Ruby

Why can't I seem to stop thinking about that one girl I ran into at that bank robbery? It's been a few weeks now so you figured I wouldn't be contemplating all of this, yet I can't seem to get her out of my head. Why did she fight me? Why does it seem that she isn't truly in line with the White Fang? What could be done with her being around? How can I help?

Yang keeps telling me that it's not good to think too hard on these things. She tells me that 'over-thinking stuff like this is only going to drive you insane, and that's the last thing you need on your plate.' She doesn't understand how big of a deal this is. I love her to death, but since she doesn't have powers of her own, at least to my knowledge, she doesn't know of the potential dangers that come into play with that burden. She doesn't understand that someone with superpowers working for the criminal empires only makes them more dangerous to deal with.

At least Pyrrha seems to get why I keep feeling this way. She's been the most supportive of me to date.

Still, Yang is right in one regard, I do need to try and relax a bit more so that I don't drive myself insane. I'm not gonna stop thinking about this issue, but it isn't going to turn me into a paranoid lunatic by the time this is done.

Well, I'm thankful that the mansion has some pretty nice training rooms. I've been working on my hand-to-hand combat with Yang and Coco whenever we all get some free time. That's been my weakest aspect so far, which is good that I can move fast. It allows me to get out of there quickly whenever I need to do so. Usually I leave the close fighting to someone like Yatsuhashi or Yang since that's what they normally do. For those times that I do need it, I'm glad that I can at least do something instead of nothing.

That's where I am right now, training by myself for the moment since Yang and Coco are out in the field working right now with some of the other mercs. Pyrrha is out on patrol with Velvet at the moment, Yatsuhashi is off working out in one of the other rooms with Jaune, the new guys that came here are off getting accustomed to the capital so that they don't get lost any more than they already have, Ren and Nora are out on a date right now, and Penny is off polishing her swords. All that leaves is Weiss, who still doesn't have the greatest opinion of me. I need to do better at making friends.

I wouldn't actually say that, ever since I got here, everyone's been super nice and awesome, it's just that they have their things that they do. I don't want to interrupt their time.

In any case, nothing I can do about it right now, just gotta focus on the training and not about anything else. Not gonna think about this dilemma I'm having with this person on the other side of the coin, who happens to have powers of their own and is working for the bad guys. Nope, not gonna think about that at all.

Ok, nevermind, that's on my mind again. Oh well, might as well take out my frustrations on the punching bag in front of me. Simple combos that Yang told me about, though it isn't as effective as facing a live target. Yang said it's more to focus on the accuracy of my hits, rather than working in a live scenario where there is a lot more to consider. Focusing on one thing at a time works in some ways, allows me to build up my skills and then apply them all together when it comes down to it.

"Need a hand squirt?"

I turned around and saw someone I haven't seen in quite a while. Low and behold, my Uncle Qrow was standing in the doorway to the training room.

"UNCLE QROW!" I yelled as I zoomed right over to him and wrapped myself around him in a huge hug. Once I had my full grip on him, I looked up and smiled at him. "Hi."

"Excited to see me?"

"Um, yeah?" I replied. I hadn't seem him in a couple of months, even well before I joined up with the Huntsmen. "Wait, don't tell me you're one of the Huntsmen as well. Or did Dad tell you where to find us?"

"No, I was around when your parents got their start as well," Qrow mentioned. "I still can't believe you've made it here. I remember when you first got the idea that you wanted to be a part of the Huntsmen in the first place. God that must've been what, ten years ago?"

"Something like that," I replied. "Still, it's so good to see you, did you miss me? DID YOU MISS ME?!" I was beaming with excitement since I got to see my uncle again. If anyone was around and able to figure out what was going on, I imagine that I would be a funny sight to see right now.

My uncle cracked a smirk, a telling sign that he was up to something. "Nope," He said, though I knew that it wasn't the case. "So, how does it feel being a part of all this?"

I finally let go of my uncle and stood back on my own two feet. "It feels weird, not in a bad way, just…" I really didn't know how to describe it. "I never thought I'd make it here. Even now after all this time being a part of the Huntsmen, I still am just waiting for the moment when I realize that this is all just a dream."

"You made it here of your own volition," My uncle replied. He always was a huge influence on my life, despite some of the less than savoury things that he does with his life. "Honestly, if anyone deserves to be here more than anyone else it's you. You did it kid, you made your dream come true."

