Destiny Finds Us

by RWBY Order

They are a universe, and every star is a story, bound by Destiny. Between these stars, some things change. In one she is blind, in another, a soldier, and in yet another a huntress. But for everything that changes, something stays the same. Ruby always defends what she loves, Weiss is always stronger than she thinks, and Blake always runs. Only, what if Weiss never came to Beacon?

15. 13: Extensions of Ourselves

***IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE AT THE END OF THIS ONE***

0000000000

Some Years Earlier

The hard stone was coarse against Ruby's palms has she scaled the cliff, and the hot Mistrali sun beat down on the back of her neck. Thankfully, she thought, the climb wasn't particularly hard, and the sweat that beaded against her forehead was mostly due to the heat rather than exertion. Her left hand gripped a finger hold and she heaved herself up, years of muscle allowing her to gain more elevation easily, and a quick burst of her semblance carried her up further still.

A soft gust of wind blew across her, and she was thankful. This part of the mountain was high enough to be out of the tropical valley it bordered, and so the wind was pleasantly cool. Still far too humid though, so even the small amount of sweat she was producing wasn't evaporating and was causing her clothes to stick to her skin. She reached up again, getting close to her goal now. In her earpiece, a smooth voice spoke in a hushed whisper, "They're about halfway to the clearing now, ETA ten minutes. Are you ready, Ruby?"

"Almost," Ruby said, not bothering to hush her own voice. She heaved herself higher yet. She glanced over her shoulder and took a moment to appreciate the view. From her vantage point, a good two hundred or so feet up the sheer cliff face, she could see out over the valley. Or, at least, she could see out over the dense jungle canopy that covered the valley. Her eyes locked on to one of the few clearings that dotted the place, her target. From her vantage point, she could almost see the ground through the break in the canopy. "Just a little more. How's Yang doing?"

A quiet huff of air on the other end of the line that Ruby knew was a laugh, and then, "She's probably thirsty, but nothing she can't handle. I'm staying on them just in case, don't worry." After that, the little conversation petered off naturally, both women focusing on their mission.

The mission in question was a rather impromptu one. There was a small village situated at one end of this valley, on a river that served as a decent source of trade with Mistral. Said village had a rather serious problem with a large bandit clan that resided somewhere in the jungle and, as far as Ruby understood it, subsisted almost entirely on plunder from raids on the village's mines, farms, and boat-caravans.

Over the years, what Ruby wouldn't hesitate to call a small war had been waged between the clan and the village, but the people here were so far removed from society that they could hardly afford proper weapons. The average soldier was armed with a spear, and the few with guns hardly knew which end went 'bang'. It was all they could do to scrape up enough money to hire Ruby and her team to finally see about putting an end to the killings.

They had only been in the village for a few days at this point, trying to work out some kind of action plan. Ruby heaved herself up again, a burst of her semblance carrying her just feet from her goal. The biggest problem barring any potential peaceful agreement was that the village didn't know where exactly the bandits were. According to the villagers, they had a headquarters somewhere in the jungle or the mountains, which at this point had gained a near-mythological status in their community. Spread out throughout the jungle, however, was an unknown number of outposts that the bandits were very defensive of.

It was one of those outposts that caused this little impromptu rescue mission. Evidently, some people from one of the village's little mining communities had stumbled across one of these outposts and, as per their modus operandi, a small detachment of the bandits had taken them captive and were moving them to be killed. That's what these bandits did, according to the town's leader. They had a strict 'no survivors' policy when it came to people from outside their clan finding their camps, and were ritualistic in the extremes they went to.

Finally, Ruby got her hand over the lip of the small outcropping she had spent the past five minutes free-climbing towards. One hand was already pulling Crescent Rose, in her compact form, off of Ruby's back as her other pulled her upwards. Thankfully, one of the now-captives had gotten off a radio broadcast before their capture. After a quick bout of planning, they managed to insert Yang along their path to the clearing and have her "captured" too.

"Where are they, Blake?" Ruby spoke to the mountain breeze.

"About seven minutes out now," the voice from the other end of Ruby's scroll-connected earpiece spoke.

Ruby plopped down on the hard rock, not really minding the ache it left in her behind. Crescent Rose sat folded in her lap, and she took a swig from her canteen. The water soothed her parched throat, but didn't do much to alleviate the oppressing heat. At least the climb wasn't so strenuous as to elevate her heart rate much.

Of course, she felt a little bit of stress knowing her sister was being held over a metaphorical fire, but she knew there was very little that the bandits could do to her. There were only maybe three or four people in the valley (outside of Ruby's team) that even had an activated aura, let alone any real training with it. That was one of the few reliable pieces of intelligence the villiagers were able to give them, that very few of the bandits had any aura to speak of.

If Yang was alone, maybe Ruby would be worried. She didn't have Ember Celica on her (as even folded up they looked like gaudy golden bracelets, and that's just begging the bandits to steal them). Even without them, Ruby was confident Yang could keep pace in a fight with the seven bandits transporting the prisoners, even if they were armed and she wasn't, but it would be close. Only, Yang wasn't alone.

The flat outcropping only extended out about five or so feet, not enough room to lay out on. It also provided nothing to brace a rifle on, but Ruby was confident in her ability to make the shot anyway. She adjusted her position a bit, curling her right leg underneath her and sitting on her calf. Her left foot she placed flat on the ground, putting her knee about level with her chest. She then extended Crescent Rose.

Her weapon was a wonderful feat of versatile engineering, and it always made her smile a little smile when she felt the mechanics of her rifle working smoothly. The barrel extended out, but the blade remained folded against it. The base of what would be the shaft of the scythe extended fully out, before folding back in on itself making a stock for the rifle. Finally, her pistol grip and trigger mechanism extended from the bottom of the receiver, and the sight extended from the top. Ruby took a moment to eye the sight. She had zeroed it earlier, but she quickly made sure it was situated firmly on her gun. It was a proper telescopic scope, larger than her normal four-times that she used on standard hunts. She glanced through it, making sure her sight picture was clear and free of smudges. It was, so next she released the magazine from the frame, glancing over her ammunition one last time. They were simple bullets that she had loaded herself. Unlike her melee bullets, which she mixed gravity dust into the propellant to help her throw herself around in fights, these were simple gunpowder loads with steel projectiles. Nice, simple, heavy fifty-caliber bullets. She slid them back into the magazine well. That done, she shouldered her rifle, bracing her left elbow on her knee for stability.

Finally, she reached around her back, gripping the slate grey cloak she had brought along in place of her typical flashy red one, as this one was the same color as the rocks surrounding her, and draped it over herself and Crescent Rose, hiding the crimson finish of her gun from sight while leaving her head,scope, and muzzle uncovered. Then, she peered through the scope and was very still.

All in all, it was a process that took less than two minutes, but was something she did almost religiously whenever she had an important shot to make. From her vantage point so far up the mountain, Ruby could see over the trees and into the clearing. She was maybe a mile away from it, but through her sight it may as well have been within arm's reach. It was always this clearing. This was the one location the bandits didn't hide. It was meant as a statement, Ruby presumed, a way for the bandits to boldly say "you can't stop us" to the villagers by allowing them to know the location their people were killed at. That, or it was meant as a kindness, always executing their captives in the same place to the villagers could recover the bodies. Either way, they were murderers and leeches, sucking the life out of an otherwise peaceful community.

The executions were random, too. No one in the village could predict when one would take place and could never stop them. Once every few days a few people would go to the clearing. Sometimes they would come back empty handed, other times with bodies. Often, no one would have even realized the dead were missing until their bodies turned up. A few times, like this one, one of the captives got put a call for help, but the bandits were armed much better that any of the villagers, and there was only so much a group of farmers with swords and spears could do against bandits with rifles and bombs. Ruby frowned, she hated bandits, and had seen far, far too many of them in her few years as a huntress. They clung to the wilds of Remnant like a mold or a cancer, toxic to the world around them. This was her job, what she had been trained to do, what she had been trained to think, at Beacon. Making the world a better place.

This group, though, was different than most other clans. They seemed more organized, almost cult-like in their secrecy. At the end of the day though, they were murderers and thieves. Any other personal qualities they had were secondary to that fact. Beacon had taught her that, too. She just had to remember that, stave off the guilt.

"They're coming up on the clearing now," Blake whispered some time later.

Ruby returned her focus to her sight picture as the bandits emerged from the brush, and all the training and justifications in the world couldn't prevent that familiar uneasiness from manifesting in her belly at seeing a human in her crosshairs. She already knew from Blake, but still Ruby counted them herself. Seven bandits, four male, three female, all armed with a menagerie of weapons and wearing mismatched leather and metal armor. Some had more advanced weapons like the caseless Atlesian Carbines the military had been using for years now, but two looked like they were still carrying weapons that fired brass cartridges like Ruby favoured. One bandit even held one of those advanced Atlesian Energy Rifles Ruby had seen in commercials (there was an 'as seen on TV' joke somewhere here), and seeing as his helmet appears to have once been the head of an AK-200 android, Ruby could guess where he got it from. Most interesting, however, was the one who appeared to be the leader, who carried a revolver in his left hand. Revolvers were less than ideal in the wilds, with their heavily limited capacity. The gunsmiths of Remnant had developed a million more efficient weapons since the revolver's conception. They were impractical now, obsolete, collector's pieces. One did not take a revolver to a Hunt, nor to a battle amongst other people. No, you did not take a revolver to a situation with variables, with moving targets or opposition. If there was any doubt of his intentions, it was eliminated.

The bandits marched the prisoners into the center of the clearing, four in total. The three villagers who had been taken consisted of a man who looked like an emotional wreck, a burly looking lady wearing a pair of overalls the miners in the valley seemed to like and whose skin was mottled with grey splotches, some kind of faunus or another, and... Ruby paused. She looked closer, taking care to keep her crosshair off of the civilians. The last one was just a kid, he couldn't have been more than seventeen. Ruby's gut turned, he was frail looking, probably hadn't been eating right. He couldn't harm a fly if he tried, but here he was with his wrists chained together and his eyes blindfolded like some kind of criminal.

The final member of the four was Ruby's sister. Yang had her hair tied up and tucked into a ball cap, and wore an unflattering beige T-shirt and cargo pants, looking as normal as Ruby and Blake could make her. Ruby saw the leader's mouth move, and each prisoner turned to face him. Ruby hovered her crosshair on his head, using it as a reference for her own wobble. At this distance a shift of millimeters by her hands would result in a projectile deviation of multiple feet. She held as still as years of training would allow her, and the crosshair stilled for a quarter-second, only to twitch off-target as a fresh rush of blood was supplied to her limbs. Each heartbeat fouled her aim, but this too was something she had practiced ritualistically for years.

Ba-bum, twitch, pause, still.

Ba-bum, pause.

Ruby slowed her breathing, allowing each breath to be long and even, feeling her heart rate slow.

Ba-bum, pause.

Too much movement would ruin her aim, so when Ruby spoke it was a whisper, "Blake, turn up the sensitivity on your mic, I want to hear what he's saying." There was no response, but after a second she could hear the sounds of the jungle through her earpiece as Blake lurked unseen in the treeline.

A second later, a voice called out, in time with the movement of the leader's lips, "Kneel!"

