It was October 31st and evening was starting to fall. You could still see a little bit of sun in the sky, but soon it would be dark enough for all the kids of Remnant to go out into the night. Adorned with costumes in the hopes of getting bags full of candy.

The thought of this was enough to give Ruby Rose a brief smile on her face. Something she most certainly welcomed given her not very great at all mood.

It had been about two years since the eon-old threat to the world known as Salem had been defeated and so many amazing things had happened since then that Ruby didn't even know where to begin.

Raven had more than atoned for her misdeeds and now lived happily with the rest of the family as Raven Xiao Long, Blake had become a pivotal leader in pushing equality for humans and faunus, and Weiss had restored the Schnee name to its former glory. In some ways, even beyond.

A happy ending that Ruby felt her team deserved was only the start though. So many of their other friends had become prominent figures in the newfound peace spreading across Remnant. And she kept in very good touch with all of them.

Jaune, Ren, Nora, Sun, Illia, and one of her most cherished, Oscar.

It had been a long time since Ozpin's merge with Oscar had been completed. Leaving nothing of old wizard within him except thousands of years worth of memories. Ruby was grateful to Ozpin for many things. One of the most notable being the opportunity he allowed for Ruby to meet Oscar. It may have been unintentional, but it brought into Ruby's life the boy who she had fallen in love with, and had now been dating for quite a substantial amount of time.

She had made so many wonderful friends. And it was in the interest of their enjoyment of the evening that she had chosen to keep the reason why she felt so terrible a secret.

October 31st may have been the day of the ever popular Halloween. But it also happened to Ruby's birthday. A fact that even to this day is something she always found cool. And she had a small amount of pride over the fact that she never let it go her head. Even as a child.

She and her friends, as well as a few notable members of her family and those of some of her friends, were currently on vacation in Mistral. Well, sort of a vacation. Grimm roaming the world were decreasing more and more as time went on. But being the Huntsman and Huntresses responsible for ending the Grimm's very Queen meant that there was no shortage of attempts for people to ask for their help in dealing with very powerful remnants of her minions.

To compensate though, many of their employers made sure to make their off-time of where they were staying as relaxing as possible. If Ruby were to be honest with herself, she considered a lot of the attempts at this to be overkill.

Currently they were all staying at a very spacious house lent to them by the Mistral Council. But they were far from the only visitors.

When offered the position of president of the Schnee Dust company after Jacques' methods became extremely frowned upon, Weiss had declined the offer. And per her request, the Atlas Council chose to disband the company entirely. Agreeing with Weiss completely when she said that the dangerous working conditions her father once enforced should be abolished, and that no one company should have as much power over a resource as valuable as dust as her bloodline once had.

This did lead other people to take up the reigns and start their own dust businesses. None of them had ever reached the point of wealth the Schnee family had acquired, but a few of them had still earned a hefty amount of riches.

One such company was currently hosting a party in Mistral that was both fancy yet halloween themed at the same time. The party encouraged halloween costumes over formal wear for example.

The party was known to be happening for about 3 weeks now, but it was invitation only. Almost everyone who was currently staying at the house rented to Ruby and her friends was invited on the grounds of them being heroes who had contributed to Salems defeat. The only two exceptions were Zwei, because he's a dog, and Ruby herself. At first she thought her invitation was just taking longer to arrive. But she started to get confused as time went on. Some of the party representative's were even asked by Weiss and a few of her other friends if some recognition of Ruby's birthday could be made since the party fell on the same day. The representative's agreed in what seemed like a joyous manner. Which only added to Ruby's confusion.

It was on an outing to check the status of the missions they had been called to Mistral for when she figured out what was going on. She was approached by Whitley Schnee, the little ball of snot that Ruby thought had no right to call himself the brother of Weiss. Progress in equality between humans and faunus had come along greatly over the years. But Whitley was still the same borderline clone of Jacques he had always been. How the Atlas council didn't force the W in his name to be changed to an S by now Ruby would never know.

A matter only made worse by the fact that even after the end of the Schnee Dust Company Whitley was still well-off. Not as wealthy as he once was, but the hefty sum of Lien he was still earning didn't do him in any favors in getting rid of his arrogance.

It had been just under two weeks until the party where he dropped the truth.

"Ah. Ruby Rose. I do hope you're not too upset over your lack of an invitation to the upcoming party."

"No offense. But I kind of doubt you would actually hope that. What makes you think that I don't have an invitation anyway?"

"It's not a matter of "think" it s a matter of "know". And I know because I paid the hostess to retract her decision to invite you."

"Wait, what?"

"Disappointed are we? She had intended to invite you originally. But you know, there's always someone willing to look the other way for some lien. Well I'd best not keep you occupied any further. Enjoy that barbaric waste of time you call being a huntress."

Ruby had a bit of a shocked expression on her face. But knew that approaching Whitley about it any further was pointless. Honestly his low opinion of Huntsman was all she needed to convince herself of that. Like, hello? It was a team of huntresses, one lead by her no less, that killed the greatest threat to the lives of every human and faunus on the planet.

Even so, Ruby was a little irritated. At Whitley for being himself or at the hostess of the party for agreeing to bribery she didn't really know at the moment. Could have been both honestly, but right now she was a little more plagued at how her friends reacted to their invitations.

To say they had all been looking forward to this party was an understatement. It was being very well hyped up and promoted and even Blake showed more excitement than usual at what the event had to offer. A lot more excitement.

It was a bit of a walk back to the house from where Ruby found out the news and that gave her plenty of time to think. Ultimately she decided that she didn't want to ruin the party for the people close to her. So she had feigned ignorance that she received her invitation and allowed her friends and family to continue anticipating the party. A decision she thought more and more was the better move as the days went by since planning for the event was taking up a lot of everyone s time.

She knew that's what she wanted to do. But honestly it was a big group of people close to her and she had been looking forward to spending her 19th birthday with them. She tried not to let it get to her too much. But the upset feeling just kept growing inside of her.

And now here she was, on that 19th birthday of hers, walking back to a house she knew would be completely barren except for her dog. By this point in time she didn't know how she could keep herself from dropping on the couch and crying when she got there. But she knew this party was important to people important to her.

So she kept up her facade all the way until the end. When everyone was getting ready for the party she stepped out of the house, saying that she had some errands to take care of before the event and that she would meet them there.

If "errands" meant "waiting around out of sight until the parties starting time" then she certainly got a lot done. She had made it back to the house, but by then the party had most certainly already started. She could even see through the windows that the lights were out.

She took a deep breath to try and regain her composure. Then she opened the door and turned on the lights. Once she did, she was caught completely off guard by what happened.