In the pre-chapter author's notes for version 1.0 of this chapter, I talked about how my first idea for this story was first conceived through the idea of having a geist bond to Ruby and give her tech-powers. But then I went on to talk about how I had been watching Generator Rex and just decided to give her Rex's powers as well as add Six (because he's a great character). I didn't want to make it an official crossover however, because I believe due to the horrifically low amount of RWBY x G.R. crossovers there are that I'd be killing this fic before it started.

But now I've written eight chapters (plus a prologue) and realized that what has come to be planned for this fic has become so much greater than simply giving a single character different powers.

And so, I will do what I did in the original AN and use this metaphor:
A (good) fanfiction is like throwing a pebble into a pond and watch as the ripples naturally develop. Like adding a new character or changing one certain event.

What I am doing here can be likened to if you fired into said lake with a shotgun using pellets made of depleted uranium.

So, saddle up buckaroos, this is no longer the RWBY you know.

Legends. Stories scattered throughout time.

Mankind has grown quite fond of recounting the exploits of heroes and villains.

But so easily have they forgotten that they are the literal remnants of a golden age long since left to ruin.

Man, risen from the ashes of their destroyed predecessors, was strong and resourceful. But they were born into an unforgiving world that had already collapsed around them.

For it was not just nature that wished to reclaim mankind, but also their own creations that had turned against them. All of these set their sights on man, and what little they had left after leading themselves to their own demise.

Mankind did its best to resist these forces with what little it had, and it seemed that their enemies were intent on dragging what was left back into the void for good.

But even the tiniest spark of hope could give salvation to these people. Through bravery, ingenuity, and research, mankind began to reclaim the gifts they had once lost.

Old technologies salvaged from the dangerous east, sciences uncovered once again to help man, but there was one discovery that helped them the most.

Aura.

With the ancient technique of harnessing the power of one's soul rediscovered, the select few determined enough to train themselves learned these teachings.

And, in doing so, became powerful enough to ward off their enemies. To provide safety to their people.

But those who ignore history, are doomed to repeat it. And whilst these powers and tools may protect mankind from nature, control it even, they are unable to safely protect them from others who hold it also.

And nature is never meant to be controlled. And it will always win in the end.

So, I ask you this:

Who do you send, to save you from yourselves?

Vale, Beacon City: 14/06/137M, 07:46pm

"Hi there Criminal Scum! My name is Ruby Rose. Now thrill me."

It seemed like a good thing to say at the time. For all of five seconds.

The ricocheting of bullets against stone was all Ruby was able to hear as she barrelled forward, one massive metal hand was held in front of her like a riot shield, palm facing out. Every so often, Ruby could feel a better-aimed shot ping against her Beatdown Gauntlet she had used her semblance to create. It was rare for a maker-type semblance to manifest in… anyone, really. Only two other prolific Hunters had the rare semblance type that allowed them to create physical forms for their ideas. And Ruby's ideas could be best described as 'heavy metal'.

As Ruby approached closer and closer to these criminals, the number of bullets that hit the right-handed BdG increased since her target became easier to hit. Once she was close enough, Ruby swiped her BdG at one of the men wearing black pinstripe suits and hats with red ties and sunglasses (at night of all things!). Neither able to react to the swing's speed or dodge the large coverage of the backhand, the criminal had no choice but to get caught in the attack and shoved through the air into another of his group.

"Just wanted a nice night out…" Ruby muttered loud enough for her opponents to hear. "But noooooo, I just have to get caught up in a robbery. Thanks for that!" Ruby swung a second BdG that melded around her hand and collided with a third man which sent him tumbling far down the street.

Ruby had been having quite a nice night until these people had shown up to rob the store she had been inside. She had gone to a late-running cafe, hung out with Yang before her older sister had gone to (in their words) 'take care of some business' and visited a comic store. But when Ruby went to go and peruse an electronics store, she had somehow found herself facing down a gang of black-suited thieves who had come in to find as many items containing dust as they could. At least, that was what their apparent leader was spouting off at the store owner about.

Which was insane, in Ruby's mind. If they wanted dust, why not rob somewhere that had more of it? Sure, pure elemental dust was the third most guarded resource in Remnant, but there still better places to get the low-grade and typeless dust. An electronics store would, sure, have a few types of batteries that used lighting dust as a conductor or storage, and maybe a few other items that contained higher-than-average dust in them, but then that was just it. It was the average, and the average item had barely a smidgen of dust in it and never a crystal above the lowest quality available, certainly nothing that would warrant an entire heist.

