Recording #10

January, 22981 AEA

"Despite being banned from my lab, Theo stopped by again yesterday. Ugh, he's so annoying. This time he made fun of me for using notebooks and scrolls to record data, which… Well, what can I say? I'm a sucker for the classics. And before you start worrying, obviously I keep electronic and magical backups. I just enjoy the feel of jotting down my notes with pen and paper. Maybe it's because I like reading books, and... Actually, why do I have to justify this to anyone? I've got better things to do, like observing the Veil. Speaking of which…"

Beacon Academy

November, 78 AGW

Ruby's hands were a blur of motion. Her right was alternating between flipping pages of whatever book was opened up in front of her, and furiously jotting down notes and sketching diagrams onto a large and incredibly thick notebook she had requisitioned from Glynda. Her left was tapping away at her Scroll, simultaneously scrolling through multiple websites to cross reference everything she had learned thus far. While sites were loading, she was also compiling an ever growing message to Ozpin, detailing the requirements for her new lab.

A manic grin was plastered on her false face. Dire circumstances aside, she was learning so much about this new world that it was hard not to feel at least a little bit thrilled at each new piece of information. She missed this feeling: the constant acquisition of knowledge, to refine her understanding of the universe, gave Ruby a rush that she never ever got tired of. Truly, this is what made life worth living, and—in Ruby's own opinion—the only thing seriously worth pursuing in this world.

Her pen dragged along the paper, leaving only a light marking behind. Drat. They really didn't build these pens to last, huh? Though, that seemed to be a common trend among mortal technology. Wait, no, they called themselves 'humans', as Ruby had now learned. Tossing the now defunct writing utensil aside, she took out what would be her fourth pen tonight. Glynda had luckily supplied her with more once Ruby told her she'd be at it all night.

"Miss Rose."

Hmm. She was about halfway through the pages in her notebook. At the rate she was going, Ruby wagered she'd need at least two more, just for the stack of books in front of her.

"Ahem. Miss Rose?"

Fortunately for her, it seemed these Scrolls—which was a weird name by the way, since she was already familiar with magical scrolls—had a decent amount of storage on them. Ruby always kept backups.

"Ruby!"

Wha—? Oh, it was just Glynda. She was standing next to Ruby, arms crossed.

"Sorry, Glynda." She put down her pen and Scroll. "Not exactly used to the whole last names thing, yet. What's up?"

"I'd like to inform you that the fall semester will begin soon." She glanced down at her scroll. "In two days, to be exact."

Wow, she had been in the library for five days? Time flies when you're not trekking through the wilderness with nothing else to do, she supposed. Though, it wasn't exactly five days. Ruby still remembered the look of shock on Glynda's face when she learned Ruby had spent her entire first night at Beacon in the library. Foolishly, she had forgotten that these humans were bogged down by the need to eat and sleep, something she didn't have to worry about.

Though, it wasn't like she was incapable of eating and sleeping. Food would just fall straight through her once it made its way past her mask—and probably get lodged somewhere unpleasant in the process, and while Ruby technically didn't need sleep to survive, it was good for her to organize her thoughts. She likened it to a longer, intense form of meditation. With some prodding from Glynda, she decided it was a good idea to sleep a few hours every day. The influx of all this new information was getting harder to organize, unlike during her time in the wilds.

Come to think of it, she did notice times when Qrow wasn't tailing her back then. 'He must've spent that time eating and sleeping. Ugh, I should have made the connection earlier!'

Sleep aside, Glynda also made a point to deliver food to her dorm room, seeing as Ruby never so much as glanced at the cafeteria. She wasn't sure why she was getting preferential treatment in the first place, though it likely had to do with why Ozpin wanted her in Beacon. Regardless, the food was quite useless to her in her current state. Maybe once her lab was up, she could convert it to biomass and begin rebuilding her original body, but as it stood, she didn't have the tech to do anything. A purely magical organic reconstruction process from food would be too risky, not to mention painful and messy, especially if anything went wrong. She definitely didn't want to accidentally summon a giant flying spaghetti monster and raze Beacon to the ground, she just got here! So instead, she just hid whatever meal-of-the-day Glynda gave her in her cloak's pocket dimension. It could stay fresh in there for later use.

