A loud smash brought Ruby from her deep slumber. In her panic, rose petals were thrown throughout the small apartment she lived in with her uncle. A second later, Ruby stood in her pajamas, handgun practically stuffed in her unfortunate uncle's face.

A singular raised finger pushed the pistol aside, "good morning Ruby. Get dressed, I got a surprise for ya."

A very sleepy expression finally took in what happened, and with a yawn she replied, "...why did you slam the door open then?"

"I knew it would get you up." That comment received some not-so-nice mumbling.

Qrow quickly learned during his mentorship over Ruby that her curiosity is a force to be reckoned with. She really did not like being left it the dark about anything, and it showed when they left this morning for Vale on this surprise trip, barely catching their flight.

What made the situation at hand worse was the wolves did not appreciate the cramped space they were forced into, and their stress began showing on Ruby. Her right eye would twitch every so often, and she couldn't help but fidget in her seat. Before, Ruby had no problems with bullhead flight.

To Qrow's immense relief, his niece, and more importantly, the wolves, calmed down upon touchdown in Vale. They didn't last long before bounding off towards the most open area in sight. After their weapons had been checked and approved as registered, Ruby had walked towards her children only to be tackled to the ground by all three of them. The squeal of her fall fueled the triplets to continue their ministrations, only letting their mother free from their torture after they were sure she wouldn't do that to them again.

A lunch break and 'small' walk later, all five sat in a forested clearing in Beacon Academy's shadow, which only served to increase Ruby's confusion and curiosity. What purpose would Qrow have taken her all the way to Beacon? Well, she had always been hounded for not voicing her concerns, so into the breach she goes.

"Why are we here?" Ruby asks, only getting a raised finger from Qrow indicating to wait. She huffs in frustration, and turns towards her children, preferring to watch them play, and listen to the voices instantly broadcast from their heads to hers instead of stress over his latest surprise.

A rustle of movement to Ruby's right pulls her attention towards a slightly amused, greying, middle aged man in a green turtleneck and black overcoat. His companion is noticeably less amused, in her equally casual-fancy black dress; pleated blouse and stockings under a pencil skirt.

Ruby slouches and drops her head to stare at the ground, addressing Qrow with, "so you took me into the forest to meet two people under the shadiest conditions? Qrow, was there really no better place for this?"

"I am of a similar mindset," came a snappy retort from the other female in the area. Ruby lifts her head, catching the tail end of a glare directed at her uncle, making the young girl chuckle.

The grey haired man merely nods towards Qrow as he makes eye contact with Ruby while he responds. "Your uncle's reasons are his own, though I would very much like to know them."

She flails her arms around while yelling at her uncle, "See Qrow?! They agree!"

Kicking off the tree Qrow had lazily been leaning against, he gestures to the two strangers. "You already know my reasons Oz. Professors, this is my niece, Ruby and these," Qrow pulls a few folded sheets of paper from his pants pocket to hand off to Oz, "would be my letter of recommendation and her current transcript at Signal so that she may enroll."

"Wait, Oz as in Ozpin? As in the headmaster of Beacon Ozpin? Why am I being enrolled into Beacon already? Don't I have like another two years still?" Ruby's voice rose in pitch as she ranted, her clear confusion, terror, and anxiety rising with each breath.

"What? Did you forget what I said when you starting living in my place? I had a year and a half to get you ready for Beacon's level of combat, and I did my job." Qrow's expression shifts to smugness on those last few words, clearly pleased with himself.

Ozpin, meanwhile, stuffed the papers in his suit pocket for later reading, before he continued, "Just one more thing for me to do."

Ruby's naturally high reflexes would not have normally been able to bring her semblance up in time, but before it could even leave Ozpin's hand, several rose petals flit into existence. A ten lien coin slowed to a fourth of its normal speed as it flied from the headmaster's hand, allowing Ruby to easily catch it. Time sped back up, and she unravelled her fist from around the coin to stare at it in confusion. Looking back up, Ozpin simply smirked, turned around, and walked away with Glynda.

With a loud whoosh, Qrow entered the room and shifted from bird-form right in front of Glynda, effectively derailing whatever train of thought she was discussing with the headmaster.

"Ah, glad you could make it," Ozpin said before the two 'grown adults' could begin their bickering, "coffee?"

Instead, Qrow lifted a newly purchased alcoholic beverage into plain view, eliciting disapproving stares from both of his colleagues. He pops the cork off and pours most of it into a steel flask. "Nah, I'm good."

"Does Ruby know?" Ozpin says with a mixture of worry and the aforementioned disappointment as he leans forward on his ornate desk.

"No. Whenever I do this I disappear for a few days. She can take care of herself." He took a sip of his drink—from the smell of it, mead—and only stopped when he noticed they were waiting for him. "What?"

"While that's good to hear, I didn't mean about your drinking problem. Did you tell her?" The headmaster's hands gestured toward Qrow in a manner denoting his entire existence.

Qrow drew in a deep, resigned breath. "...No, doesn't seem like the right time yet."

"And why is that? You said she could take care of herself." Oz continued pressing, clearly wanting Qrow to break.