But Ruby was training towards becoming a Hunter and could not let such robberies slide. It didn't help the criminals' cause that they were also taking all the money and shaking down everyone else in the store. And even if Ruby hadn't even made the lowest training rank of hunter yet, the Tracker, she still held the values that made an initiate one. And thus, she decided it was the right decision to begin throwing punches with metal fists the size of herself. That was until she began using what was basically a giant, high-velocity staple gun to pin the thieves to concrete walls.

Upon first whipping out the aptly dubbed 'Stapler', Ruby's opponents were more than understandably confused at seeing her grow a backpack with a belt-fed mechanism attached to a wide, vacuum-like barrel attached to her hand. This confusion sharply turned into surprise and fear, however, when angular, u-shaped bars of metal began to be spat out of the uniquely shaped moth of Ruby's 'gun'. They flew fast enough to retain their orientation and collide with the thieves' stomachs, the sharp points on either side digging into the walls of buildings, and securely tethering them.

Retracting her semblance creations back into her body, Ruby took stock of her situation. There was still a sizeable about of bad guys still lurking around, most still inside the store she had begun her brawl by kicking the first goon out the window of. She could also see the leader, a man in a white coat with a bowler hat on top of his sweeping orange hair, a polished cane resting lazily under his right hand. But there were people still inside the store, the remaining thieves between them and the exit. And that wasn't to mention the nightlife that had stopped to gawk and record the fight. Well, Ruby couldn't blame them too harshly for that one, it was a rare occasion that you saw someone using a semblance in person, let alone someone who can manipulate aura.

"Everyone! Get out of here, it isn't safe!" Ruby shouted at the crowd, waving her arm horizontally to try and gesture to move away. Ruby had already torn up a good part of the street whilst swinging herself around with the BdGs, and it was starting to worry her that a bystander might get hit by some of the rubble. Her attention was diverted, however, when a storm of bullets pelted down on her aura projection.

Even if Ruby channelled most of her aura into her semblance, she didn't neglect the three other types of aura use, and as her father kept saying; projection is both your first and last line of defence. And Ruby was more than thankful that she listened.

Wasting no time, Ruby reconstructed both BdGs and turned to face the remaining men. Her eyes widened behind her reflective orange goggles when she saw the lead guy, the one in the bowler hat, had his can raised and its base flipped up like a crosshair. And he was aiming it at the crowd.

"NO!" Ruby cried as she leapt towards where she could intercept the shot if the man chose to fire. The BdGs melted away to loosen the load Ruby had to sprint with. Ruby heard the crack of… well, it was more of a 'thwoomp!', but all the same Ruby heard the man fire off whatever concealed weapon he had in his cane before she began to just react on instinct. With little time to think Ruby create a smaller gauntlet, far smaller than the BdGs and only about the size of a regular gauntlet, she threw her hand up at the incoming projectile with the back of her hand facing it. Then, blooming out from the back of the gauntlet's hand was a translucent green shield.

The screeching of the mystery man's blazing projectile came to a sudden disruption as it hit Ruby's Hardlight shield. Now, whilst Ruby would have liked to say she 'blocked' the shot, that wouldn't be entirely accurate. Instead, a better descriptor would be that she 'redirected' the attack… straight into another building. Ruby cringed as she watched to fiery explosion rip off a good chunk of a building's corner.

"Ehheheh… whoops…" Ruby winced. Turning her eyes away from the unintended property damage, she adopted a scowl when facing the thieves and their leader once again. "Big mistake jerks! You can't just go around stealing stuff and trying to hurt people while I'm around!"

"Oh?" The leader remarked as he casually stepped out through the door, despite the broken window being right beside it. "And who exactly would you even be, little girl?"

"Ruby Rose! Future Hunter-in-training!" Ruby declared.

"…" The man squinted at her. "You aren't even in the ol' fancy school upstairs yet?" he threw a thumb up over his shoulder, intending to gesture towards Beacon Academy despite it being in the opposite direction. "You're just some kid with a fancy semblance? Ohohoh! This is rich! Do you even know how to fight?"

Ruby's response was to make the BdGs again, rip up a chunk of tarmac (okay, that property damage may have been a little intentional), toss it into the air, and then punch it towards the small congregation of black-suited bad guys at the shattered window. And like pins when bowling, they all got sent flying as the chunk of street collided with them for a strike.

The leader shrugged. "Okay, I'll give you that. But then again, you get what you pay for."

"Yeah, so you better watch ou-!"