That got a nice smile out of me, my uncle really knows how to cheer me up, even when I don't need it. Then again, right now, there's just a lot of things that I need to consider.

"Something on your mind kid?"

"Huh?"

"You look like there's something bothering you right now," My uncle said to me. "Wanna talk about it?"

As much as I wanted to talk about that, I've spent too much time focusing on it right now that it'd be a moot point to continue on with it. "It's nothing I haven't mentioned to most of the others already. Nothing that can really be done about it right now anyway."

"Alright, if you say so," Uncle Qrow conceded, though I could tell that he was a little skeptical of my response. I'm glad he decided to drop it, since I didn't know what I would say in the first place. "Anyway, I actually have a delivery for someone here, goes by the name Weiss Schnee."

"Oh, I can take you to her," I volunteered. As I made my way out the door, I grabbed my uncle's hand and dragged him towards where I thought Weiss would be at this time. "Come on, she should be somewhere here in the mansion."

"Hey, slow down kiddo!" My uncle shouted as he was being dragged along by me. I will admit that maybe I was going a bit too fast at the moment, but at least I wasn't using my powers to get us there. Once I slowed down and allowed him to walk normally, he pulled out his flask and started to take a couple of glugs from it.

Honestly that's the only thing I don't like about my uncle, his insane drinking habit. It's like he has some almost all the damn time, I don't need to see him throw his life away in a drunken stupor. I wish that there was something I could do to stop it, but it's out of my control right at the moment. Maybe later on, but who knows.

"What do you think you're doing?"

I had failed to notice that Weiss was actually standing right nearby us, so much so that I ended up jumping in surprise when I heard her voice. "Oh Weiss, we were looking for-"

"Why in the world would you bring a random stranger here when you of all people know how secretive we are?" Weiss started shouting at me, accusing me of being a 'dolt' as she liked to call me. "Do you realize how much of a problem this is going to cause for us now?"

"Hey kid," Uncle Qrow stepped in, probably because of how Weiss was yelling at me. "First of all, maybe you should recognize that this isn't the first time I've been here. Hopefully that doesn't give you a heart attack or anything, wouldn't want you to get confused on why I'm here. Second, I'm actually looking for you specifically because I have a message for you."

"And what makes you think that I'm the person you're looking for specifically?" Weiss asked. "I haven't even told you my name, and I don't know if I want to."

She did have a point, neither Weiss nor I have given my uncle any inclination as to who she was at all.

"Because the person who asked me to deliver this message said that the person who is receiving it as an almost uncanny resemblance to what she looks like," My uncle replied. "I doubt that there are many people who share similarities with you genetically, so you got any ideas on who that might be?"

Ok, seeing Weiss' eyes go wide when she heard what my uncle said was kinda funny to watch. It was almost like she pulled a complete 180 in a heartbeat. "You have a message from Winter?" She asked quickly.

"She asked me to give you this letter," Uncle Qrow mentioned, pulling the letter out of his jacket pocket. "I ran into her a little while ago and helped her out of a tight spot. Don't worry she's fine, she's got a pretty good gig going where's she at."

As Uncle Qrow pulled out the letter, Weiss all but snatched it out of his hands. "You didn't read this, or do anything of the sort, did you?" Weiss asked, all but accusing him of some petty things.

"Don't worry, though I do know about the whole thing with you and your family," My uncle mentioned, though that gave me a few things to think about. "You can trust me, just like you can trust my niece here. She's a good egg."

"What kind of egg?" I asked, almost wishing that I thought of what I had just said before saying it.

"I would say scrambled, but you've shown that you have at least some intelligence," Weiss replied.

"I'd say I'm more sunny side up instead," I countered.

"In any case, I actually gotta go speak with Ozpin, so I'll catch you later kiddo," My uncle said as he ruffled my hair a bit before taking off.

"Suddenly I'm starting to make at least some sense of you," Weiss jabbed at me. "If you need me, I'll be over in my room." Weiss then took that as her time to leave and go off to her own things once again.

Now that I'm alone again, and that I'm probably not gonna be able to do any more working out, I might as well go out and do something. I went back to my room and got changed before heading down into the town.

For me it wasn't that long of a walk, I have super speed so going to and from places really isn't that big of a deal when you think about it. So I was soon standing at the edge of the city near one of the checkpoints.