Glynda continued talking while she was reminiscing. "May I ask what weapon you will use for Initiation?"

Ruby froze. A weapon? Oh! That's right, she wasn't supposed to be using magic in public. Silly Ozpin and his rules. Still, the limitation gave her a few ideas she just had to test out. She popped up from her seat, scooping up her journal and Scroll.

"Thanks for reminding me, Glynda! Uh, Ozpin mentioned something about forges earlier?"

"...Yes, he did. We have a facility here for weapon crafting and upkeep. You can navigate to it using your Scroll." Glynda paused, and her eyes narrowed slightly. "You don't have a weapon of your own, do you?"

"I will soon!" Ruby replied, pocketing her tools before zipping off to the forges. "See ya later!"

Contradictions. They weren't inherently bad, but rather, necessary for developing a theory. No, the presence of contradictions in Ruby's character wasn't what was bothering Ozpin; it was what they implied. Beside him, Qrow's jaw was desperately trying to hit the floor, as both of them watched her work from the entrance to Beacon's weapon crafting facility.

Ruby was a veritable whirlwind of activity, going through the motions of testing, observing and refining her understanding of Dust on the facilities practice dummies. She was lightning quick in her methodology: As soon as she'd fired off a shot of Fire Dust from one of their practice guns, her notebook was at the ready, instantly jotting down everything that had just occurred, before turning to one of the many blueprints laying around her workstation and adding to them. This whole loop took at most thirty seconds, before Ruby moved on to the next piece of Dust-based weaponry laying in front of her. Behind her lay an increasingly large pile of used guns, inert swords, smouldering battleaxes, and the like, all completely exhausted of their Dust ammunition. As practiced as she was, her behavior actually wasn't the main problem. It was those damned blueprints.

Scattered about her workstation were incredibly meticulous and detailed sketches and diagrams of various weaponry. The first few—which Ozpin could tell were first since he had to fish them out from under the rest—were relatively tame. He could see that Ruby had started out small: a shortsword lined with Dust along the flat of the blade, a staff with a rotating Dust chamber, and other basic weapons.

Then the problems began as he moved further up the blueprint hierarchy. Simple martial weaponry gave way to increasingly complex designs that Ozpin had trouble wrapping his head around. Though he had lived for thousands of years, Ozpin was a little too busy keeping the world safe to truly educate himself on the various sciences of the world, instead opting to learn from whatever his current host knew.

The first blueprint that marked this shift detailed a minigun. Simple, right? But then he noticed that the firing mechanism didn't use any bullets.

Then he noticed that the six barrels could actually detach from the clamp and expand to form a larger hexagon, whose inner circumference about fit the shape of his arm.

Then he noticed the hexagon was held together with a dynamic hard-light mesh that reacted to internal and external stimuli.

Then he noticed an additional, larger barrel that only revealed itself when the weapon was fully expanded.

Then he read Ruby's notes, scrawled out as an afterthought, her handwriting much sloppier than before.

{substitute Gravity Dust + Hard-Light Dust in formation of stabilized laser focus for seventh barrel}

{no Adamantine to work with yet: approx. capable firing ten concentrated ion beams before cooldown and repair required}

Adamantine? What on Remnant was that? And how valid were these designs? The utter look of concentration on Ruby's face told him she was taking this seriously, and even ignoring the parts of the blueprints that he would need an expert to verify, her other weapon designs were practically flawless. Firing mechanisms that could account for jamming and recoil in innovative ways he had never seen, highly adaptable mekashift frames that blew Qrow's Harbinger out of the water, utterly foreign alloys that Ozpin was certain didn't exist yet—Ruby was a genius with weapons and engineering.

And that was a problem.

Because it completely burned down his theory that Ruby was a child of the wilderness, who just happened upon Qrow while he was out in the field. And from the ashes, Ozpin could only think of two new theories, for now.

The first was that Ruby was actually telling Qrow the truth, that she actually was over fifteen thousand years old, and the places they thought she made up actually existed. And yet, how could that be? Ozpin had lost count of the exact number of lives he had lived, but in all the history he could remember, he had never met someone like Ruby, never heard of a place called Aetera, and never discovered a floating city until Atlas came around. And that wasn't even accounting for the fact that being fifteen thousand prevented her from being a Maiden, leaving the magic she used to save Qrow unexplained. Was she like him and Salem? But the Gods never mentioned another immortal, and she seemed likewise unaware. Ozpin just couldn't see a rational way out of this line of thinking, not without going down the rabbit hole of playing twenty questions with Ruby.

