A/N: Trying an idea for an AU. If you like it, let me know. I don't think it's AU-ish enough though.

"Officer, do you have any comment on what happened here?"

"There were reports of gunfire, can you confirm this?"

"Is Mr. Torchwick available for comment?"

The reporters swarmed, sensing blood, and officer Arc backpedaled frantically.

"Nothing to see! Um! You can uh... go away? Please?" He stuttered. "I have a taser!" He declared, but none of them seemed to be listening. Just then a girl with nothing showing under her red hoodie but a few wisps of black and red hair pushed her way through the crowd, shoving aside paparazzi with a large instrument case.

"Jaune!" She caroled cheerily. "Mind if I squeeze in?"

"Go right ahead." Jaune said with a gallant bow. That was a mistake.

"Officer, who is that girl?"

"Is she some sort of consultant?"

"What exactly is going on here officer?"

"Sorry Jaune!" The girl called from inside the police line. "Guess you have to deal with them!"

Jaune gulped, listening to the increasingly infuriated demands of the reporters and a silvery, delighted laughter fading as the girl walked in.

The crime scene was a house. It was a very nice house, owned by one local 'respectable' businessman, Roman Torchwick, successful millionaire. Ruby walked in, nodding to various police she recognized.

"Pyrrha! Yoohoo!" She called to a tall officer with long red hair tied in a ponytail.

Deputy Commissioner of Counterterrorism Nikos turned with a severe, thoughtful look on her face. "Ruby. Thanks for coming so quickly."

"No problem!" Ruby chirped. "So, what's up?"

Pyrrha managed to give a slight frown of disapproval for Ruby's unprofessional attitude while simultaneously giving her a slight smile of amusement. "You know the Torchwick case? Smuggling in Grimm and Dust?"

Ruby nodded, her face sinking a bit. "Bad news?"

"Good, actually. He slipped up and we've got him running. But we still have a large subterranean basement possibly filled with Grimm."

"And by possibly, you mean probably?" Ruby said, looking mildly annoyed.

"Yes."

With a sigh, Ruby opened up her instrument case. Inside was a large, sleek rifle. Ruby snapped on a few loose parts with a quick, practiced motion.

"Whatever happened to the scythe?" Pyrrha asked with a smile.

"It's... in the shop." Ruby replied, blushing.

"It exploded again, didn't it." Pyrrha said.

"It's not my fault!" Ruby retorted. "The stupid thing is-"

"A ridiculous hybrid between a gun and a weapon that nobody has ever used." Pyrrha finished. "Yes, I know."

"Oh shut up." Ruby grumbled. "I'm working on it. You'll see."

With that, she picked up the completed rifle. It was painted black and red, and was around as tall as Ruby herself. In addition to that, Pyrrha knew she kept several knives on her person, due to her 'normal' weapon being perpetually 'in the shop.' Pyrrha often wondered how someone so utterly childish ever became the sole Hunter for an entire city.

She led Ruby down the hall, to what looked like a supply closet. The inside had been cleared out to reveal a trapdoor.

"We haven't gone in yet." Pyrrha explained. "But several of the men heard growls."

Ruby peered at it. "Well, here goes nothing!" She said brightly, kicking it open with a foot and dropping in. A moment later, every officer froze at the noise of a series of bloodcurdling howls.

"Yup! Grimm!" Ruby called. There was a loud gunshot.

Jaune, along with the reporters, heard both.

"Oh no..." He muttered, burying his face in his hands.

"Officer Arc, what's going on in there?"

"What kind of animals are those?"

"Do the police have Mr. Torchwick in custody?"

"Will you people just go away!" Jaune wailed.

Ruby was in a bit of a pickle. Actually, not a bit of one. A large dill pickle. No wait, that wasn't ridiculous enough. Ruby was in a pickled pumpkin.

Roman Torchwick, psychopath, had stored an entire pack of beowolves in his secret basement. Some people had tigers... some people had snakes... why did some people just have to go above and beyond normal crazy? Really. Beowolves were large, hairy, fast, and studded with nasty bone protrusions that would shred anything that got within the reach of their gangly arms. And this guy had a pack of them.

Ruby calmly worked the bolt on the rifle, and fired. One of the beowolves exploded, a chunk the size of a basketball seemingly disappearing. Score one for the anti tank rounds.

Ruby managed another five shots before the beowolves got the presence of mind to charge, moving with incredibly fast, loping strides. The odds were around ten to one, in favor of the things that went bump in the night. Ruby so needed a soundtrack for this.

With a smooth motion, she flipped the rifle to hold it by the barrel. With a normal gun, this would be idiotic, but Ruby had worked special supports into the thing. In addition, the girl was much, much faster than she had any right to be, and she generally considered a reasonable pace for a run around sixty miles an hour, and when she really tried she couldn't even be seen moving.