The crying man all but crumbled, and Ruby could just barely hear his blubbering in her earpiece. The other civilians followed suit. Yang, however, stayed standing. Ruby knew why, logically. These bandit types were always violent, especially with defiant prisoners. This was all part of the plan. Still, as the leader took a step forward and threw a fist into Yang's stomach, Ruby's hand tightened on the grip of her rifle. She heard Blake suck in a breath in what was almost a hiss, and so Ruby cautioned, "She's fine, don't worry. We'll get her out of there. Just wait on my signal."

Blake huffed on the other end of the channel, before asking, "What's the signal going to be?"

Ruby rotated Crescent Rose's bolt, drew it back, pushed it forward, and rotated the bolt closed, chambering the first brass cartridge. "You'll hear it," Ruby joked, trying to alleviate some tension she could feel in the air.

The bandits had taken a formation around the prisoners quickly. The leader stood directly in front of the prisoners, flanked by a pair on each side a few steps behind him. The remaining two stood behind the prisoners, each one diagonal to a prisoner on either end of the line-up. None of them were directly behind a prisoner, which didn't bode well. Without words, and with far too much practiced ease, the two behind the prisoners, and on Ruby's right, moved forward and removed the blindfolds of each one. Yang kept her eyes closed, Ruby could just barely make out. Her hair was just a shade brighter than normal after absorbing the punch, so Ruby surmised she was hiding a pair of red irises.

The leader started moving again, and Ruby frowned. Leading her shot at this distance would be hard, she should wait until he stopped moving. He went on a short rant as he paced, "You all should've left well enough alone. Now, you've put yourselves in this clearing and you're going to die here," it was the same type of hardass stuff Ruby had come to expect from this kind of person. He stopped pacing for a moment, and Ruby's crosshair hovered on his torso.

Then, suddenly, he stormed forward toward the sobbing man, a fire in his eyes. Ruby guessed the guy had been crying for a while now, and the leader (who Ruby had dubbed Eyepatch in her mind, not because he had an eyepatch or was missing an eye, but just because he seemed like the type to wear one) was probably fed up with it.

The man screamed, manic, "Help! Stop, please, someone help!"

Eyepatch's gun whipped across his face, and he shouted, "No one is coming to help you! We're all alone here, and since you've been so fucking pathetic, you go first." He took a step back from the man, who was now sobbing hysterically.

This was her chance, Ruby realized. She leveled her rifle with his chest once mere, before a thought occurred to her. If he held some kind of rank, he might have some info they might be able to squeeze out of him. Something more useful than the hearsay of the villagers, anyway. She made the decision to incapacitate him, instead.

Eyepatch raised his revolver to the crying man's forehead, and Ruby shifted her rifle, holding her crosshair right over his forearm. A smaller target for sure, but she trusted herself. Everything seemed to slow down as she turned her attention inwards. She couldn't hear her earpiece, nor the wind rushing by. It was almost a trance, not dissimilar to a sort of meditation. The ache of her right knee against the stone, the sweaty clothes clinging to her skin, the fear for her sister, all of it melted away. All that was left was her heartbeat and her slow, even breathing.

Ba-dum, pause.

Ba-dum, pause.

Ba-dum, pause.

Ba-dum, pause.

Ba-dum, CRACK!

The one thing Ruby always kind of regretted about Crescent Rose's dual functionality was that, since the barrel doubled as the shaft of a scythe and Ruby preferred the manual bolt-action, there were no reciprocating parts. Nothing rocked back and absorbed any of the recoil, and Ruby was thankful her aura kept her from bruising after multiple shots, stock padding be damned. At this range, Ruby could actually see the projectile traveling through the open air in her scope, appearing to arc very slightly up before curving back down, staying remarkably straight due to the lack of wind in the valley today. The bullet flew true and intersected with the target slightly less than two seconds later, passing through his forearm with a brief splash of red, disconnecting his hand and wrist from the rest of his body. The crying man promptly fainted.

Ruby told herself that he would never hurt anyone with that hand again.

A little over three seconds later, she heard the report of her rifle through Blake's mic.

Almost without thought, Ruby chambered a second bullet. Blake pounced and Yang tore herself free of the chains.

The little skirmish lasted less than a minute. Most of the bandits lie dead, five killed in the skirmish and one killed who refused to surrender, who instead had tried to pull a pin on a hand grenade in some sort of bid to take everyone with her. Ruby kept up overwatch from her perch for a few seconds more, but the jungle was still. Ruby watched Blake give Yang her scroll, and heard an "I'm glad you're safe," from her sister's partner. By this point, Blake had readjusted her microphone sensitivity back to normal, so Ruby missed Yang's reply.

After a second, Yang joined the voice channel on her own scroll, "Hey, Rubes, thanks for the cover," she said, stretching her shoulders after having her arms chained behind her back for so long. She then threw a vague thumbs up towards the mountain.

Ruby laughed freely then, saying, "A little to your left, dork." Yang adjusted her aim, now right on Ruby's position. "You should probably get to releasing those people, and you might wanna give your girlfriend a hug while you're at it, she almost went ballistic when that dude punched you."

"I did not-" Blake started, before Yang scooped her up in her arms.

The exclamation of "I knew you cared!" was covered up by Ruby's own laughter.

"Oh!" Ruby realized, smacking the side of her head, "Duh, yeah, one of you get first aid on that guy before he bleeds out. He might be able to tell us more about the situation in this valley."

"I'm on it," Blake replied, pulling a first aid kit out of her pouch and moving to Eyepatch once Yang dropped her, who at this point was trying to drag himself into the brush in some vain attempt to escape. Yang set to breaking the chains on the civilians, and Ruby finally stood from her crouched position, her back popping loudly as she stretched before stowing Crescent Rose on her back.

Ruby stood there for a moment on the edge of the cliff and frowned. The light breeze was quickly blowing away the scent of gunsmoke that moving her cloak had released into the air. There was always some part of her, some residual feeling from her younger, more naive self, that recoiled away from the act of killing another person. That part dreaded missions like these.

She much preferred hunting Grimm. There was none of this there. The soulless beasts could be felled by the hundreds with no grief, almost like a game. They weren't even much of a challenge anymore, for the most part. This jungle was too dense for most Grimm, and served as a natural barrier for all but the smallest of them. Ruby doubted they'd come across much more than a few Rapier Wasps or a Beowolf pup. There was just a certain purity to ending the Grimm that doing the same to evil humans didn't have. Sadly, Ruby ruminated as she folded and stored Crescent Rose, the people her and her team killed made these missions a necessity.

She closed her eyes and remembered the image of Eyepatch with a gun to that crying man's head. The image served to quell the bitter taste in her mouth, to remind her of her training. She did what she did so those people could return to their families. It was a good thing, she was sure. It did little to assuage the heavy feeling of moral ambiguity that hung on her shoulders.

Either way, she pushed the thought from her head. She knew what would distract her, and that thought managed to bring a smile to her face. After all, her team needed her in that clearing. So, she took a step forward, off the nook she had been shooting from.

There was a second as she stepped off of the cliff where she hung in the air, and she could feel the tight grip of gravity slowly take hold of every part of her, like a heavy, familiar blanket. Then, she was falling. She felt the acceleration, the wind slowly picking up and dragging through her hair, her gut losing weight. The stone she had spent several minutes climbing earlier passing in seconds. She spread her arms wide, feeling the wind rushing between her fingers and through her hair.

Eventually, she hit terminal velocity, and the acceleration died off. This was as fast as gravity was willing to take her, and it wasn't enough. So, as the canopy below rushed up towards her, she kicked out against the cliff face with as much force as she could muster and reached within herself to that well of power. She felt her aura rush through her limbs like a river, smooth and strong. It coalesced around her face to protect her from the wind, through her legs to increase their strength. It soaked through her organs and blood to protect them from the G-force, and, finally, it wrapped around and absorbed into her heart, increasing its rate and the strength of it's pulses drastically.

When she kicked against the wall, her semblance activated and, in a burst of rose petals, she changed direction and fired horizontally over the jungle canopy. Her cloak cracked like a whip behind her, and the speed, the acceleration, made her shout with joy. She covered the distance in a few joyous seconds, kicking off the tops of trees to maintain her speed and leaving a trail of petals and upset foliage in her wake. When she finally came out of her semblance and her body normalized, she hit the dirt feet-first and rolled, burning off her velocity quickly by absorbing the force in her legs with the help of her aura. When she stopped, Blake was only just pressing a compression bandage onto what was left of Eyepatch's forearm, and Yang had only unchained two of the prisoners.

It had taken her all of six seconds to cross the mile gap from the mountain to the clearing, and by the end Ruby had barely broken a sweat.

0000000000

Present Day

Sweat poured down Ruby's forehead as she ran around the track in the Schnee Manor's gymnasium. Her heart throbbed, sending a small pulse of pain alongside every rush of blood. The track ran the circumference of the gym, a quarter mile in length. Her boots beat on the rubber surface, and the sound echoed through the massive, lonely room. Any other day she would have had music playing, either on headphones or playing over the gym's speakers, but not today. Even though it had been a whole workday since, the previous night Ruby had dreamt of a hunt. It was more of a memory than a dream, really, but still it rested on her heart.

Though she wouldn't admit it, it was the reason Ruby had yet to touch the weight rack or the pull-up bar. She remembered so vividly the feeling of wind in her hair, the familiar, full body lurch of acceleration. She remembered that she would probably never be able to feel that again.

Probably.

What an awful word, Ruby thought. A word that implied possibility, hope, the potential for a miraculous recovery, even after so long. It was that why Ruby ran laps. Why she was butting up against her third mile without slowing, why her throat ached with lack of water and her heart throbbed with over-work.

The Atlesian weather had eagerly embraced winter, and so Ruby wore a black, long-sleeved and high-necked shirt and a pair of sweatpants with her symbol sewn into the outer right thigh on this particular afternoon. The shirt covered up the scar on her chest, but did little to hide its presence from Ruby. One injury had done a lot, and a long period of bedrest and months without training had done the rest. Now, she was pushing against her very limits, every bit of training she had gone through and every ounce of that Rose-Xiao Long tenacity was drawn upon to fight the burning in her legs and lungs, to ignore the progressively worsening pain brought up by each beat of her heart and each thud of her feet against the track.

She was pushing the very limits of her physical being, and yet she was going so slow!

It was so frustrating! More memories came, unbidden. She remembered doing this at Beacon, lapping her classmates even without her semblance. She remembered finishing a workout, the runner's high still in her veins and the satisfying feeling of a good strain in her bones. That satisfaction eluded her now, even as she ran herself ragged.

And so she kept pushing, irrational, like an animal chasing its own tail. Finally, even as her spirit, her soul ached for more, her body failed. Declaring definatively that it had had enough, her heart gave a particularly painful pulse that caused bright sparkles to dance in Ruby's vision and a black fog to constrict around her eyes. She stumbled, momentarily losing control of her legs. Just barely managing to keep herself from falling on her face, she stumbled onto her hands and knees. Breathing raggedly, Ruby's focus very quickly changed from regaining her speed to simply not passing out.

She had a coppery taste in her mouth, not unlike blood. Once she was recovered enough that she could focus her eyes again, shame filled her. Almost two decades of training and experience, from the point she was big enough to hold that little twenty-two rifle to her graduation from Beacon, all come to this. On the floor nearly unconscious after only three miles of what should've only amounted to a light jog.

She grit her teeth and forced herself to stand up, even as her knees shook. She didn't want to work out any more, so she turned and left the gym.