The second theory fared no better. It assumed Ruby was lying about her age and origin, but for what purpose? He had asked the other Headmasters for more information earlier in the week; a 'Ruby' matching her description never existed in the four Kingdoms. While this was fine by itself, as plenty of fringe settlements usually never got reported properly, Ozpin couldn't help but think back to the circumstances in which Summer Rose had disappeared. As Qrow had said, the timeline matched up. Yet Ruby carried with her knowledge that was simply impossible to gain living in the wilderness.

In other words, Summer died twelve years ago looking for the Maiden in the Grimmlands, and Ruby gained an advanced technical and magical education without appearing in any Kingdom.

…Ozpin prayed those two facts weren't connected.

The mysteries kept piling up. He needed answers, and he needed them now. He approached Ruby as she began drawing up another blueprint, this time of some giant double-headed battle axe that could, among other things, turn into a personal jetpack.

"Miss Rose, if I may ask, where did you learn to do this?" He held up a few of her designs.

"Years of experience, Ozpin." She replied, continuing to sketch while talking. "Oh, and can you not touch my blueprints? I haven't made backups yet."

"Of course, my apologies." He set the sheets of paper down. "But I was hoping you could be a bit more specific about where?"

She looked up, clearly confused. "I believe we've been over this? I was born and grew up in Aetera, and set up a lab in the King's floating city, where I did most of my research." So, she was sticking to his first theory.

"I'm pretty sure Qrow and I told you this when we first met, you know, right before you told me how scary my magic is." She waved her hands sarcastically.

"And who is this King you speak of?" He was willing to brush it off the first time, but now, he wasn't so sure.

One look at Ruby told him he had overstepped. "No one you would know. He was King of all Eternals, and… a close friend." She whispered the last part under her breath.

Eternals? But before he could ask more, Ruby turned her eyes back down to her blueprint and started furiously drawing again, determined to end the conversation there. Ozpin was reminded of when they first met, and her solemn words when he questioned her motives. Her emotions were genuine. He just had to believe that.

"I'm sorry, Ruby. I didn't mean to stir up bad memories."
She chuckled. "It's fine. Water under the bridge, as you people say. Besides..." Her eyes narrowed, and for a moment it seemed like she was just talking to herself. "I will see them again, no matter what."

If he were here, Ironwood might have said Ozpin was going soft, but the wizard was all too willing to accept her resolution. To him, that kind of determination couldn't be maliciously faked. With a start, Ozpin realized that in the end, it didn't matter who or what she was. She needed his help, and he needed hers. That's really all that mattered.

He smiled and took his leave, dragging Qrow along with. "Try not to go too overboard with the design, okay? I'm not made of money."

A panicked shout of apologies reverberated across the facility as the doors closed behind them.

"In other news, the notorious 'gentleman thief' Roman Torchwick escaped capture again last night, marking the fourth Dust store robbery perpetrated by him this month. Police are still working on tracking him down. If you have any information, please call at—"

The news feed cut off, and a hologram of stern-looking blonde with glasses appeared. Wasn't this one of Uncle Qrow's coworkers? What was her name again?
"Hello, and welcome to Beacon! My name is Glynda Goodwitch."

Well, she got her answer. Glynda's hologram launched into a speech as the airship began to descend, though Yang didn't really pay attention. Was Uncle Qrow already on campus? He told her he hadn't taken up an official teaching position, so she supposed they would meet whenever he felt like it. The ship landed, and she hopped off the ramp as it unfolded, deftly avoiding the projectile vomit of some poor blonde schmuck near her. Gross.

"So this is Beacon…" It was an even more impressive sight up close. Sure, she had seen the pictures, and heard about it from Uncle Qrow's stories, but it failed to capture the sense of excitement she was feeling at seeing the real thing. Second, third, and fourth year students, milling about or watching the newbies (herself included), created exactly the kind of atmosphere Yang was anticipating.