That's how they keep track of who's going in and out of the city, the military set up these border checkpoints to figure out who is coming and going. It was this whole thing that they introduced years ago to stem the flow of 'contraband' moving into and out of the city. All it's really done is caused some problems, since most of the border patrol that is there is corrupt beyond anything I could imagine. Anything that doesn't come in through the underground tunnels, usually ends up going through the corrupt officers who get paid off at the gates. Instead, they turn away the occasional starving family who can't afford to get into the city.

Honestly, it sickens me that they would do something like this, but there's only so much that I can do right now. If we start to combat the police and military, we may not have as much support from the general population, because they will see it as us tearing down one of the few lines of defense that they have. No, we'd have to handle it in a better way. Gathering evidence of their misconduct, exposing a corrupt officer here and there, those sorts of things are what we could do.

What we as Huntsmen do is there's a few locations that only we know about that allow us access into and out of the city freely. Still, I'm worried about how long it'll last for.

As I make my way there, I start to hear a noise that puts me on edge. It almost sounds like someone running, only they're being chased after by someone else. Obviously I'd look into that, but the first thing I would need to do is find a way to disguise myself, so I wouldn't get made.

Fortunately, we usually keep some small portable disguise kits with us for situations just like this. It doesn't help us completely, but for those moments when we're in the field and have no time to make a switch into our usual outfits, it works well. So I donned my own disguise kit and make my way towards the running, trying to keep as quiet as possible in case it turned out to be nothing.

I'm certainly glad that I did, because the first thing I noticed when I came closer, was a young girl being chased by what looked like an upper member of the White Fang. The two of them ran, the larger guy chasing after the admittedly smaller girl, and I just couldn't stand by and do nothing.

Before I could move though, I saw something that immediately caught my eye. The girl tripped and fell, and the guy tried to grab her. But instead of actually getting a grip, she moved away in a flash. What's crazier, was that she left a clone of herself behind that dissipated in the taller guys grip. She ended up moving right behind him and kicked him forward before pulling out an all too familiar weapon, a pistol with a katana frankensteined together into some weird combination.

This was the exact same person that I encountered at the bank, only now she looked to be on the outs with the White Fain.

I was right all along, there was something about her that seemed off when we first ran into each other. I could almost feel like she was going to play a bigger role in all of this. Now there were even bigger questions. What happened that caused her to leave the White Fang? Why was she being chased? Did she really leave the White Fang, or is there something else going on?

One thing that I didn't need to ask about, she started shooting at the person who was chasing her. Luckily for him he seemed to find some form of defense against the shots, some kind of power of his own I guess. It snapped me back out of my own thought process and reminded me that there was still someone who needed help. This girl then readied herself as though she was about to get into a fight with the guy. Whether she was a part of the White Fang or not, I couldn't just stand by and watch this fight take place without doing something about it.

After shrugging off the bullets, the guy stands up and I get a better look at him. He wore the traditional White Fang uniform, except the sleeves were removed, and he had a full face mask instead of the mask only covering his eyes. He also wore a weird tattoo that adorned his well-above-the-average muscular arm. Even weirder was that the guy was fighting with a chainsaw.

There wasn't much I could do, but who knows, maybe I'd be able to at least distract the guy long enough for us to escape. Being out here alone, makes me wish that I had come along with someone. Still, I'm a Huntsmen, and I can't let anything stop me. With that in mind, I charged towards the guy and jumped to kick him back, hopefully catching him off guard.

At least when I made contact, I knocked him backwards a bit. He clearly didn't see me coming, but now my stealth advantage is gone. I moved in between myself and the girl, holding my arms out as if to shield her from anything that came her way. I could tell that I had stunned him for the moment, but now he looked even more furious than before. At least, that's what I'm assuming, that mask makes it hard to see what he's looking at. For the moment, I can feel his eyes trained on me, questioning how I had the audacity to get between him and this woman. Despite my nerves starting to take shape, I stood my ground and refused to bend.

"You will not hurt her," I said to the man defiantly, waiting for him to make his move.

AN: Hope you guys enjoyed this one. I don't know how much I'll be updating stuff in the future, new job that takes up a lot of my time and all that. Plus I've been brainstorming ideas for a possible novel so hopefully that goes well. Anyway, thanks for reading, I'll see you guys next update!