"I…" he shook his head to focus on the present, "That's not the point of this meeting. We're here to talk about Ruby's enrollment, not how she was raised."

Ozpin nodded his head, deciding to drop the matter, "Very well. Glynda, you're our aura expert. Anything you'd like to bring up?"

"Actually yes. Her aura felt four times as strong as you'd expect of even a fully trained huntsman. Her wolves gave off the same impression. At first I thought it they all had abnormally strong auras, but when you threw the coin I saw every one of their auras dip to compensate for the impact." Two of the only things that could still get Glynda excited were anger, and aura, the latter of which showing here. As she continued in her speculations, she got more and more animated with her movements, ending with her catching her own excitement and stomping down on it. "Not only that, but I felt the same energy drone that I complained about before Summer's silver eyes unlocked. She's getting close."

"Thank you Glynda. That will be interesting to see how it affects her combat. Qrow, didn't you also say she named those wolves after her mother's story?"

"Yeah, what of it?"

"So far we know that they can speak to Ruby telepathically, Sköll has already manifested his trap, even if he doesn't know how to use it yet, and they share a collective aura pool. Sounds familiar?" Seeing it dawn on Qrow in the form of disbelief and stupefaction, Oz continues, "That is one of the reasons I agreed to this."

"I don't believe it. They're just coincidences. Nothing more." Qrow stood up and walked to the window he flew in through.

"You know that can't be all it is. You are in my inner circle, after all."

Skyhawk, the bullhead's older brother. A massive, towering, flying hunk of metal the size of three bullheads wing to wing. That is what picked up Ruby and the rest of the Beacon initiates in Vale. A freaking skyhawk. She couldn't believe it; she thought they were reserved for military extractions from highly treacherous regions only. Shortly after boarding the vessel, she noticed the vast amounts of space there was. At least a hundred people could ride one of these with room to spare for enough furniture for each of them. There were only twenty, maybe thirty students on board right now.

As Ruby was wandering the halls of this behemoth of Atlas masterwork, she found a nice space to drop off the wolves and let them roughhouse as much as they wished. She loved them dearly, but even as their officially unofficially official mother, they got a bit restless and crazy if they weren't allowed to burn off excess energy.

Well… mostly Sköll, but that's beside the point.

Now she sat in relative silence—ignoring the still instantaneous communication between mother and wolf—with naught but her scroll to entertain, or in this case, torture, her until liftoff, and torture it definitely was. For staring into her face, in a large, annoying red circle next to her sister's face was the number one hundred, fifty six.

Had it really been that many? Ruby couldn't tell as her finger hesitated over the image, debating to finally make contact after the year and a half without. Her nervousness could be felt by the wolves, causing all of them to pour their love and sense of family over her, but even hat wasn't enough to get past the lump in her throat and fear in her heart. After a few seconds of internal debate, Ruby pressed down on the button to read the messages.

Or she would have, if she weren't suddenly implanted in the wall beside her with a very audible crash, followed by many less audible cracks. Ruby's fight or flight response kicked into high gear, pulling her legs up to try and kick her assailant off, before recognizing the smell of burnt Yang. Looking up, Ruby saw what might be the worst way to reunite with a family member, ever. The scene that filled her vision was her sister's signature red eyes, fiery blonde hair, and enough actual fire to have evacuated the room they were in. The blonde yelled something at her, but she couldn't tell what, pain overwriting her hearing.

"Ow. Yang. Collarbone. Useful. Would like to keep." Ruby wrapped her hands around Yang's arm, trying to push against the pressure to no avail. She had always been stronger than the reaper, at least as far as brute strength is concerned. Out of the corner of her eye, she barely catches another, distinctly male, head of blond hair turn around and walk away.

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR DAMN COLLARBONE," a shift in pressure and grip said otherwise, "WHY DIDN'T YOU AT LEAST READ MY TEXTS?!"

"What makes you think I haven't?" Yang simply points at Ruby's forgotten scroll on the floor. "Oh. Right, transparent screens." Ruby's face drops back to its nervous outlook at the reminder.

"Yeah, about as transparent as you. How are you even here? We're off to Beacon." As Yang speaks, the lilac begins to return before suddenly her completely scattered mind goes full circle and she is blazing anew. "YOU COULD'VE AT LEAST TOLD ME I WOULD STILL GET TO SEE YOU!"

"Yang, let me down please." She tries, thankfully getting immediate compliance. Straightening out her clothes, the reaper shoots forward and wraps her arms around the rightfully pissed off blonde. "I'm sorry, I know I should have said something. Qrow has been training me ever since, and you know what that means."

The fire fades ever so slightly as the older sister reciprocates her hug, "Oh come on, his training isn't that bad."

"No, but it's time consuming. I barely had time for my own wolves, when we weren't trying to figure out how I'd fight with them." Ruby pulls away from the hug, and steps back, sitting down on the bench she had been sitting on earlier.