This was Beacon. This was where the best of the best came from! It was the perfect place to become stronger, to forge herself into the most powerful fighter she could be. And maybe one day soon, Raven wouldn't even see her coming.

Grinning to herself, she made her way along the main avenue, taking in the sights. Vomit Boy was apologizing to some white-haired girl over a vial of Dust she was holding. She watched from afar with a bemused expression as the blonde seemed to stumble over every word, and the girl: a Schnee, she realized from the crest on her luggage, continued to berate him. Eventually, a black-haired girl stepped to his rescue, or was it to put down the Schnee? Either way, all three took off soon after, pointedly ignoring each other. From what Uncle Qrow had told her, this was standard fare for a Schnee, so she chose not to worry about it.

Nearing the fountain statue in front of the amphitheater, Yang was met with an odd sight. A dark-haired girl sat on top of the Beowolf statue, kicking her legs back and forth as she watched people make their way past the main doors. She had an extremely thick notebook in hand, and often stopped watching to scribble fiercely into it. She was already wearing a first year's uniform, which was weird, and fit a red cloak over it. Huh, what a coincidence. Not that a red cloak was particularly unique, just that this was the first one she found ever since listening to that drunk Huntsman's tale.

Curiosity overtaking her, she went to talk to her, only to be beaten to the punch by the Schnee.

"Excuse me! You, up there!"

The girl blinked and tore her attention away from the passerby, looking down at them. "Yes?"

Yang began talking with the Schnee simultaneously, intercepting her.

"You shouldn't be sitting—"

"Cool cloak! But where'd—"

"—there, who do you think you are?"

"—you get that uniform from?"

The two prospective students glared at each other, though Yang's was more playful. She grinned as she saw Ice Queen Jr. huff in annoyance. But before anything else could be said, Red hopped down from the statue.

"I'm Ruby! Nice to meet you!" She hesitated, then tentatively stuck out her hand.

"Yang Xiao Long." The red cloaked girl relaxed as Yang shook her hand. Soft, and utterly lacking calluses. Curious…

"Thank goodness. I wasn't sure if that was the right thing to do in this situation." Huh? She took out her notebook again and scribbled something in it.

Beside her, the Schnee had regained her composure, and stepped forward. "Weiss Schnee." She said curtly.

"Well then, Ruby. Care to explain yourself?"

"Sure!" She chirped brightly. "The cloak's been with me since my second century, and I'll be a first year here this year, hence the uniform."

Weiss took a startled step back. "B-but we haven't gone through Initiation yet! How can you already be a student?" Yang was similarly perplexed. Was she just gonna ignore Ruby's first answer?

The cloaked girl shrugged. "Ask Ozpin. Though, you probably won't get a straight answer out of him." Did the Headmaster personally accept her?

"And I still have to do Initiation with the rest of you Humans, anyways." She huffed in annoyance at the last part.

Weiss was clearly outraged at that remark. "How dare you talk down to me! The nerve of you people…" She spun around and stormed off towards the auditorium. Awkward.

"Riiight. I guess I'll head in too. You comin'?" Yang stared curiously at Ruby, who was back to writing notes.

"Nope! I've got more people to watch." She leapt back on top of the Grimm statue. "See you around, Yang!"

Yang walked through the doorway and mingled among the crowd of Initiates. A Schnee and a nutcase prodigy, huh? Beacon was certainly turning out to be quite interesting. A lock of crimson hair, and the gleam of golden armor caught her attention.

Yang's smile was all teeth. She was here too. Perfect.

A/N: Adamantine is my own stand-in for the the component of Eternal tech that made it powerful. It's never named in the game, but I figured Adamantine would work since Eternal Artifacts ingame are described as durable to the point of unbreakable. More on that later.

As you might have guessed by the subject matter and origin of this fic, I'm not a very a creative person. The minigun that could transform into a laser cannon was my attempt at a 'cool' weapon. The double-headed axe is a reference. Feel free to award yourself however many Internet points you want if you get it.

Also, I won't be adding 'Summon: Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster' to Ruby's repertoire of spells, despite how fun that might sound on paper. Sorry!

Concerns and criticisms are appreciated, especially as I begin to introduce even more characters with different personalities. Thanks for reading!