A gust of wind blew by as Ruby stepped out into the open air. The sun was still hovering a good distance above the horizon, but the air was nevertheless absolutely frigid. Ruby cursed under her breath as the chill seeped into her sweaty skin, threatening to freeze the moisture where it lay. Eager to get out of the cold and back into a heated room, Ruby moved as fast as her legs were willing to carry her towards the main building on the property. Thankfully, the grand doors, which looked like they weighed as much as an Ursa, were electronically assisted, and swung open and closed again with little effort.

The weather wasn't all that had changed in the three months since she had moved in, Ruby thought as she drug herself up the staircase, pointedly ignoring the ache in her legs and chest. She had settled nicely into her new position, and had - slowly - begun to get used to the extravagance that came with being involved with a Schnee. Even now, she barely spared a glance at the massive knight statue that split the grand staircase in two.

She had become much more used to the Schnee facilities at the company building, and had added a secure work scroll to her kit that she carried around every day that Herder and the other security personnel could call her on in case of an emergency. Her pistol belt, which still hung on her hip even now, sported a new SDC nametag and security pass.

Her and Weiss had become more comfortable as of late as well. Even though her boss still insisted she refer to Ruby as "Miss Rose" and Ruby her as "Miss Schnee", their conversations had become more relaxed, and leaving the company building at a half-reasonable time had become more normal. Though, Ruby still had to all but stuff food into Weiss's mouth to get her to eat some days.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Weiss had just stepped out of her study when Ruby turned into the hallway that lead to their bedrooms, still clad entirely in her work clothes despite the fact that they returned to the manor nearly three hours prior. She still refused to dress casually in her own home, and still adamantly denied Ruby access to her bedroom. Ruby had begun to wonder if Weiss even owned pajamas or any other loungewear.

Ruby made to greet her boss, who was facing away from her, but she was preempted. Weiss froze visibly, and Ruby heard her sniff the air. She turned around, brow furrowed. Ruby looked down at herself, noting for the first time the sweat that visibly darkened her shirt and slicked her hair. She put on a sheepish smile as Weiss connected the odor in the air to the sweaty ex-huntress. "That bad, huh?" Ruby tried.

"It's fine," Weiss said amicably, pausing a little awkwardly, "It's not as if I've never smelled sweat before."

That was also new. Ruby often caught Weiss putting in effort to keep conversations going when, at the beginning, she would have been perfectly content with being curt and leaving Ruby hanging. It didn't do anything to make Weiss's eyes any less frigid or her face any more readable, however. It was fascinating, really, how Weiss so rarely emoted. On the rare occasion she would become angry, Ruby would see that Schnee fire in her eyes, cold and burning all at once. Even then, her face didn't do much moving, a downturn of her eyebrows, a bend of the lips. It was almost like she was incapable of more.

Ruby knew that wasn't the case, though. The few times she had broken Weiss's mask proved that. She could recall the blatant shock on her face when Ruby had shot the window in Weiss's office, of the few times she had managed to make the woman laugh, the rare instance of genuine concern for someone or another. Still, those were few and far between, and far more often Weiss looked like she looked now, not unlike some kind of statue or ice sculpture (A Weiss-Sculpture?) but that wasn't really the right way to describe the way her face seemed to compose. It was more like she was above it all, like some kind of untouchable entity which could be acted on by her surroundings, but not affected by them.

All this contemplating was all well and good, but the salt on Ruby's skin was starting to get cold and uncomfortable, and a shower would do wonders to take her mind off the emotional ache as well. "Yeah, well if you think it smells bad, imagine how bad it must smell this close," she tapped her own nose, "So if it's all the same with you, I'm really looking forward to a shower."

It was very, very subtle, but Ruby thought she saw some kind of movement on the corner of Weiss's lips. "That's fair, though you might want to make it quick. That delivery of yours is due soon, after all."

"Oh, right, I forgot about it!" Ruby exclaimed, and it was true. She kicked herself mentally, another mark against herself today. Not only had she failed to get even the smallest bit of satisfaction from her run because of that damned dream, she also got so caught up with it that she forgot about the delivery!

Ruby passed Weiss, hurrying towards her bedroom. Looking over her shoulder, Ruby called back, "I'll see you in a bit!"

She received no verbal response, but once she was out of earshot, Weiss sniffed the air again. "She didn't smell that bad," she muttered to herself.

0000000000

About forty-five minutes later, Ruby stood in her bedroom, clad in a grey T-shirt with a faded, black rendition of Beacon's sigil on the front. It was the kind of shirt you could buy for five lien from the campus store, but it had always been Ruby's favorite lounging-about shirt. She wore a red pair of sweatpants with it, glad to be out of her sweaty clothes. Her hair was still a little wet from her shower, and she was sorting through the delivery that had come in, arranging the pieces on her bed.

It had been hellish getting these through Atlesian customs, and no matter how much she waved her still-valid huntress credentials and permits, there always seemed to be just a bit more paperwork. Weiss eventually stepped in and used her clout as head of the SDC to expedite the process somewhat, but it still took months. "You go here, and you right ...Okay, I think that'll do it," she muttered to herself.

Before her, spread out on her bed sheets like the most inviting of lovers, was a portion of her collection. From the cliched to the obscure, the designer-new to the classics, displayed on Ruby's bed was a menagerie of firearms from all across Remnant, as well as a few of her own designs, all freshly imported from Vale. And Weiss wanted to see them!

Not that she outright said that, but Ruby had picked up on her weird fascination with Ruby's pistol, and considering how she went out of her way to push the shipment through customs hell, that fascination definitely carried over to the rest of her employee's arsenal.

Her legs still ached with over-exertion, and so too did her heart (both in the physical and metaphorical sense), but there was very little Ruby couldn't push aside, if temporarily, for this. Plus, this was the culmination of months of waiting, and she was genuinely excited enough to show off this portion of her collection that it cut through the pain of her old wounds, and allowed a real smile to push onto her face.

She sent Weiss a quick text to come to her room and set about preparing in her head the presentation. This was only a small part of her several-year-long collection, and lacked any of the weapons she had designed to be used by a Huntsman or Huntress, but it was still extensive, and she loved every one of her weapons more or less equally, regardless of simplicity. The only question was what order to go through them all with Weiss. Maybe by age? If so, production or design? What about by rarity? No, some of these are unique, that wouldn't do. Size? Too easy. Maybe just from one end of the bed to the other? By kingdom of origin? Wing it?

There was a firm pair of knocks on her bedroom door. Wing it it is, then! "Come in!" she called, loud enough for Weiss to hear through the expensive, oak door.

Weiss stepped into the room, still in that same blue dress and white jacket she wore to work, saying "I saw your message. I trust that there were no issues...wow."

"Right?"

00000000000

Weiss wasn't sure what to expect when she stepped into Ruby's room. Guns, for sure, but not what looked like half a museum and half a military base to have been upended onto her personal assistant's bed.

"Well, where do you want to start? It's up to you." Ruby asked, a smile bright on her face.

Where did she want to start, Weiss wondered to herself. She took a step towards the bed, sweeping her gaze over it. There were so many. Thinking back, Weiss didn't know why she expected any different. Naturally, her eyes gravitated towards one that looked strangely familiar. After a second of silent deliberation, it clicked. She had seen this one in her history studies as a teenager, in grainy, black-and-white pictures in textbooks. "What about that one?" she asked, pointing towards the gun. It was right on the edge of the bed, and she felt an odd compulsion to place her hand on it, but something stopped her. A sense that she ought not to, that she'd cross a taboo to touch it.

Ruby didn't seem to notice, and her smile was bright enough to distract Weiss from the odd feeling. "You have good taste!" Ruby exclaimed, perhaps too excitedly. Weiss envied the easy way Ruby plucked the rifle from the bed. "I built some of these, and others I bought, but this one was a pain to come across, let alone buy. I love the history of him, though."

"Tell me," Weiss said quickly, her eyes still gravitated to the weapon.

Ruby leaned toward Weiss like she was about to impart some deep secret to her and said in a low voice, "You have no idea how happy I am that you said that." She braced the rifle proudly across her chest in display and slipped easily into a (mediocre at best) old Atlesian accent "Der Sturmgewehr Modell...Eh, hell. How do you say forty-four in Atlesian?"

Weiss allowed a hint of a smirk for conversation's sake, "Vierundvierzig."

Ruby blanched, "Oof, I'm not even going to try that one." She shook her head, going back into her 'teacher' voice, "Designed and Manufactured in the latter years of the Great War by the Atlesian military, this was the first real assault-rifle used in large numbers by any kingdom's military. This was back when Atlas still used proper," she put a near-comical emphasis on the word, "cased bullets in their guns. It was also before they lost the war, before they had to adopt Valean as a language, which is why the name is in Atlesian. Most people just call it the StG-44 'cause Sturmgewehr Modell Whatever-whatever is a mouthful."

"When was this one made?" Weiss asked, curious. She didn't have much experience with guns, obviously, but she knew her history. Even if her focus was less on the weapons used to wage the war and more on the politics behind them, if this gun really was a relic from the war, Weiss could certainly appreciate the history of it.

Ruby smiled softly and ran her hand along the receiver and the magazine as one would to pet an old cat. "Most of the parts have been either replaced or refurbished, but according to the numbers on the original parts, he was built in the second-to-last month of the war. Almost Eighty-five years old, now!"

Weiss let her eyebrows raise, expressing how impressed she was, "That old? Can it still fire?"

Ruby nodded, "It can. Most of the load-bearing parts are newer, but he's mostly a showpiece now. Don't want to risk damaging the original parts and all. Plus. it's chambered for a weird cartridge, so it's expensive to load."

The last sentence flew almost entirely over Weiss's head, so she just hummed in agreement, feigning understanding.

"I got a few more Atlesian ones here, too," Ruby said, setting down the StG and plucking an even older, bolt-action rifle from the pile. "This one is a reproduction, so it doesn't have the history of the other one, but I've always been fond of the bolt-action stuff. It's only four years old now, but it's a replica I built of a gun Atlas used at the start of the war when a good bit of the world was still using swords. This one is called the Gewehr 98." She gave no pretense of trying to say the number in Atlesian this time.

"You built this?" Weiss asked, eyes sweeping down the stained wood of the rifle, which cradled the metal part as if they were one in the same."

Ruby chuckled, her voice sounding almost husky, "Oh, Miss Schnee, I've built much more impressive things than this."

Weiss suddenly felt the urge to swallow.

"But we'll get to that," Ruby said, falling back into her teacher-voice like she hadn't just put Weiss on the back foot. "I've built all sorts of complicated stuff, but you just gotta appreciate the simple things sometimes." She shouldered the rifle, the muzzle pointed harmlessly at the window of her room. Idly, she rubbed the smooth wood of the stock with her thumb. "You can't beat the classic wood-and-metal look, honestly. It just fits right in the hands." She seemed to think for a second, and Weiss was curious as to what could be going through that bizarre brain of hers. After a moment, Ruby held the rifle out to Weiss with one hand, and said, "Here, you try it."

Weiss blinked, eyes snapping from Ruby's to the weapon being offered. That feeling of approaching taboo was back, but she didn't want to disappoint the other woman or risk squashing this exciting energy Ruby was giving off. Hesitantly, she extended a hand forward, wrapping around the handle of the gun. "Okay."

Ruby didn't immediately let go. "Grab it with both hands, by the forearm."