"So they're still around?" Yang questions, laying her hand on the wall and leaning into it. Watching her sister closely, all she got was a smirk. "You gonna answer me or-" her sentence was cut off as a warm mass impacts her back, knocking the brawler to the ground. Rolling over, Yang was immediately subjected to one big happy puppy. Sköll was relentless in his face-licking, obviously much happier to see Yang than his siblings. Hati strolls over just to lay down next to Ruby, not caring whether she's teased and called 'momma's girl' by Sköll again. Fenrir bounded down the hallway and batted Sköll off the brawler, quickly causing a fight, blurring their fur colors of black, grey, and yellow.

"I take that as a yes." Yang finally manages after her experience. She grins after hearing Ruby giggle.

'It's showtime!' Ruby stood by the steel box that was the rocket locker administered to her by Beacon to house her precious sweetheart, which she was currently caressing as she mentally psyched herself for what was to come.

The previous day had been hectic catching up with Yang, while trying to find the auditorium where Professor Ozpin gave a mildly unnerving speech that seemed to do its job at chasing those of weaker constitutions away. After that, everyone slept in the ballroom together—which was interesting to say the least—but now the sun was rising and initiation began.

And Ruby was ready for it.

Yang on the other hand still had some inner worries with her sister's presence at the top. Ruby's clear confidence only made it worse. 'How much can somebody change in so little time?' The Blonde hid her woes and sauntered up to the obvious weapons nut, wanting to see if she really had changed,. "Well you look confident. Any reason?" Leaning in so as to both corner Ruby and look her in the eyes, Yang couldn't spot any signs of it being a mask.

Ruby visibly jumped, really not prepared for her sister's appearance. Quickly regaining her composure, she turned towards Yang and holstered Crescent Rose on her back. "Let's just say, monsters are my speciality. People not so much."

"Still an introvert I see, good to know not everything about you has changed." Yang says, crashing into the rocket-locker beside her. "But, I guess change is all that can really come from Qrow's influence and three foreign voices in your head."

"Hey, don't blame my kids." Reaching into the locker, Ruby pulls out her last item of note, her pistol. Still gunmetal grey and unfinished, stencil marks in place with some light etching already started. Turning back towards her conversation partner, she smiles at the look Yang is giving her. Putting the gun in the folds of her cloak, Ruby sighs, and runs her other hand through her hair, "Have I really changed that much?"

"Well, you're not exactly the same little sister I knew. You used to only mutter curses, but when we left the Skyhawk, I'm pretty sure I heard you say 'goddamnit' as I went to hang with my old friends. And then there's the subject of your wolves. Normally I'd say calling them your kids is an example of classic Ruby childishness, but you've taken that one to heart. If I didn't know better, you could have actually given birth to them." Her gaze turns more serious, looking her sister over, "Unless… You're into that sort of thing."

"YANG!" Ruby's face flushed redder than her namesake, a punch tossed at her laughing sister's shoulder.

The blonde, shrugging off the surprisingly hard blow while trying to harass her sister more, barely manages to say with another shrug, "What? No kink shaming here."

After throwing another punch, this time narrowly dodged by a still laughing Yang, Ruby retorted with, "You have no room to talk! Remember how you were during your boy craze?!"

Finally calm, the blonde bombshell replies with a wistful tone and a wave of her hand, "Ah, yes. The boy-bands."

"HAVE YOU NO SHAME?!" Ruby eyes her rocket locker, thinking it might be a good spot to hide. Maybe even escape.

"Not when you're so easily flustered." The older sister easily finished the conversation there, that annoying smirk plastered on her face taunting Ruby's very dignity.

About to throw herself into her locker and await the end of all things, both her and her sister's attentions are pulled to the opposite side of the locker room. A certain blond boy, in his ever present 'charm,' apparently decided to hit on another group of girls, and he is clearly 'enjoying' his consequence. A spear piercing his hoodie was probably the luckiest punishment, all things considered.

The soft slap of palm against forehead pulls Yang's attention back to her sister, only to hear her mutter, "Goddamnit Jaune. How did you even get into Beacon?"

"Someone you know?"

"In a way." The reaper walks over to 'Jaune', barely slow enough for the armored one to pull her sword-spear free from the concrete he is embedded in and walk away apologizing as she goes. He slides down the wall with nary a sound. Evidently hearing Ruby's approach, he looks up, only to groan in defeat at the sight of the little devil.

Reaching her arm out, Ruby says, "Jaune, did you even listen to what I had to say the last time you asked me what I know about dating?"

"...That you have no experience…?" The crumbled boy offers while praying to whatever gods he can think of off the top of his head that he's right. He grabs her hand to be helped up, yet again surprised by her strength.

"And that even I can tell you're doing it wrong." Seeing Jaune open his mouth, Ruby deadpans, "And no, your parents' advice isn't helping your cause."

Jaune droops his head in forfeit, "Yeah, you're right. I should just stop."

"Well you two seem awfully close." Ruby's torturer saunters over with yet another annoying smirk, "Actually, there's another change for you. Since when did you have friends?"

With an eye roll, emphasized by her tongue poking out in Yang's direction, Ruby returns her focus to Jaune. "Come on you big baby, let's go to those cliffs."

The blonde brawler let out a troubled sigh at the sight of watching the stranger who had become her sister leave the locker room consoling the socially awkward boy. "Change number four."