Edit (06/18/16): A couple sentences and some grammar editing.

Ruby ran as fast as she could in the general direction where Vi was supposed to be. Having a lot of shrubbery in her way, Ruby couldn't really use semblance seeing that she would probably tear her hood that she had received from her mother before she died. Ruby had enough sense to preserve the only thing that her mother had given her. That and her injury.

To make progress in getting to Vi faster, the red-haired girl transformed her weapon to its war scythe form to cut the occasional bush or vine. Ruby didn't want to disturb the greeneries but her hood was more important than a few thorns that could rip her hood and it was a better and faster than just finding a way around the shrubbery if she was to find Vi as fast as possible.

After running and hacking at what seemed like five minutes through the forest without using her semblance, she found herself in a small clearing in the forest. Deciding not to stop for anything, Ruby continued to run forward but as she ran, she felt the ground tremble and she immediately knew that some creature of Grimm was tracking her. The girl immediately stopped running and readied into a fighting a stance. Ruby slammed the edge of her scythe to the ground.

By then, she heard the growls of Beowolves and probably some Ursa minors along as well. Ruby could feel adrenaline rush throughout her entire body as excitement to fighting the Grimm once again after a long time not fighting any creatures of Grimm. Signal Academy only taught them how to use weapons and held the occasional sparring between two students but never the creatures of Grimm. Only theories on how to fight against the Grimm

A single Beowolf came out behind Ruby and dashed at the girl to lunge at her with its claws. Ruby, being the faster between the two, lifted her scythe as if it was almost weightless and spun around swinging her scythe towards the foolish Beowolf that thought that it could take out an isolated girl in one swipe. Ruby, already facing the Beowolf, turned her hips around and her scythe had gone through the Beowolf's torso. Ruby fired a shot and the scythe cleaved the Beowolf horizontally into two. As the dying Beowolf laid dying, other Grimm charged at Ruby.

Staying silent, Ruby smirked at the Grimm creatures around her. She was at a small clearing so she knew that her cloak wouldn't be ruined. She swung her scythe up in the air and rotated her sweetheart so that the blade faced the opposite way. Ruby then put all her strength into hitting her blunt side of her scythe onto the Beowolf in front of her. She shot Crescent Rose once more to launch her forward flinging to another Beowolf.

Ruby used her semblance to create more leverage to slice the Beowolf in front of her. Once she got a meter close, Ruby sliced the poor Grimm in half. After the Beowolf started dissolving into nothing, Ruby caught her breath and surveyed the Grimm that was surrounding her. There were at least five more Beowolves and two Ursa Minors. She could take them on by herself. Ruby was confident enough to fight them alone without any help.

Standing in a readied stance, Ruby let the Beowolves come at her before she jumped up into the air and used her speed to spin her scythe vertically, cutting down all but one Beowolf. Ruby landed on the ground gently on her feet and within a split second, she rushed in front of the Grimm with her immense speed and simultaneously beheaded the Beowolf. That left two Ursas left.

By the time she had wiped out the Beowolves, Ruby was panting heavily. The girl clutched her chest and stabbed Crescent Rose to the ground to catch more of her needed breath. At the same time, the two Ursas were charging straight for the tired girl. Ruby, still short on air, saw the two Grimm and grabbed her sweetheart, transformed it to its storing mode, put it on her back, and got out of the way. I can still do this, she thought to herself although clutching her left chest to ease the pain that she was experiencing, I can still do this.

Using her semblance once more, she revolved around one of the Ursas so that it could confuse the large Grimm somehow. When she felt that she was slowing down and her chest was restricting her from enduring her own immense speeds, she took out Crescent Rose and shot two rounds onto the ground which boosted the girl up in the air. As she had mentally planned, the Ursa was confused and was frantically searching for the human with a red hooded cape around it.

Up in the air, Ruby pointed her sniper rifle at the Ursa's head and shot once and ran out of ammo. To her surprise, the bullet pierced through the Ursa's armored head and it drop down to the ground dead. Ruby landed on the on top of the dead Ursa and quickly grabbed a full magazine from her back pocket and replaced the empty magazine, putting the empty case to pocket where the full magazine had been. In front of her was the last Ursa that she had to fight but unfortunately for the red-haired girl, Crescent Rose was getting heavier and heavier by the second as Ruby's breath was getting shorter and shorter. The pain that seared through her chest was at the point that it was now unbearable. Just one more, Ruby… You can do this…

Ruby mustered all the strength that she had left and cocked her gun and pointed the heavy gun towards the remaining Ursa. She shot once. The recoil pushed the girl onto the ground. She aimed at the Ursa again and shot once more. The recoil from the sniper rifle made Ruby lose grip of Crescent Rose and the High Caliber Sniper Scythe flew a few meters to Ruby's right.