What? How is she meant to grab the gun with her forearm?

Ruby, snorted, sensing Weiss's confusion, "The wooden bit at the far end of the gun is called the forearm, sorry."

Oh, that made more sense. Once she grabbed the gun, Ruby let go.

The first thing Weiss noticed was that the gun was heavier than it looked. Second was that once it was in her hands, the woodwork was exquisite. Sanded, stained, and polished to a smooth, dark brown sheen. It wasn't dissimilar to the quality of wood Weiss was used to in her furniture. And Ruby had done this?

Though, now that she had it in her hands, she wasn't really sure what to do with it. After a moment's deliberation, she drew it up to her right shoulder as she had seen in pictures and movies, pointing it at the window too. It was a bit uncomfortable since she was using her off-hand, but not so bad as to make her want to put the rifle down immediately.

"Go ahead, work the action," Ruby said, openly invested in watching Weiss handle the rifle.

Weiss pursed her lips together, not meeting Ruby's eyes as she said, "I don't know what that means."

"The little lever by your face, with the knob on it. Rotate it up and pull it back."

Oh, yes, Weiss had seen that in movies too. Still, she could feel Ruby's eyes on her, and a bit of frustration began to swirl in her belly. She was Weiss Schnee, she didn't like not knowing things, and being so clearly out of her league was unpleasant. It felt like being the butt of a joke she didn't understand, and that very quickly multiplied her frustrations. Acting with a confidence she didn't feel, she found the bolt with her eyes and dexterously rotated the bolt up, drew it back, pushed it forward, and slapped it down.

It made a very satisfying schtick-schtick sound, and Weiss had to admit that Ruby was right. Even mounted on the wrong shoulder, there was a certain rightness to it. Even if she would've preferred a rapier. "I'll admit, it does handle well," and she meant it. Still, she was quick to offer the weapon back to her bodyguard. Ruby took it back and set it down on the bed with care, eyes wide and supportive, not an ounce of judgement in them for Weiss's lack of experience. It cooled Weiss's frustrations a little. After a moment, Weiss spoke, "They weren't very original as far as names went, were they?"

"What do you mean?" Ruby asked, taking her eyes off the bed for a moment to meet Weiss's gaze, an odd sort of happiness sparkling in her silver eyes that Weiss wasn't expecting to see. She seemed to really enjoy talking about either history or weapons, and the energy was infectious.

"Gewehr," Weiss explained, her lips wrapping easily around the near-dead language, "it just means 'gun'. 'Gun Model Forty-Four' and 'Gun Ninety-Eight'."

Ruby caught on, nodding once with a light laugh, "You don't know the half of it! There was a lot of tech progress over the war, and all of Atlas's stuff was like that. Actually, a whole bunch of militaries do that, now that I think of it." Weiss watched as Ruby was quiet for a moment, rolling some unfathomable thought around her mind before shrugging and saying, "Most of the stuff made just for militaries is like that. Bland, clinical. The stuff meant for huntsmen's cooler. Have more personality to them with names and color schemes and everything. I mean don't get me wrong," she laid her hand on another gun, "military weapons are really cool sometimes, but just no heart put into them, you know? No…" She paused again, splaying both hands open fingered out towards nothing in particular, "...pizzaz!'

Weiss didn't think she had ever heard that word before.

Before she could so much as ask, Ruby continued on, "But yeah, I give them the appreciation they deserve. I got a couple of things from the war, but most are reproductions I bought or made from other designs." She put her hand on one such thing or another as she listed them off, "Got an old trench gun, a Valean Springfield, even a Browning Automatic Rifle and a few pistols back in Vale from a couple different countries, but those aren't here. Let's move on from the old stuff though, I have more!"

Weiss was so stunned by the deluge of words she didn't particularly recognize she almost gave away her confusion by not following Ruby to one of the different sides of the bed. They spent the next couple of minutes like that, going from gun to gun, talking about different time periods and design philosophies. Ruby was stunningly well-learned on the history of the topic in the way only genuine passion can make a person, and Weiss was interested despite her lack of background knowledge. Between Ruby's lecturing, Weiss would easily plug in questions and listen to Ruby's answers with interest. As she went along, Ruby would occasionally offer Weiss one item of her collection or another to hold. Slowly and seemingly without knowing it, Ruby worked down that taboo feeling in Weiss the same way one would work out a knot during a massage.

The variety of Ruby's collection certainly helped. For every old, simple gun she had a factory-new machine. The names blurred together in Weiss's head after a while. The numbered ones in particular seemed largely arbitrary in their naming. A deluge of Ms and fours and ones and sevens and fives. More than just guns, Ruby had a few simpler weapons spread among the pile. She demonstrated a special function of the knife she carried in her belt, showed off an old shortsword she claimed had been bought from a forge in Vacuo, and a small metal block that expanded into a kama. She even kept, interestingly enough, a few novelty weapons as well. There was a handgun Ruby showed her that looked like the one she carried around at work, except it was two of them merged into one gaudy double-barreled pistol. Another, which Ruby insisted was practical for "large game" and "small Grimm" was an obscenely large handgun chambered in the obnoxiously named "Fifty Action-Express", a bullet thicker that Weiss's thumb. There was a device similar to a chainsaw but about the size of a knife, as well as a steel boot with what appeared to be some kind of firearm mechanism built into the heel that Ruby claimed she had 'won in a fight', but refused to offer any further explanation. Most of the numbers and technicalities went over Weiss's head, but something about Ruby's voice...Weiss could tell that Ruby was genuinely proud of her creations and collections, and genuinely enjoyed talking about them. There was just something so real and infectious about seeing the younger woman happy and in her element that made Weiss feel inexplicably okay with being in over her head. Ruby had succeeded, unwittingly, in soothing away Weiss's frustrations entirely.

As they worked through the collection, one thing on the bed was beginning to draw Weiss's eye. Up near the pillows rested a wooden shipping crate which Ruby seemed to be either avoiding or saving for last. Weiss didn't ask about it, but her curiosity was slowly growing the longer Ruby skirted around it.

Finally, with a glowing smile on her face, Ruby pulled the box to the edge of the bed, "Just one more thing, you're gonna love this one I think."

"What's so special about?" Weiss asked, eyeing the blank sides of the crate curiously. It looked heavy, and tugged the sheets along underneath it as Ruby slid it forward.

"Well, Miss Schnee, as you know, I've built a good few of these based on other models, and I've designed and built a couple of unique weapons for huntsmen and myself to use, but this right here is the only gun I've ever designed and built with normal people in mind, and also the only one I've patented and sold." There was a pride in her voice, and the theatrical introduction definitely piqued Weiss's interest.

Ruby cracked the lid and said in her best announcer voice, "Coming in at nearly twenty-five pounds unloaded, I give you," she threw the lid open dramatically and from within she withdrew a beast, "The Woodcutter 3-29!"

The gun, if it could even be called that, was massive. Bulky and long, it looked more like it should be mounted astride an airship or atop a tank rather than in the hands of a human being. Broad metal plates covered the inner workings of the gun from the receiver all the way back to the stock, and a handle and trigger came naturally from the bottom. Most of the metal was black, with a few red accents scattered about, something Weiss was suspecting was a signature of Ruby's. There was no forearm at the end of the gun, but rather a second grip sticking down perpendicular from it. Ahead of the receiver, the barrel and gas piston was more open to air and eye-catching, and a tall sight jutted from atop the barrel along with what looked like a handle of some kind.

This was far above everything else Ruby had shown her, far above any weapon Weiss had seen outside of a military base or action movie. There was a firm canvas box of sorts sticking out of the side, presumably to hold bullets, and if there was any doubt in Weiss's mind that this thing was well and truly a machine gun, the fact that the little box looked like it could hold more than a hundred bullets quashed it.

Ruby shouldered it with some strain, to her left shoulder this time, but otherwise held it like any other rifle, drawing Weiss's eyes first to the image painted on the side of the side in loving detail, which depicted a long yellow dragon, snakelike in body but with a head not dissimilar to that of a lion, circling around that rose symbol Ruby seemed to have stitched into half of her clothing. Next, Weiss's eyes were drawn to the strain in Ruby's arms.

Weiss knew that Ruby was a fairly feminine woman. She had many of the traits Weiss had learned were conventionally attractive. From the dark hair to her inviting face to the full shape of her body, it was plain to see that many people would find her attractive, but it wasn't something Weiss really felt. To be honest, she had never really felt any kind of attraction to anyone. She could tell when a man was handsome, or a woman was pretty, but it was just a social queue to her, something to be noted and remembered. Ruby fit her idea of a pretty woman, even (perhaps especially) in a suit, but there was something…

Ruby supported the weight of the machine gun, the Woodcutter, with both of her arms, but at this angle Weiss could only see her right one. And for all her social training and experience, Weiss's brain simply did not know how to deal with the way the weight of the firearm brought out the definition in Ruby's arm. The already short sleeve of Ruby's T-shirt was bunched up, and Weiss thought she could see every single muscle all the way from her wrist to her shoulder, and while Ruby didn't have big muscles, they seemed dense, strong and steady, like steel cabling on a suspension bridge. Weiss very suddenly realized she needed a glass of water.

But Ruby was talking again, and it was Weiss's salvation, "Seven-point-six-two millimeter cartridge, steady rate of fire that's neither too fast nor too slow, effective range up to seven-hundred meters, quick-change barrels for overheats, plenty of standard picatinny rails for any kind of accessories you wanna slap on her, yet lightweight enough to carry with relative ease, if you have to take on a pack of beowolves and don't have the ability to throw yourself twenty feet in the air with one foot and swing an eighty-pound sword with one hand, this is the weapon for you!" Ruby beamed proudly as she lowered the gun from her shoulder and Weiss had the sense that she had just heard a long since pre-written marketing pitch. "Wanna hold her?"

Weiss hesitated, though this time it wasn't out of taboo, but rather a brief doubt that she could. After a moment, though, she said, "Sure." Ruby offered the Woodcutter, and Weiss reached out.

"It's more or less ambidextrous, with a few part changes, so you can shoulder it on the left if you want," Ruby said as she let go.

Weiss damn-near dropped the thing when Ruby released it. Twenty-five pounds honestly didn't sound like all that much on paper, but in Weiss's hands it sat heavy. She had to adjust her grip, but after a moment she brought it up to her shoulder. It felt much more natural to press the stock into her left shoulder rather than her right like before, even if the encumbering nature of the thing negated it somewhat. Weiss maintained the stance for a bit longer before she couldn't bear the pressure of the weight on her right arm, which extended out to support the forend of the gun, and lowered it. "Does it..." she began, swallowing, "Does it do its job well?"

Ruby took the gun back with a half smile, "Well enough. We didn't sell very many, but a few towns on Patch use it against the beowolf packs on the island." Ruby went and set the Woodcutter on the bed again with a sigh that Weiss thought was almost affectionate, their tour of Ruby's collection over. "So, what'd you think?"

Weiss nodded politely, falling back on her social niceties for lack of anything real to add to the conversation, "It's certainly an impressive collection. I'm not terribly well-versed in weapons, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless." And yet, her own words seemed to echo in her own head. Not terribly well versed in weapons.

Ruby cocked her head to the side, not unlike a curious dog of some sort, and asked, "I remember you mentioning you started training as a huntress before. Did you ever get a weapon?"

