of White Fang with big guns on them. "Yeah, call for some help, anyone that is able to," She finally said after a few moments. "In the meantime, we should get down there and help as much as possible."

Without hesitation, she leapt off the ledge and down to the ground beneath us. I was really appreciative of the fact that the shoes I got were designed to take major impacts, including falls from pretty big heights, so they cushioned any impact that would've hurt me pretty badly. Penny, of course, had decided to unleash what was in her backpack, a cadre of swords that she had complete control over. Actually, it wasn't the swords themselves, it was the fact that they were attached to her via a very strong string. See, Penny has what she calls her powers, puppeteering, meaning that anything that is attached to her, even if it's connected through the string, she has full control over.

Using the swords to slow down her descent, she eventually reached the bottom, holding the swords around her as she scanned the area around her. I jumped down after her and landed next to her. Thankfully she moved the swords out of the way when she saw me come down next to her, I'd hate to have been impaled on one of her own swords while trying to take action.

"Call for help, I'll move ahead and get started," Penny called to me, activating the voice modulator and charging forward into the fight.

On each of our wrists, we have a communicator that allows us to speak with the people in charge whenever we need to. Doing so, I activated it and brought up a holographic display and began the call back home.

"What is it Blur?" Weiss said as she appeared on the display. "This had better be important."

"Well if you count a lot of White Fang breaking into a bank and robbing the place as important, then yeah," I replied. I didn't mean to sound dry and sarcastic, but there was only so much that I could do right now, and I didn't have time to argue. "They used explosives and things are a mess right now. Matrix told me to stay behind and contact you guys for backup before I joined her."

"Alright, we'll send someone out there," Weiss said, getting serious when I mentioned what was going on. "Now get going, you have a job to do so do it!" With that, she ended the call, prompting me to get out there and join Penny out in the field.

Once I rounded the corner, I saw that things were crazy. Penny was on the steps of the bank, trying her hardest to keep the robbers within the area until the police arrived. So, helping her with that, I ran behind them and started to push each of them back into the fray with a couple well placed kicks, before speeding out of their range and moving on to the next one of them.

It was fairly simple actually, Penny was using a few of her swords to keep herself defended, while using the rest to injure and pin down any that tried to escape, especially those that had a hand on the money. I was helping to keep everyone contained as well, and things were going fairly well. The police were bound to arrive soon and by that point we would escape and the bad guys would get arrested. Hopefully they would go on trial, but with the way the system was, I doubt that would happen. At least the bank would be able to reclaim its money.

At least, that's what was supposed to happen, if I wasn't suddenly tripped up by someone who had appeared from out of nowhere. I felt the wind get knocked out of me once I hit the ground, and barely had enough time to roll out of the way as the person who tripped me up came at me. Once I was out of the way, I stood up and got a good look at who it was that I was dealing with. This person certainly wasn't like the normal thugs that I've encountered so far, she seemed so much more dangerous.

She had one of the normal White Fang masks, but hers had a ornate design layered on top of it, signifying her as a major player. Aside from the mask, she had jet black hair and cat ears on top of her head, black pants and her torso was covered with a tattered black cloak. In her hands were two different parts of the same blade, except one was the sheath that contained the weapon while it was stored. The other half was a katana and what I could only imagine was some kind of pistol frankensteined into being part of the blade's handle.

I couldn't see her eyes, but somehow, I just knew that there was some kind of trepidation underneath that mask. I don't know why, but I felt as though she didn't want to kill me, but would if she was forced to do so. "Who are you?" I asked, my voice still hidden by the modulator.

"Who I am doesn't matter," The girl said. "I can't let you go on hurting the Faunus any more."

How in the world could she think that what we were doing was hurting the Faunus? The White Fang was more responsible for their woes than we were, and yet she was on their side. Why was she doing this, did she not know how bad the White Fang was? "I can't let these people get away with robbery, Faunus or not it isn't right," I argued back.

"I'm sorry," She muttered. I could tell just by the way she sounded, that this wasn't what she wanted to do. "But I can't let you stand in the way."

Fortunately for her, she didn't have to worry about me for much longer. Dropping down from the sky and landing in between us was a figure I had become familiar with. I saw the giant sword resting across his armored shoulders, a blade that was larger than I was. The man was really tall, wearing an olive green tinted set of armor. His left shoulder had a pauldron on it that protected him from harm, while his right was left bare. His arms were uncovered and you could see the muscles that he had on him. His head was covered in that of an old samurai helmet, keeping him safe and his identity safe at the same time.

"I'll give you one chance to leave," The Red Blade said to this girl. "You should take it before you get into a fight you can't win." Despite the intimidating appearance, I knew deep down that The Red Blade, otherwise known as Yatsuhashi, was a real sweetheart and a gentle character. Out in the field though, he rolled with the intimidation when it was necessary.

The woman could clearly see that the odds were stacked against her, so she left. At first I thought it was strange, I saw what appeared to be a shadow left behind as the person was already leaving before we realized it was a clone in her place. As she was running, once she got into the shadows, she just disappeared completely. Nothing left behind of her at all.

I had actually completely forgotten about the rest of the White Fang up until then, and when I turned to check on Penny, she was already jogging over to me, the people that were there tied up and unable to leave. "What was that all about?" Penny asked once she was close enough.

"That girl we were facing off with, she had powers much like our own," I said. "You think we should inform the Headmaster about this?" After what had just happened, it seemed like a safe bet. This was something that probably needed to be told.

"That we should," Yatsuhashi said, before we heard the sounds of the police arriving. "Come on, it's time to leave." With no arguments from any of us, we turned towards the nearest alleyway and left the area to report what we had found.

AN: Ok, if you can't come up with who that is by now, then I don't know what to tell you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in, I don't really have much to say right now because it's pretty straightforward. Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and I'll see you again next chapter!