Exhausted, Ruby tried to crawl to get her weapon but her legs had already given up on her. Knowing that her body had already reached its limit and just laid down on the grass and faced the bright blue sky. Ruby knew that the Ursa was still alive when it growled loudly and she felt the ground in which she had laid was vibrating violently and she assumed that it was charging towards her.

Ruby was expecting to be trampled very soon so she closed her eyes and waited to be killed. I should have listened… Ruby, why do you have to be so stubborn? Yang knew that this was going to happen even before I came here. Why didn't I listen? Ruby was now contemplating over her death that was about to come any moment.

Ruby waited but nothing had happened other than the tremors of the Ursa violently running towards the incapacitated girl had stopped. Ruby opened her eyes and turned her head to where the charging Ursa was only to see it slowly dissolving into nothing. Besides the Ursa was a human figure was facing the opposite direction from the girl and with Ruby's tired eyes, she was not able to recognize who the person was until she fainted from exhaustion and the adrenaline from her body slowly going back to normal levels.

I knew it! I should've been there sooner!

Someone help me!

Hey, is she okay?!

I knew it! I should've killed those Ursa when I saw them! Hey can you see this?

Help me carry her weapon. It's too heavy for me.

Hey there, bestie, we're here at the temple ruins. I'm going to let you rest until all the guys get here.

Hide Ruby now!

Hey there again, bestie… We're going back now. I should've been there a lot sooner… I hope your sister isn't going to kill me…

Two years earlier…

"I'll see you later dad!" Ruby grabbed her head phones from the couch where she had accidentally slept at last night watching her favorite show.

"Alright," a voice replied, "Stay safe out there, my baby girl."

Ruby groaned and said, "I'm not a baby anymore, dad!"

Ruby's father appeared from the kitchen and gave a small laugh, "I know, I know. You're still my youngest daughter and I love you. And would you kindly help me with some shopping since you're going to Vale anyway," Ruby's dad pulled out a scrap of paper from his apron and some lien to pay for the goods, " Here's the stuff that we need for next week and I've added in some extra money so go treat yourself with some cookies," Ruby's silver eyes glowed with absolute delight and gave his dad a bear hug, "Dinner will be ready when you get home so don't eat too much, okay? Oh, and Yang will be home sometime later. Happy Birthday, dear," The red-haired girl nodded with complete enthusiasm before leaving their apartment at Vale into the night.

Ruby took an air cab to downtown and paid the fare when she reached downtown. For her birthday, her dad gave her lien for her weapon's maintenance and better modifications for Crescent Rose. Her excitement on getting her sweetheart fixed and getting better mods overwhelmed the red-haired girl more than anything except that she was going to able to see Yang once again after she entered Beacon as a first year huntress-in-training. Ruby secured her headphones to her ears and started playing music on her scroll as she walked down the streets of Vale.

Her first destination was to get new mods for her Crescent Rose and get it installed and fixed at the same time. Ruby knew that she could've done the maintenance herself but her dad was using their apartment's workshop for some massive project that he needed to do for Signal Academy which probably meant more work for Ruby to do since his dad never helps him with the work that he assigns to his class as to not show any favoritism to any of his students. Ruby entered the shop called "From Dust Till Dawn". The shop wasn't exclusively only selling dust crystals and powders but if one played their card right, they could buy different merchandise other than dust and Ruby was there for that purpose since their "secret but legal" business were high-quality.

When Ruby entered, the store was filled with a variety of dust elements that she probably would never need since Crescent Rose was purely mechanized and the sniper was gas operated. Three people were at the counter talking to the old owner of the shop. Ruby didn't want to disturb them so she decided to go to the back aisle of the shop to read a magazine or two while waiting for the other customers to leave the shop.

Ruby walked to where the Weapon magazine and picked up a copy to read. Before she flipped the magazine, Ruby skipped the current song she was listening and searched for something that she liked. After a few seconds of tapping and swiping on her scroll, Ruby settled on a metal rock song and turned to the first page of the magazine, carefully examining every detail each page that she read through.

After a few minutes, Ruby finished the magazine that she was reading and looked over to the counter and saw that the three customers were still in front of the counter so she picked up a previous issue of the Weapons Magazine and started reading it to pass the time.

Ruby was enjoying the magazine that she was reading. She would go ask for the things that she needed even though it was already late into the night but she was going to see Yang again which made it all worthwhile when she felt a tug on her right shoulder and pulled her hood down. Ruby turned her head around her and saw a man wearing a black suit with a red tie along with a matching hat and red sunglasses. Ruby was staring at the man with confusion until he pointed to his ears. Ruby understood what he wanted so she returned the magazine to the book rack in front of her and took off her headphones.