That was a sour memory, and one Weiss was not keen on delving into. She opened her mouth to steer the conversation away, the very last thing she wanted to do was sour the so-far pleasant afternoon by reminiscing on the largest and most bitter of her many personal failures. However, what came out of her mouth was instead, simply, "A rapier. I lost it when I changed career paths."

That gave Ruby pause, she seemed to notice the shift in mood. She began to go about the process of collecting the guns and moving them over to the large safe in the corner of her room, but talked as she worked, "Oh, yeah? What happened to make you change careers, if you don't mind my asking?"

Weiss most certainly did mind her asking, and yet found herself explaining, "I wasn't strong enough for it. It's as simple as that."

Ruby seemed to chew on the words as she slipped the StG-44 into a sealed case, "What do you mean?" she asked, and Weiss wondered why.

There was no reason for Ruby to take interest in this, no potential benefit, at least none that Weiss could see. Truly, there was also no reason for Weiss to tolerate Ruby prying into her past. She was sure she wouldn't even have to argue about it, Ruby would undoubtedly leave it alone if Weiss so much as asked, but Weiss found herself elaborating regardless, "You know my sister joined the military. I had this idea about following in her footsteps, and making a name for myself as a huntress, helping people." Yes, she remembered those days clearly. A young Weiss, maybe fourteen or fifteen, laying in bed with the barely muffled shouts of her parents across the hall. Her room, picturesque, perfect. Everything in it organized and straight, dusted and polished. In her mind it was a gilded cage, one that she would one day break free of and go out into the world. Reclaim the Schnee name her father had tarnished, defy him on a grand scale, and return triumphantly home to take back her company. It was her sole comfort back then. It was hope. It was... "It was just a childish dream that I never should have bothered with. I never would've been strong enough to follow through with it anyway. I was naive."

Ruby was quiet, tucking another rifle safely away. After a moment though, Ruby said, "That's not naive, Miss Schnee. That's just called being a good person."

Weiss frowned, allowing the emotion to show plainly on her face only because Ruby was turned away. "Well, either way I still shouldn't have bothered. I didn't succeed, and I was too weak to have been able to anyway." It was bitter to say, and that must've come through in her voice.

For the first time since Weiss had met her, Ruby's shoulders visibly slumped. That dark bob of hair shook side to side as Ruby shook her head softly. "I know how that feels," Ruby said softly, closing the safe with a definitive clank. She didn't continue, and the room lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.

The bed was now clear of weapons, the only ones not safely stowed away in the locker now was a knife on Ruby's workbench and the pistol on her hip. Weiss thought back, back to her teenage years. She remembered holding her Rapier, the feel of it's grip in her hand and the featherlike weight of it. Even now she could feel the air parting for its passage, feel the flash of heat, of strength as she spun its chambers and released the power of nature's wrath.

She remembered the feeling of it shattering in her grip, strong steel giving way to a larger blade.

Myrtenaster

Suddenly, Weiss broke the silence, "Why do you like weapons so much?"

It gave Ruby pause. Weiss was well aware of how out-of-character it probably sounded, but for once she didn't care. Ruby seemed to notice that too, and so her response came quick, "That's...a real conversation, you sure you want me to go into it?"

Weiss only nodded, not really understanding why but feeling a deep need to hear what Ruby had to say.

Ruby stalked back to her bed before she began, sitting down. After a moment, Weiss followed suit. "Well, it's kinda a lot, so get ready. Okay, so you know I have an older sister, right?"

Weiss nodded, she remembered talking to her on the phone once before, and Ruby had mentioned her in passing a few times over the past few months.

"Well, for a lot of reasons, she was really, really protective of me growing up." Ruby began, her body language open and earnest, "And when I was really little I didn't care. My family was kind of unorthodox, and kids can be cruel, so Yang had to protect me from bullies a lot growing up." She chuckled, and Weiss envied the ease at which she did it, "It kinda helped that she had a semblance a lot like my dad's, so she could be pretty scary when she wanted to. Nothing scares a fourth grader like a sixth grader, after all."

Her laughter died off, and she held Weiss's full attention as a slight frown came to her face just as organically as the laughter had, "And like, when I was real young, I didn't care much. I was just happy the mean kids were gone and that Yang was there. Eventually, though, I started to feel like...like a damsel in distress, you know? Like I was helpless because I wasn't…." she trailed off, thinking, and suddenly realized she forgot to mention something "Okay, so, Yang was strong. Still is, but even as a little kid. It's part of her semblance, plus her aura does a lot to boost her strength. Even without it she may as well be a bodybuilder. We both wanted to be huntresses since we were really little, it was a family thing." She curled her fists up by her face, "She was all into hand-to-hand stuff. Boxing, martial arts, weightlifting, that sort of thing. She was - is - really, really strong. And I idolized her when I was little."

She dropped her hands as Weiss commented, "She sounds impressive."

Ruby nodded, "She always has been, but anyway. When I was little, Yang was like, the picture of strength. But I didn't have the advantages she did. I couldn't fight off four mean kids pulling my hair. Heck, I couldn't even really fend off one if they were persistent. I was useless, and not just because I wasn't a strong fighter, but I just felt so scared to stand up for myself because I knew I couldn't back up anything I said." Then, a slow, almost dopey smile came to her face, "That changed when I got into fifth grade and we started early combat training. Those of us on the path to being huntsmen and huntresses anyway." She waved a hand through the air to dismiss any misinterpretation, "it was mostly just different classes from the civilian curriculum, but we got to go to Signal for an hour or two every other day for practical training. My dad was a teacher there, that's when he bought me my first rifle."

"I don't follow."

Ruby smiled, a kind of pride showing in her voice, "I was good at it, Weiss. I was just like eight or nine, but I was outpacing everyone. I didn't need to have to worry about being able to back up what I said on the playground anymore, because they stopped picking on me."

Weiss frowned, "The children stopped because you were good at shooting targets? Did you threaten them?" Weiss couldn't see Ruby, even as a little kid, threatening to shoot a petty bully.

Ruby laughed and explained, "No, nothing like that! I didn't even have to say anything to them. You have to remember, most of them were just on the civilian track, and when the little girl they were picking on suddenly had a reputation for picking off a target with a rifle at two-hundred feet. Then, I started learning how to fight like a huntress, with this big scythe and with all the acrobatics, and suddenly the fact that I was short or that I had skinny arms or that me and my sister didn't have the same mom didn't matter anymore. For the first time, I was just as scary as Yang."

Weiss was quiet, absorbing the information. After a moment, she asked, "Is that all? It was something you were good at as a child, so you like them as an adult?" That answer seemed disappointing, half-baked.

Luckily for her, Ruby shook her head. "No, it'd be a lot easier to explain if that was it. I just, ah, it gets a little heavy after that. Do you mind?"

"No, no," Weiss said quickly, "Go on. Please."

Ruby took a breath, steadying herself visibly for a moment before continuing, "Well, weapons were only a part of it back then. My aura, my training, all of it meant they saw me as a huntress," she paused to shrug, "even if I was only like a tween at the time. That was what made them leave me alone. It was a long, hard fight to become an actual huntress, though. Years of training and studying...I even, by some miracle, managed to skip ahead two years to Yang's class in Beacon." This time there wasn't near as much pride in her voice, more a sadness as she recounted her achievements, "I was the leader of my team, a good shooter, a great fighter with my weapon. Yang even taught me some hand-to-hand stuff, so I was even better than most at that. Then, me and my team graduated."

Weiss was all but holding her breath. Hearing about Beacon, that place she had dreamed of but never truly gone to, from Ruby was rare, and the air in Ruby's bedroom seemed thick with a kind of meaning, a kind of importance, that Weiss couldn't wrap her hands around.

There was a longing in those silver eyes as Ruby recalled, "Team RuBY, our year's only three-person team. The R-u was me, the Y was my sister, and the B was her partner. We were the best of the best, and I was so proud of us. So proud of myself. You have to understand, Weiss, this was something I had been working towards since I was born. I felt like I had all the power in the world when they handed me my license."

It was getting late now, and the sun was kissing the horizon and casting the room in a red glow as the world of Remnant transitioned from day to night. Ruby's eyes caught that light like silver mirrors and Weiss got the distinct impression she was seeing Ruby's soul.

"I could twirl around this huge weapon, run miles without breaking a sweat, tear my way through hordes of Grimm of every shape and size. With my team at my side, we were unstoppable. Indomitable." Then, all at once Ruby seemed to be sucked back into the present, and she winced visibly, and Weiss saw her roll her left shoulder as if in pain, "And then all of that was gone. Gosh, when I got out of the hospital I could barely do a pushup, let alone fight a Grimm. My aura was useless and my semblance didn't work…" She trailed off, and Weiss didn't miss how Ruby avoided specifics about the event that wounded her, but also didn't ask for further explanation.

As, despite everything, the pained look in Ruby's eyes pained Weiss too.

And Weiss knew the feeling all too well. The words Ruby spoke were the same ones Weiss had thought a million times. Weiss never made it as far as Ruby, never arrived at Beacon or lead a team , never graduated and became a Huntress. But she remembered her own power, remembered transitioning from a life of nothing but faux luxury and bitter feelings to one where she would train for hours in simulators, against androids and projected Grimm, fighting until sweat beaded her brow and her heart pounded in her chest. She knew what holding power felt like, and she knew just as intimately as Ruby how losing that power felt. It was crushing. Myrtenaster shattered, alongside Weiss's will to fight, to defy her family's will. Compliance.

Weiss never recovered, not really.

But Ruby was not done talking.

"But like, that's the thing. I lost so much of my ability to fight, I lost my career hunting Grimm and fighting bad guys because I couldn't use my semblance. I couldn't even carry my weapon anymore, the one I'd built as a kid and had been with me through all my training. I felt...weak and, and vulnerable." Ruby shook her head, pulling herself out of some memory or another, before slowly resting her hands, which had been gesticulating with her words, on her lap. "At least, that's what I thought."

Weiss watched as Ruby's eyes hardened. Not enough to seem cold or angry, but showing a conviction Weiss hadn't seen before, in anyone. "What do you mean?" Weiss asked, quietly desperate to hear what Ruby had to say. Hoping against hope that Ruby had discovered something Weiss had missed, some cure for what was ailing her.

And so Ruby explained, "For a while, I was back to being a kid again. Skinny, weak, short. I couldn't do anything. Yang was hurt too, going through her own recovery, and I didn't want to make her life any harder. It was...it was a really rough time. And it wasn't until later that I had a revelation."

Slowly, almost tenderly, Ruby brought out the last weapon left in the room. Rosebud slipped from the holster on Ruby's hip. Ruby supported the pistol in both hands, laid out in the flat of her palms, and explained "Everything I thought about myself, all the self-deprecation because I was injured, it was true to an extent. I couldn't do all the things I could as a huntress, but neither could ninety percent of the population. Without my powers, and all weak from being on bedrest, yeah I couldn't overpower anyone, or defeat an entire gang single-handedly, but there was one thing I didn't lose." She tapped a single finger on her temple, "I had all my training, my memories. I knew who I was, and just like when I was a kid, the problem wasn't that I was weak, but that I knew I couldn't back up my brain with my physical strength. The problem was that I was scared."