Which meant that when she swung it baseball style into the head of the first beowolf, there was a very loud crunch and a very dead nasty. Ruby whirled like a bizarre dancer for a metal band, swinging her rifle into the monsters with loud, audible crunches and cracks. It was times like these she sorely wished the scythe was working. A sharp object made everything in life so much easier.

A few minutes later, the beowolves were dead.

Ruby picked her way around the shattered bodies, carefully inspecting the basement for the first time. It was big for one thing, easily fifty feet square. The ceiling was about ten feet high. Other than the bodies, it was completely bare except for a small pine tree.

"Hey, Pyrrha?" Ruby called up. "I think I found the problem."

"What do you need?" Ruby heard from above.

"Uh... something to burn a tree?" Ruby suggested. "And it needs to be thorough. Get like, some gasoline or something."

"Only with you..." Pyrrha sighed. "I'll be right back." She returned a few minutes later with a can. "It's one of the ones for people stranded on a highway." Pyrrha explained, dropping it down to Ruby's waiting arms. "Do you have a lighter?"

"Nope."

"Catch." Pyrrha tossed one down. "And try not to burn anything down?"

"Except the tree." Ruby said, liberally sprinkling it with gasoline.

"Except the tree..." Pyrrha sighed. "Just be careful?"

"You send me to kill a pack of roving demonic monsters and you're worried about setting fire to a tree?" Ruby griped, judging her work to be adequate and flicking the lighter. The tree went up in a cheerful, crackling, sooty blaze, and Ruby stumbled back a bit, coughing and choking. "Ack!" She sputtered.

"Sorry!" Pyrrha called down. "You alright?"

"Yup, fine." Ruby said, backing out of range of the cloying smoke. "Make sure that all of it's down to charcoal when I leave."

"Why are we being so careful with a tree?" Pyrrha asked, giving Ruby a hand as she climbed back into the house.

"It's from the dark forest, you know, in Germany?" Ruby said. Pyrrha responded with a blank look. "Where the Grimm's fairy tales come from. Torchwick was using the tree to summon beowolves."

"I don't understand." Pyrrha said. "How?"

"It's all about symbols." Ruby replied. "The tree is from where a lot of stories about wolves came from. So, a person with a lot of Dust or Aura can use it to call them here. Like a whistle... only..." Ruby shrugged. "It's a tree."

"I... see." Pyrrha said, not sounding like she understood at all. "You should leave through the back, if you have somewhere to be. The department can take it from here."

Ruby nodded. "Mkay. See you later then."

Ruby slipped out the back, avoiding the roving pack of paparazzi. She was heading back for her house, strolling cheerfully through the city streets, when her phone rang.

Come at me... and you'll see...

Her sister. Ruby flicked the phone open. "Hey Yang! How are you?"

"Pretty good little sis. Hey, so, I got some news for you. You want the bad first?" Her sister asked.

"Um, good please." Ruby said, unnerved.

"There is no good news." Yang informed her.

"But-"

"I have bad news, and I have the weather."

Ruby resisted the urge to find her sister and kill her. "Fine. What's the weather?"

"Sunny!" Yang replied cheerfully. Ruby glanced up. It definitely looked like rain. "In Philadelphia." Yang added. "Because it's always sunny in Philadelphia."

Ruby glared into space, and imagined replacing her sister's shampoo with glue. "Fine. Bad news then?"

"So, Ozpin heard about your little problems catching the Torchwick gang." Ruby's stomach and her heart had an abrupt introduction. "And he's sending you a partner!"

"But Yang, that's great!" Ruby said cheerfully. "This city is huge and someone to help would be awesome!"

"Yeah... about that..." Yang cleared her throat. "You remember that total bitch you shared a room with back at Beacon?"

"Oh please no..." Ruby groaned.

"She's gonna be there in fifteen minutes, and Ozpin wants you to be at the airport to meet her."

"Fifteen minutes!" Ruby squeaked. "But..."

"I had something come up!" Yang protested.

"You mean you forgot..." Ruby groaned.

"Maybe. Now quit talking and hurry, sis! You're gonna be late for your date!" And with a gleeful chuckle, Yang hung up.

Ruby shut the phone and walked into an alley. There she blurred and vanished in a spray of rose petals, the only sign of her passing a strange trail of wind.

Ruby got to the airport in thirteen minutes. She waited around, having snuck onto the landing strip. Ruby clung to the shadows, avoiding the workers and watching as people departed their planes. How was she even supposed to know what she was-

Oh.

That was a clue.

A sleek private jet in white, with a huge snowflake logo on each side swooped in. Ruby recognized the logo, unfortunately. Her guest had arrived. The plane rolled in and a line of elegantly dressed servants began to disembark, carrying various bits of luggage.

"Careful with that!" A voice snapped from inside. "It says fragile for a reason!"

Weiss Schnee, billionaire, Hunter extraordinaire, and world class bitch stepped off the plane.

A/N: So, how was that? I'm trying my hand at a little Shounen.