"Yes?" Ruby asked.

"I said," the man said, "put your hands in the air, now!"

"Are you robbing me?" Ruby was uncertain whether the man was going to rob her of her money that she had from the way the man was angrily looking at her with his red-bladed sword.

"Yes!" he retorted.

"Oh…"

Without warning, Ruby used her semblance to speed up her jump into the air and kicked the man with her two feet flat on his chest making the man fly off to the other side of the shop. Not a second later, another person wearing what seemed like a uniform appeared in front of Ruby and pointed a dust-operated gun at her face. Ruby used her semblance once more and gave the man a flying side kick to his stomach and Ruby, over exaggerating her attack, called upon her semblance to push the man all the way through the shop's window. The man broke the window and Ruby soon followed through. When the two had landed on the streets, Ruby kicked the gun away from the robber and used all her force into a single kick to the head to make sure that he wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.

Ruby grabbed her sweetheart and slowly stood up and turned her head towards the other men that were currently robbing the store. As she gradually stood up from crouching on the pavements a couple seconds ago, Ruby transformed Crescent Rose into its scythe form and then Ruby swung her weapon vertically multiple times in to ready herself in the fight that she was going to be in and to intimidate the robbers then slammed her weapon into the ground with the barrel of her sniper pointing at the robbers.

"Okay," the man, with the bowler hat and white suit, said, which set him apart from what Ruby assumed his henchmen. He then panned his head towards his henchmen, motioned with his head and commaded, "Get her."

The henchmen ran around the broken mirror, which Ruby thought was dumb because they could've just jumped over the window and could've initiated a fight a couple seconds earlier but they just exited from the door and sprinted towards the red-haired girl.

The man who was first amongst his peers swung his red-bladed sword at Ruby diagonally from the right. Ruby just jumped up in the air, revolved her entire body to her left on top of Crescent Rose, and planted her two boots on the side of the man's face with enough force to send him flying back to the front of the shop. She then spun around on top of her weapon and carried her sweetheart to the air before landing on the pavement. Ruby then examined her opponents' next move who were now rushing to her. Ruby pointed the sniper's barrel behind her and shot once to grant her enough speed to hit the guy to her left with the blunt side of her weapon and caused him to launch off high into the air and landed a few meters away from her and swung her weapon to her back and slam the back part of Crescent Rose onto the other guy that was trying to attack the girl.

The guy that flew high in the air was able to recover quickly and sheathed his red sword then took out a firearm, pointed at Ruby, then started firing at the girl.

With the help of Ruby's semblance, she was way too fast for the bullets to even hit her once and with Crescent Rose's high caliber rifle, the knockback also helped speed Ruby's approach to the shooter. With two quick dashes, Ruby collided with the man and flung him up in the air. The red-haired girl continued to move forward due to the abnormal amounts of speed that she had and stopped it by slamming her weapon onto the pavement once more. While the man was still up in the air, Ruby swung around above the street and shot herself up in the air and used the back of Crescent Rose to hit the man once more rendering him unconscious.

Ruby landed almost gracefully if she hadn't had to bear the weight of Crescent Rose. Nonetheless, the man wearing the white suit looked at the unconscious henchman and said "You were worth every cent," referring to the henchmen, "Truly, you were." He started walking forward while taking his cigar off of his mouth, "Well, Red, I think we can all say it's been an eventful evening," he dropped his cigar on the pavement and used his can to extinguish the lit cigar, "and as much as I'd love to stick around…," the man then pointed his can towards Ruby and a little reticle at the end of the cane went up, "I'm afraid this is where we part ways." The man shot a flare to Ruby who turned the barrel to face the floor and shot down and the knockback made Ruby fly up into the air to evade the flare that the man shot.

Rub landed on the ground and the man was already gone. She looked around to search for the henchmen's boss. Ruby then turned around to see that the man was already climbing up a ladder to a building's rooftop. How did he get up there so fast?, Ruby thought. Behind her, the owner of the shop showed up at the entrance of his shop. Ruby sensed his presence and asked, "You okay if I go after him?"

"Uh huh," the old man said.

Ruby ran towards the building and shot Crescent Rose downwards to boost her up to the rooftop.

"Hey!" Ruby shouted to the man. He stopped from where he was standing.