Ruby's hand dropped back down to her pistol, idly releasing the magazine and ejecting the chambered bullet onto the bed, the clack-clack of the slide loud in the otherwise silent room, a soft look in her eyes as she thought, "If I wanted to be poetic about it, I'd say that weapons, to me, represent a boost to that physical strength, extensions of the body. I can lose my power, I can be weak from bedrest or from being hurt. I don't have to be a huntress or a soldier or anything else. Two-hundred years ago, I would have to worry about going out alone in a shady area, worry about the people I could thrash with my powers but who could beat me without them. But weapons...they make everyone equal, regardless of disability or injury or race or background or just not having the bulk to fight." Ruby smiled, sad but fond, "They just, they're 'cool', yeah, but so much more." She raised the pistol between them, "They're defiance."

Weiss frowned, the word resonating with memories from her youth, of hopes yet to be dashed, "What do you mean, defiance?"

Ruby looked at her gun for a moment more, before setting it on the pillow next to her. She chewed her thoughts for a moment before asking a question, one she had been asked years before, "Do you believe in destiny?"

Surprised at the apparent departure from the conversation, that word too had heavy connotations from her childhood. Her father would often talk of destiny. Both his own and that of his family members, Weiss most often. He had always said it was her destiny to run the SDC, to carry on his legacy. A part of her hated that he ended up being right. "I'm not sure if I do or not."

Ruby nodded, accepting the answer, before continuing, "I had an old friend who talked about it once. I kind of adopted her outlook." She sat forward, "See, to me, Destiny isn't like a storybook. It's not rigid, but instead it's a set of events that can happen, and some that always happen. There are some destinies that are worse than others, that you have to fight to change."

This, though, was a far cry from her father's ideas of Destiny, and one Weiss found oddly resonant. She didn't interrupt Ruby, who's words seemed to flow through her to rest directly on her heart, "And it takes a lot to change it sometimes. Strength, willpower, you need it to fight against destinies you don't want. Weapons are one way to defy destiny. To defy my destiny to be a little kid always reliant on her sister, to be this weak person who can't defend herself after her injury. Weapons gave me back the power to decide my own destiny. To decide who I am. That realization gave me the boost I needed to...to start healing, I guess." Ruby shook her head, sighed, and then met Weiss's eyes, "I thought everything was lost. That I'd already passed the point of no return, that the night I lost my career - my team -, I'd also lost my life. That I died that night, but by some fluke my body kept on living. For a long time I believed that I failed, somehow. That the destiny I always thought I was bound for was gone." She shoulders sagged, as if I heavy weight rested upon them.

But then, Ruby's back straightened, a strength possessing her frame, "The thing is, though, that destiny is a lot more liquid than that. Because I wasn't dead, even if everything I had lived for up until then was gone," she pressed her right hand over her heart, "I wasn't gone. And I realised that no matter how long you lay down defeated, it is never too late to stand up again." Her words began to accelerate, an earnest conviction taking root in her voice, as if she had forgotten Weiss was listening, "No matter how many years pass, it's never too late to get up and try again, to fight again. The past is set in stone, but no matter what has happened to you before or for how long it's gone on, you can still write a new chapter in your life. You've just gotta keep moving forward."

Every word seemed to beat against something within Weiss. Or maybe, something within her was beating against something else. Weiss felt something change. Something abstract, imperceptible but very, very real. It cracked and shifted, and let something out. Something that was not new, but instead was old. As old as she herself was.

Weiss didn't know it then, but in that moment, the Schnee began to die, and Weiss began to live. Her first step.

The room was silent afterwards, as Weiss had no rebuttal, no way to vocalize the strange feeling within her. She didn't know what to think of all she had heard, and so they sat in silence as Weiss struggled to process what Ruby had said and what it meant to her. Ruby reloaded her pistol, and Weiss watched her set it on her nightstand. The sun had completed it's crossing over, however, and Ruby looked tired after baring so much of her soul.

Weiss felt almost guilty for keeping her own to herself.

The two bid each other goodnight, and went their separate ways.

0000000000

It was a few hours after that Weiss lie awake in her bed. She couldn't stop thinking. Couldn't forget.

She had tried everything. Writing in her journal, bathing, reading reports on her scroll. Sleep wouldn't come, so instead Weiss remembered.

She remembered her own childhood. Years spent in this very house that was never quite a home. She remembered the cold that seeped into her, seeming to touch the core of her soul and spread, like a cancer. She remembered her epiphany at the young age of thirteen to follow in her grandfather's footsteps. She would train and become a huntress, travel the world and reestablish the Schnee name as something honorable and righteous. Her ambitions were grand, but oh so real. Spread out before her as an open book, those ambitions were as real as the chill of Atlas's winds. For the first time in as long as she could remember, Weiss felt fire. All consuming, an ember, hot and hungry, she wanted to be free. More importantly, she was willing to fight for her freedom. Myrtenaster's grip in her hands was the personification of that fire. The personification of her defiance.

Someone once remarked that the pen was mightier than the sword. In that moment, in that one gleaming, burning moment that Weiss held Myrtenaster for the first time, she held both sword and pen as one, and she was prepared - eager - to wield it to write her own destiny.

But that had passed, and over time the fire died. Smothered by her own inadequacies and her father's thumb. When the day came for Weiss to take her training to the next level, Myrtenaster, that symbol of power, shattered. With it, whatever withered remains of her dream, her fire, was snuffed out too. Bitterness and anger were quick to fill the void Myrtenaster had left in her life. Once more and forever, Weiss felt the inescapable cold.

She lie in bed, hair splayed out in a halo about her head from tossing and turning. The moonlight which slipped through her window illuminated the room in frigid light. The white sheets and white blankets did little to counteract the chilling effect of her mind, her heart. She stared up at the ceiling, at nothing, with a vague frown on her face. For the first time in nearly an hour she shifted her head.

Like fate, the moonlight illuminated a small wooden box resting on a shelf. It wasn't particularly large, nor long. Perhaps a foot long and a half-foot wide. Cedar, with the Schnee sigil stamped in silver on the top. Weiss knew the box well, knew it's contents. The smooth finish of the wood, the cold of the metal clasp and sigil, the plush, red velvet lining. The cold, dead steel it cradled within.

Then, suddenly, in her raw emotional state, something seized upon her. Like a revenant rising from a grave, Weiss arose from her bed. She needed something desperately. She needed control, she needed fire, and she needed to know, to know she had power over herself. She needed a weapon, something in her knew. She needed Myrtenaster, but with the sword long since destroyed and it's remains useless, her body independent of her mind left her bedroom.

It wasn't until she was outside the door that Weiss paused. Her mind seemed to catch up in a rush, asking incredulously 'what are you doing?' but Weiss had no answer for herself. Twenty-six years old, the CEO of an economic titan, and Weiss could come up with no better answer than a base need. Weiss opened the door.

Unlike Weiss, Ruby slept with the curtains drawn, casting most of the room in an impenetrable, inky blackness. A single sliver of silver moonlight slipped through, though, and rested across her sleeping bodyguard's face. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing slow and even. Weiss proceeded slowly towards her target, as the light not only illuminated Ruby's face, but also her nightstand.

And on that nightstand sat Rosebud.

Weiss had no plan, no rational thought other than a cold fear seeping into her very soul, though what she was afraid of was worryingly vague and internal. As if she was scared of herself. A phantom, she drifted across the room. Her hair was down, and she was clad in naught but her nightshirt, but her bare feet were silent on the floor, and after a moment she was gone, the door closing with a whisper.

And yet, Ruby, who had been awoken the moment Weiss entered the room, looked after her curiously.

0000000000

The wind outside was frighteningly cold, easily below freezing. Weiss knew, logically, that this kind of cold was dangerous, especially dressed as she was. She was barefoot, and her paper-thin nightgown did nothing to protect her from the cold as she padded down her driveway towards the security building. Even as she very profoundly did not care about the wind, her right arm curled protectively over her torso in some vain but involuntary attempt to shield herself from it. Her left arm hung by her side like a pendulum with some great weight attached to it, the pistol in her hand.

The interior of the building was cold, but much less so than the outside, not that Weiss much noticed. Single-minded, Weiss made her way across tile and linoleum floors until she finally came to her destination: the shooting range. The room had a long counter stretched across its length. Most of the stations were empty, but one right in the middle had boxes of ammunition stacked beneath it. Ruby must have set those up for herself, Weiss reasoned. She walked to the station and looked over it.

Briefly, she considered that she didn't know how to reload a magazine with bullets, but she didn't plan on doing much. Just fire a few bullets and get this thing out of her system. In the moment, Weiss didn't consider how she'd explain the missing bullets to Ruby in the morning.

Weiss tapped a few commands into a tablet she found at the station, making a holographic target of a human silhouette appear about fifteen feet in front of her. It was blue, and looked almost like it was made out of glass, but they could've been glass bottles on a fencepost for all Weiss cared then.

Then, for the second time since Weiss had left her bed, she paused.

Was she really about to do this? It didn't make any sense, it was irrational and wild and pointless. It was unbecoming of a woman of her stature.

And yet, something in her cried out when she almost left the station. Yes, Weiss was about to do this.

Though that was not the end of her issues. She wasn't quite sure how to hold the pistol. It was heavy in her hands, and she tried to remember the times she had seen Ruby fire Rosebud. She copied Ruby's stance as close as she could remember. Weiss extended her left arm out and away from her body in a way that felt just a little unnatural, and peered down the sights. The next problem came when she realised her hand was shaking terribly, shivering from both the cold without and the cold within. She lowered the gun and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

When she raised it up again, she was more steady, but still the front sight quivered too much for Weiss to really aim the gun. 'It doesn't matter' Weiss thought as frustration built, and simply put the front of the gun over her target.

Again, she hesitated. After a moment, and through a burst of bravery, Weiss squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened, not even a click.

She was getting frustrated with all this. She was Weiss Schnee, damnit, this was wrong. Why didn't the gun fire? It was loaded, right? To be sure, Weiss pulled back the slide on the pistol, looking down into the ejection port to see if there was a bullet in the chamber. There was, but Weiss had drawn the slide back too far, and the gun ejected the bullet. From how she had been looking down into the gun, the unfired bullet edjected straight up and bounced off of her forehead.

A hot blush ran over Weiss's cheeks. Even here in her solitude, she was still being mocked. Unseen faces and unheard voices laughing and jeering as the Schnee made a fool of herself. She shook her head, frustration quickly turning to anger. She wasn't supposed to not know what to do, she wasn't supposed to be stupid or clueless or make little mistakes. She was a Schnee.

After a moment of searching, Weiss found a small lever by the side of the gun, remembering vaguely that it was a safety feature that prevented the gun from firing. She flipped it and once more pointed the gun down at the target, ears hot from embarrassment and anger.

And she was very angry. Angry at herself for failing to fire the gun. Angry at the gun for being complicated. Angry at herself again for even being here instead of asleep. Angry at fate for its cruelty. Angry at her father and her upbringing. Angry at herself again for failing to be a huntress, for being weak, for being stupid, for being naive and scared and small and a child and my daughter.

BANG

Blood rushed loudly in Weiss's ears when she finally pulled the trigger to shut up her own thoughts that, by the end, weren't in her own voice. For an instant, fire bloomed in front of her and warmed her skin. It was much, much louder than she was expecting, and recoiled much harder. So loud that she shockwave made the air around her noticeably move and ruffle her loose hair, and the kick was hard enough that it torqued Weiss's wrist and pushed her arm back painfully, and she nearly dropped the pistol. The bullet itself veered wildly and missed the target by no less than two feet.

But she had done it.

Her breathing was just slightly harder and louder than normal, and yet she felt unnaturally, uncomfortably warm. Like the feeling just after a fever breaks and that awful sick chill gives way to heat and sweat.

A voice behind her spoke, "Whew, we got to work on that."

Weiss nearly jumped out of her skin, and turned on her heel. A hand, gentle, caught Weiss's left one before she could accidentally point the gun somewhere she didn't want to. Ruby stood there, clad in a black tank top and a pair of fluffy white pajama pants with little hearts stitched onto them. Weiss thought for a moment that they were so very against Ruby's usual aesthetic, as she had never seen Ruby in anything as stereotypically feminine as heart-laden pajama pants, but they were tucked into Ruby's ever-present calf-length combat boots and were secured to her hip with an empty pistol belt. The clash was so very pronounced and Weiss was so very emotionally raw that she almost laughed.

Instead, she shouted, "Wha- how long have you been awake?!"

Ruby seemed unaffected by Weiss's ire, responding easily with "Since you opened my bedroom door."

Suddenly realizing just how caught red-handed she was, Weiss was thrown onto the back foot trying to come up with an excuse, suddenly having to face the consequences of her irrational behavior, "Oh, I wasn't trying to-"

But Ruby cut her off in a way that Weiss realized suddenly she wouldn't have tolerated had anyone but Ruby done it, "You don't have to explain. Do you want me to teach you how to shoot her right?"

"What?"

Ruby shook Weiss's wrist, which Weiss only now realized Ruby was still holding. Her hand was warm.

Weiss was indignant. She had no idea what she was doing, true, but she couldn't just admit that. Plus she had done good enough by herself. She just wanted to put everything that happened in the last hour behind her and go to bed.

Instead, inexplicably, Weiss said, "Yes."

"Okay", Ruby said, letting go of Weiss's hand and seeming to forget entirely just how strange Weiss was acting, how Weiss had stolen her gun in the dead of night, how Weiss had made a fool of herself - unknowingly - right in front of Ruby. She seemed to forget her own tiredness, rubbing at her eyes, and made a vague motion with her hands, "Okay, first thing, we need to swap the bullets in Rosebud."

Weiss frowned, looking to the pistol, "Swap the bullets? Why?"

"Well, I'm assuming you didn't change out the ones I already had in her, right?"

Another mistake, albeit one she didn't understand. "No, should I have?"

Ruby shrugged tiredly, and Weiss immediately felt guilty for being the cause of her assistant's interrupted sleep. "It doesn't hurt anything, but that's my carry ammo you're shooting." She stifled a yawn.

Weiss frowned at the gun, before handing it over to Ruby to let her handle swapping them out. "Your what?"

Ruby seemed content to show Weiss rather than just explain. She stepped past Weiss to the table and dropped the magazine out of the gun, setting it on the counter. Then she rotated the gun in her hand so the ejection port pointed straight up. Casually, she pulled the slide back and ejected the chambered bullet straight up into the air. It spun a few times before Ruby caught it on its way down in a show of dexterity that Weiss wouldn't expect of someone operating on less than three hours of sleep. She then offered the bullet to Weiss with one hand while reaching down below the counter for a box of bullets with the other. "Carry ammo. It's like, you have two kinds of bullets. Carry and Range."

More terminology. Weiss frowned, looking at the bullet Ruby had handed her. The casing was brass, but the actual bullet itself was a silvery color, and lacked a real tip. Instead, there was a little divot on the nose, lined with ridges.

Ruby worked open a box and went about filling a spare magazine with the 'range' bullets as she explained, "'Carry' means that I use those when I'm on the job. Those specific ones are made of steel, with hollow points so they expand on impact with stuff. I picked em because," she paused to yawn again, "I figured if someone tried to make a move on you, they'd probably be in casual clothes, and it'd probably be around other people, like at a press conference or something. Those probably wouldn't go through a person and hit someone behind them, 'cause they kinda tear to pieces when they hit things."

"Oh," Weiss said, a bit unsettled by how casually Ruby talked about shooting a person, but she reasoned that it was Ruby's job.

"I've also got pointed brass ones coated in teflon, which can punch through a beowolf hide or soft body armor, subsonic ones with a lighter powder load for use with my suppressor, and a few elemental types with dust infused in the powder or bullet. It's just covering bases."

"Wait," Weiss interjected with a shake of her head, immediately worried she had violated some sort of safety protocol, "Why can't we shoot those here?"

Once more Ruby gave a tired shrug, "No real reason, except my carry ammo has a different mix of powder, so they kick harder. That's why Rosebud about sprained your wrist when you shot her earlier. That, and range ammo is a lot cheaper, since its just lead pellets. No real machining required, no Dust in the powder, that kind of stuff"

Done loading a few magazines with the more simple bullets, Ruby slid one into Rosebud and passed the gun back to Weiss. She stepped aside and motioned for Weiss to take her position at the counter, "Usually I'd say we need some earplugs, but it'll be fine for now." She then made an odd motion, pushing her hands out in front of her and away from her body, "Alright, lesson one, triangles are your friend."

"What on Remnant does that even mean?"

Evidently Ruby found something in her tone funny, because she laughed lightly, tiredly. "Here, look, aim the gun at the target."

After a moment, and perhaps feeling a little bit silly, Weiss resumed her stance from earlier.

"Spread your legs out a bit." Ruby began under a yawn, "It doesn't have to be wide, but you do want a good, stable base so the recoil doesn't rock you and throw off your aim."

Weiss shuffled her feet, realizing almost for the first time that she was barefoot and in a frilly nightgown. Ruby or, indeed, Rosebud didn't seem to care what she was wearing or how silly the situation looked though. Ruby was content to teach, and Rosebud would fire no matter how the person pulling her trigger looked.

"Alright, I'm going to be teaching you the isosceles stance," Ruby began, out of Weiss's field of view, "It's a really good one for beginners, and it'll help you pick up on things like handling recoil and aiming easily."

The word 'beginner' burned Weiss like a brand, and she couldn't stop herself, "Don't treat me like a child, Miss Rose." Her tone was just as scalding, but when she turned to look at the other woman she found Ruby profoundly unaffected.

Instead of putting her assistant in her place, Weiss's words only prompted Ruby to shrug and say, "I'm not." After a moment though, Ruby's eyes seemed to soften in a way Weiss had never seen before, "There's no shame in being new to something, Miss Schnee. You are new to this, and there are steps to getting better. You're only a person."

Weiss pursed her lips, unprepared and unused to the emotions Ruby was impressing on her. Instead, she turned back to the target and resumed her stance.

"Alright, now, two hands on the pistol. Cup one with the other."

Weiss frowned again, "Wait, but you shoot it with one hand."

Ruby nodded, and explained, "Yeah, but I've been shooting since I was six months old. If I had my aura, could probably fire a howitzer with one hand for all the practice managing recoil I've had." Ruby seemed to sense the feeling of inadequacy Weiss felt at hearing that, so she was quick to follow up, "What I'm saying is that I've trained a lot for it, you haven't yet. If you want to, you'll get there in time."

Weiss was suddenly aware of how close Ruby was to her. Not close enough to break any social taboo, but still, close. It was strange, Weiss didn't know why she was suddenly so very aware of it, so Weiss turned back to the target and clasped the gun in both of her hands.

"There you go," Ruby said, a supportiveness in her voice that made the tips of Weiss's fingers feel warm again, "Now hold your arms out straight. Not totally locked, but almost. Good, hunch your shoulders forward towards the target, it's gonna feel weird, like you're sticking your butt out, but it'll keep the gun steady so you don't hurt your wrists too much."

Weiss focused on her posture, ignoring her own mind telling her an adult Schnee shouldn't have to be taught anything and instead focusing on Ruby's neutral, supportive voice. "See, triangles."

Weiss broke posture to look at Ruby, furrowing her brow, "What?"

Ruby smiled, something nostalgic in her eyes, "Two eyes, two lines of sight, one target. Triangle. Two shoulders, two arms, one gun. Triangle. Two feet, two legs, one crotch. Triangle. It's the shape of power." Ruby laughed softly, but fully, "My dad used to say that, but it's true. A lot of triangles. Even more with a rifle or shotgun."

It was absurd to listen to, and Weiss once again felt a bizarre impulse to laugh alongside Ruby. She didn't, but she did accept her advice, feeling the different triangles Ruby had listed off and focusing on her posture.

"Alright, now drop the stance, chamber a round, then resume it again and fire."

Ah, a test then. Weiss was always good at tests in school, this should be no different. She relaxed her shoulders, stood normally for a second, before pulling back the slide on Rosebud, the red pistol clacking it's affirmative. She checked the safety, before going back into her stance. Her bare feet firmly planted, her shoulders forward and her elbows almost locked. She cupped the pistol in one hand, her left wrapped around the bit analogous to the hilt of a sword, her finger on Rosebud's trigger, and her right cupping the bottom of her left hand. She peered down the sights of the pistol, which quivered but held on the center ring of the target fifteen feet away from her, right over where the target's heart would be.

BANG

The recoil was much less pronounced, and the sound, while tremendously loud, didn't create any kind of shockwave this time. Even so, the bullet veered to the right of where Weiss thought she was aiming, chipping the very edge of the hologram and sending little fragments of semisolid light scattering back and dissolving. The controller tablet flashed a bright 'zero points' on it's screen, and Weiss frowned. "I missed," she said flatly.

"Yeap," Ruby said, bouncing with the word on the balls of her feet. After a moment, she explained, "Yeah, a lot of people think that pistols are easier to use than rifles 'cause of video games and movies, but it's really the other way around. Try again." Her tone was light, but supportive.

Weiss pursed her lips, aiming again. This time, she squeezed the trigger and the bullet missed the target entirely.

Three magazines she would go through trying this. Of the twenty or so bullets she fired, only about five landed within the score-counting area on the target. The rest either chipped pieces of the target off of the edge or missed entirely. Even the shots she landed felt more like luck than Weiss's skill improving. "I don't understand," Weiss admitted after removing the empty magazine from Rosebud, "I'm putting the sights right on the target, why am I still missing?"

Ruby shrugged, "Pistol sights are finicky. I don't even use them, but I've probably put close to a million rounds through Rosebud. You get to a point where you can just kind of tell where the bullets are going to go."

Weiss frowned again, frustrated. That didn't make any sense, why would there be these glowing red sights on the gun if they weren't reliable. She had half a mind to just heave the gun itself at the target and call it a night. Instead, she released her frustration with a huff and set the gun down on the counter with a clunk.

She found Ruby with pursed lips. She seemed to be contemplating something, so Weiss waited for her to speak, shivering a bit as the chilly air seeped through the thin nightgown she was wearing. Eventually, Ruby said, "Here, just pick it up again and load it. I have an idea."

When Weiss had gotten out of bed, she hadn't meant for this...wherever this was to become a lesson. Weiss was getting to the end of her patience with this whole business, and a part of her was once more longing for her bed, but she found herself humoring the other woman. Grabbing a fourth magazine filled with range bullets, she slid it into position, cocked the gun, and aimed at the target. "Now what?" Weiss asked.

When Ruby spoke, it was from much closer behind her, close enough that it sent goosebumps trailing up and down her arms, "Do you mind if I touch your for this?"