"Persistent," he said with disgust in voice. Ruby didn't say anything rather prepared for anything that the man would throw at her. Crescent Rose by her side, Ruby was anticipating that the man would shoot at her again and jump down the building instead, an airship went up, hovering in the air. How could I have not seen this coming? Ruby was in shock with the man's extravagant escape plan. However, Ruby's defense did not falter and readied herself once again for a possible counterattack.

The airship shone a bright light at Ruby, temporarily blinding her and allowing the man to get on board the airship. "End of the line, Red," he said then threw a red dust crystal at Ruby which made her look at it when it landed at her feet. The next thing Ruby knew was that she was thrown off to the side from an explosion and she was separated from Crescent Rose as she was blown off to the side.

Ruby was out of breath when she had hit her back on a wall. The glass behind her had shattered as well and when she did a quick inspection for injuries, she saw that a shard of glass had penetrated her back near her spinal cord. Her aura hadn't protected her in time. If she wasn't distracted by the dust crystal, she could've at least prevented serious wounds. She cursed at herself and tried to stand up to get Crescent Rose. Not feeling numb anywhere, she used her semblance to get to where her sweetheart had laid on the ground.

While she was rushing, she suddenly felt a sharp pain on her chest. Ruby continued running and grabbed Crescent Rose and started firing multiple times with its gun from at the airship. The man was not anywhere to be seen this time and was replaced by a woman whose face was blanketed by the darkness but her dress which glowed like fire was visible and her eyes were glowing as well. The woman deflected the shots that Ruby was blasting at the airship.

After depleting her ammo, the airship took off and Ruby felt powerless to do anything. She dropped Crescent Rose on the ground and collapsed on her side. Her vision was starting to get hazy but when she looked at her chest, a black glass shard was protruding from her left chest and it was the inside of her and had somehow managed to get past her aura. Luckily for her, blood wasn't flowing outside as the glass shard had blocked the blood from exiting her body. So if she were to pass out from the excruciating pain, she knew she'd be fine.

Ruby could handle a little pain but what she was feeling right now was too much for her to handle. Ruby then started to feel sleepier and sleepier until she fainted on a rooftop on the day of her own birthday. She was supposed to see Yang today but sadly, that wasn't going to be the case.

Ruby woke up hearing continuous faint beeping of a heart monitor and she felt as if an axe had cut her head in half. She tried sitting up but she felt a sharp pain on her left chest so Ruby decided to just lay on the bed. Ruby examined the room around her and she concluded that she was in a hospital and her theory was further proved when she tried to lift her right arm and saw that it connected to an IV drip.

Ruby looked to her left and saw that it was already noon and two months had passed since that event. Seeing this, Ruby felt tears trickle down her cheeks and she wiped them with her left hand. Lying down in bed for two months felt horrible as she felt really tired and weak from the slightest movement.

A minute passed by and nurse who seemed to be in charge of Ruby was walking by to check on her noticed that she was already awake and quickly turned around, probably to call a doctor. A couple more minutes passed by, Ruby heard the door to her right open and a man in a white coat entered.

"Hello, Miss Rose. Good to see you're awake," the doctor said, pulling out a stool and placed it to Ruby's right, "How are you feeling?"

"Everything hurts…," she replied weakly.

"Okay, that's normal. I can see that you can speak properly. I will let the nurse contact your family as soon as possible. They'll be here in probably ten minutes or so. But before that, I'll need to do some routine checkup on you just to make sure you'll be fine. Will that be alright, Miss Rose?"

"Yes…"

"Before I start doing your checkup, I must warn you, Miss Rose, if you wish to continue your studies as a huntress, your heart was permanently damaged and your back had been infected from exposure from an open wound at your back and everything is fine except that you can't use your semblance for any prolonged periods of time. I don't know whether it would be five minutes or one hour. But be assured that everything will be fine, Miss Rose."

Ruby had not said anything and stayed silent as she tried to absorb the only news that she could get from the doctor.

"Okay…"

Two years later…

Ruby woke up at the school infirmary and she clutched her pain to ease the pain that she was feeling at the moment. Ruby then looked at the clock which told the date of what today was. Ruby sighed when she saw that not a single day had passed since she collapsed at the Emerald Forest. The school nurse came in and saw that Ruby was awake and pulled a stool to Ruby's right.

"How are you feeling, Miss Rose?"

"I think I just need to rest for a bit. What happened to me?"

"Your friends brought you're here a couple hours ago and you've just been sleeping. The school doctor didn't see anything wrong. You'll need a little bit more of rest though so I'll just leave to allow you to rest more. Call for us if there's anything that you'd need." The nurse stood up from her seat and left the room and Ruby was left alone.

Feeling tired and sleepy, Ruby closed her eyes and wandered off to sleep.