Weiss swallowed, unsure. Ruby had been nothing but supportive all night (morning?), and Weiss felt against all odds that she would trust Ruby here, "Go ahead."

She didn't know what to expect, what Ruby was planning, but when a pair of equally bare arms slid up her own to cradle her now-shaking hands, Weiss almost jumped.

Her mind scrambled, thoughts blurring and coming up as vague impulses rather than the put-together thoughts she prided herself on. Ruby wasn't significantly bigger than Weiss, but those differences of inches were so much more pronounced as Ruby enveloped her.

And enveloped really was the word to use. Weiss had always frowned at her arms, she saw them as thin, frail, weak. Ruby's were not overtly muscular, not in the sense that movie superheroes are muscular, but they were much more toned, and there was a strength and steadiness there that Weiss could feel. Ruby's muscles were smaller, but tighter. Firm like stone and close to the bone in the way that practical training makes them. Even as her breathing deepened and her heart rate accelerated, Weiss watched as Ruby steadied her hands, and the sights of Rosebud stilled obediently, like a dog before it's kind master. Her hands were warm, calloused but still soft and sure.

And while Ruby was not near close enough that Weiss would say she was pressing against Weiss, Ruby was certainly close enough that Weiss could feel the heat of Ruby's body. Even on a night as cold as this one, she radiated a warmth that felt inviting, almost intoxicating as Weiss absorbed it. She felt the other woman's hair brushing past her temple as Ruby all but rested her head on Weiss's shoulder to better see the gun they were both holding.

When Ruby spoke, she spoke quietly to compensate for her proximity to Weiss's ears, "See, look. It's all about steadiness. The sights are important, but you have to trust yourself. Weapons are extensions of our bodies. Don't use the sight, aim with your eyes and trust your hands to follow along." A hot blush colored Weiss's cheeks as she could feel Ruby's breath on her cheek, and the low tone of Ruby's voice lent an almost - dare she even think it - intimate atmosphere to the whole affair.

Ruby guided her with little movements, little pushes that Weiss could feel as both dexterous flexes of fingers and the shifting of Ruby's shoulders against her own. But she was not commanding. Ruby did not tell her what to do, how to move her arms, how to steady herself. There was no more lessons on form and function. Ruby lead her, but did not command. Instead, she steadied Weiss's movements and calmed Weiss's heart. Weiss looked past the sights and focused on the target. Right over where the heart would be, there was a ring encircling the number '10', and Weiss instead focused her eyes on that. Her hands moved naturally in coordination with her eyes.

Then, she hesitated.

What if, after all this encouragement, all this build up, she missed? Could she bear seeing the disappointment in Ruby's eyes? Even if that wasn't there, even if Ruby looked just as supportive as always, Weiss would know. Ruby would be putting up a front, she was sure. She would just fail again and know that she had disappointed the other thought crossed her mind to call it here, Ruby would certainly let her. They could go back to bed and forget this night ever happened.

"There you go," Ruby whispered, as to not break Weiss's flimsy concentration, "You've got this."

No, she couldn't call it here. She owed Ruby this. Owed herself this. 'You have to trust yourself,' Ruby had said, and of all the advice and guidance she had been given in her life, none had felt the same way in her heart. It felt...warm.

With a thought, Weiss squeezed the trigger.

BANG

The hologram shattered into a million particles which, like flakes of snow, drifted weightlessly to the ground.

+10 Points

0000000000

They ended their impromptu training session soon thereafter. Rosebud was secured in Ruby's holster and reloaded with her carry ammo. Weiss shivered at the feeling of the cold pavement on her bare feet, but there was a strange, dull warmth in her that seemed untouchable by the cold of the Atlas night-winds, even as they howled on the path between the security building and the manor. Like an ember of her feeling from earlier, in smouldered, leaving a confusing but pleasant feeling in her chest.

Ruby whistled in awe, looking at her scroll, "Two in the morning! Time really flies."

"I'm sorry for all this," Weiss said after a second, her arms crossing to shield herself from the cold, guilt threatening that ember within, "I didn't intend to wake you up."

Ruby laughed once, "Oh, pfft, it's fine Weiss," she stopped herself abruptly, catching her mistake and stiffly saying, "Oh, er, sorry Miss Schnee, I didn't mean-"

"It's fine," Weiss found herself saying, surprising both her assistant and herself. "I don't...you can use my first name if you wish, Ruby. I don't mind," and, surprising herself further, she realized there was no lie in that statement, no half-truth. Indeed, Weiss found herself wanting to hear Ruby say her name again.

The smile Ruby gave kindled the ember in Weiss's chest to something warmer, bighter. Like kindling, catching fire and burning.

Once they were out of the cold and back in the manor, the heater did wonders. Weiss felt like sheets of ice were melting and falling from her skin, and she wondered how she ignored the cold earlier.

Even though Ruby had said she didn't mind the undoubtedly rude awakening, Weiss still found herself wanting to apologize one last time, "I am sorry, though. I hope it won't be too much of an issue come morning that I woke us up like this."

Ruby didn't laugh this one off, instead she smiled warmly, "It's fine, Weiss. At the very least this'll make a good story to tell someone in the future. Waking up at unholy hours to do something unreasonable is just what friends do." She shrugged, looking tired but happy, "Now, I'm going to go do my best to get eight hours of sleep in six hours, goodnight."

"Goodnight, Ruby", Weiss just managed to get out. They parted ways and, once Weiss was alone once again, a single word resonated through her head as an organ resonates through a cathedral.

Friends.

That ember caught and spread, becoming stronger, growing into something braver. It burned warm and inviting, a hearthfire in her soul.

It was the best night of sleep Weiss had in years.

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A/N

"Whew, it's been a while, guys. 18,000 words at time of writing, and that's before edits. This chapter is the longest single body of work I've ever written I think, and it's several months in the making.

Compound together the length of this chapter with prioritizing my family over my writing and a really, really unpleasant interaction I had with another person on tumblr (so unpleasant it soured the entire show for me for a good few weeks because I kept associating the characters and show with the anxiety and bitterness the interaction left me with, and has resulted in my all but shutting down my tumblr), and you get a six-month gap in updates.

Enough negativity, though, I've finally written something! And it's a pretty good something if I do say so myself. My style has changed a lot I think since I first started this story, but this chapter contains two scenes which have been in my head for years. Gosh guys, the dopamine of finally putting to paper a scene that's been swirling in your head for so long is incredible. The scenes I'm talking about are the one where Ruby shows Weiss her collection (though I plan on rewriting the scene before I publish this), and the scene at the shooting range. It sets up quite a few things I hope to capitalize on as the story progresses.

A few little fun facts about this chapter, that machine gun Ruby designed and built is based heavily in my mind on the M60E6, and if/when it's fired in this story you have my good friend CheifD3m0n1c to thank for any sense of realism I can add to it. It's pretty easy to research firing rifles and handguns where I live, but even in the USA a machine gun is hard to come by. He was in the Air Force and trained on a similar gun, so I went to him for advice on how to portray it. Additionally, it's name, the Woodcutter 3-29 is special. Ruby described it as being intended for Beowolf hordes, right? Well, in the red riding hood fairytale, it's a lumberjack - a woodcutter - that kills the wolf at the end of the story. 3-29 comes from the fact that the Red Trailer is three minutes and twenty-nine seconds long.

I considered briefly naming it the Chekhov, but I thought that was too on-the-nose.

I don't have much experience with many guns, but I hate pistols. I took out a bit of my frustrations through Weiss here. The sights are useless! I put them on the target, pull the trigger, and miss! I shot a few magazines from my friend's pistol (which is the same caliber as Ruby's) to research this chapter and used my experience from that to describe how Rosebud would feel to Weiss, someone who, like myself, is new to shooting handguns. Everything from the different types of ammunition to the way shooting moves the air around you is as realistic as I could make it after a few months of learning how to shoot at my University. I tried to take special care to represent Weiss's and Ruby's minds here as far as gun terminology goes. Ruby know's a lot about them, and Weiss knows next to nothing, so I tried to represent that in their inner monologues by changing my own writing to represent the character whose perspective I was writing. I.E. You'll notice things like Ruby's perspective sections using terms like 'grip' where Weiss's uses 'handle'.

While I'm on the subject, I wanted to write down what the purpose of this story is. Or at least, the purpose of my method of telling it. I wanted to tell a story that is anchored on Remnant, in RWBY's universe. It's an incredible world, but I wanted to ground it in reality. Not making a 'gritty' story (I hate stories that are so dark and hyper-serious, Se7en remains my least favourite movie), but making one where the characters are human beings. RWBY is a hybrid of fantasy and sci-fi, and the show is much closer to its fantasy side as far as characters and storytelling goes. Destiny Finds Us is closer to the sci-fi side, but it's still incorporating and assimilating the important character themes from the fantasy part of the show. I hope that comes through, I'm trying to adapt the characters into older, slightly different versions of themselves, and trying hard not to change who they are fundamentally, but rather the way in which they are applied to the world. If you thought "Wow, having team RuBY killing people in that flashback is kinda weird and off-putting for their characters," then good, that sense of strangeness is what I was trying to show with that.

Oh, and one last thing. About the whole "Three person team" thing, I have an explanation for that. I won't put it here cause I want it to be explained by the story itself, but it's not terribly important to the narrative. Just a butterfly effect type thing from Weiss not going to Beacon, it'll be addressed, so don't worry your pretty little heads about it."

That was my original author's note, written around March of 2019 if I'm remembering right. It's been a good while since then, new decade now and all that. But anyway, the reason I'm writing a second author's note so long after is with an announcement of sorts! Canon has moved forward, and we've learned so much more about the World of Remnant since I started this. I was sixteen when I first started working on this story, and I've progressed a lot too. My writing style is wholly different and more consistent, and looking back I'm struck with a feeling of dissatisfaction. I've decided that I'm going to rewrite this story. From the ground up. Make adjustments to parallel canon better (Atlas being a fucking floating city for instance), and better reflect the characters and their interactions, etc etc. That way, chapter 1 and chapter 13 will both feel like they were written by the same person in the same story. That said, I need to make something very clear: I will still be updating this version. As I said, most of the changes will be purely stylistic, with very few plot changes. Allow me to explain.

I'm going to post the rewritten version on FF and Ao3 as a separate story to this one (Called like 'Destiny Finds Us: Take 2' or something, haven't decided yet). When I get to chapter 14 in the new version, and it's caught up with the old version, I'll post the new chapters to both the old version and the new version. That way anyone who doesn't want to reread the same story with better writing can just keep following this one and still get the new content when I write it. That does mean anything I change will come out of nowhere. For instance, in the old version, I have Ruby at 24 years old, but in the new version, I plan on having her be 26. If you don't follow the newer version, then the changes will simply appear in the new chapters. I.E. Whenever chapter 14 gets added to this story, Atlas will be in the air despite it being shown on the ground earlier. I'd heavily recommend following along with the rewrite version, but it's not, strictly speaking, absolutely necessary.

If that didn't make a lick of sense, PM me and I'll be happy to explain it better. I'm also gonna start writing more short stories between chapters of the rewrite, both in the main continuity of RWBY and AUs, keep my creative juices fresh rather than stagnating on one story. I've already started work on a few one-shots taking place during Yang's time in Mistral between vol4 and 5, so keep an eye out for that.

Welp, a long author's note to cap off a beast of a chapter. I hope you enjoyed, and if you want more don't forget to review!