Ruby didn't have time to finish her threat before the man raised his cane once again and fired another rocket-like projectile at her. With less aura to pump into her rather intensive 'Redflektors', Ruby simply raised her gauntlets to block the shot. A poor idea when the explosion proved a little too powerful for the integrity of the gauntlets to handle. Ruby yelled in pain as the two metal fists burst apart and sent her flying backwards.

Finishing tumbling across the street, Ruby wobbly pushed herself up from the ground to see what the man was doing. She could still see him still where he was, standing near the front of the store and shouting boastfully to her.

"I'd say it's been a pleasure, Red. But it really hasn't. So, there is no sadness in my heart now that I have to tell you that we must part ways! I bid thee, adieu!"

The man flipped the can around in his grip so that the shaft was in his hand and the curve was pointing towards the roofs above him. With some activation of a hidden mechanism, the head of the can shot out and grappled on the top of a building, reeling the man towards it like a grappling hook.

Ruby stopped to gape at what she had just witnessed. That man had not only a can that could be used as a bludgeoning weapon due to the sturdiness and weight it needed to function, not only some kind of micro-missile launcher, but it was also a freaking grappling hook?!

"Aw man, that's so cool!" Ruby grumbled, dusting her crimson jacket off. "It'd be cooler if I didn't just get shot by it!"

"M-miss? Are you okay?" One of the bystanders asked as they approached Ruby.

"Oh? Yeah, I'm fine. Are all of you, okay? Did anyone get hurt?" Ruby asked.

"Uh, I think that we're all okay, they didn't hurt us."

Ruby nodded. "That's good. I'm not going to let him get away with this."

"Y-young lady!" Another person called. Turning her head, Ruby saw what she assumed to be the store manager. "There's no need to chase him! Everything's okay now!"

Ruby shook her head. "No can do, if he's out there he can just do this again. I have to go after him."

And without listening to anyone further, the telltale signs that ruby was about to make one of her builds covered her legs. The green circuit lines glowed for a moment or two before metal exploded outwards and took the form of two massive boots that ruby stood atop of.

"Just call the police! They can take those guys!" Ruby called to the crowd, pointing out the people she had knocked out or restrained just before. Next, Ruby crouched her legs and the boots let out a whirring sound as the powered up. Then, as Ruby went into a leap, her boots pushed her upwards and over the relatively lower rooftops, leaving some cracks in the road as she took off. Soaring in the air, Ruby quickly spotted the leader man making a mad dash across the rooftops. Ruby smirked, knowing exactly what she was about to do. Getting into a crouching position in the air with her 'Big Kicks' boots, she prepared to extend her legs down and throw the man off balance with a shockwave.

Upon reaching the roof, Ruby did just that. What she didn't account for was just how powerful her landing would be. Sure, it sent the man flying off his feet from the resulting impact, but it also sent ruby through the roof and into the building below. Pulling her Big Kicks back into herself, Ruby coughed and waved away the massive amount of dust she had caused by caving the ceiling in. Fortunately Ruby still had her goggles pulled down over her eyes, which stopped any of the dust from blinding her. Looking around, Ruby saw that she had landed in someone's living room which, thankfully, wasn't populated at that very moment. Giving a silent apology to the owners of the home, Ruby pushed some aura into her enhancement technique, allowing her to leap up through the hole she made and clamber onto the roof. There, she saw that the leader guy was had just finished getting to his feet and was at the edge of the roof.

"Well, you are certainly a persistent little nuisance. Aren't you, red?" The man said, adjusting his coat.

"Only, my friends get to call me Red, whatever your name is!" Ruby retorted, her arm glowing green circuits before making a giant sword bigger than Ruby, a segmented and serrated edge curving around the blade.

However, Ruby's comment seemed to throw the man off-kilter. "Wait, you don't know who I am?"

"Uhhhm, should I?" Ruby asked, tilting her head.

"I'm Roman Torchwick! Criminal mastermind wanted across Remnant!" The man, 'Torchwick', said.

"That… doesn't really ring any bells. Sorry?" Ruby offered an apologetic grin.

"Roman. Torchwick." Torchwick said slowly. "Hornswoggler! Master thief! The only man to ever get in and out of the most guarded Atlan bank in the country!"

"…" Ruby Blinked. "Wait, aren't you the guy who accidentally blew up more than half the cargo in that one magtrain heist?"

Torchwick exhaustedly ran a hand down his face. "Yes. Yes, that was me. Blame the people I hired; this is why I only rely properly on-"

"You jerk! I had to four more months for replacement parts that were on that train!" Ruby shouted angrily, grabbing one of the metal handles at the hilt of Buzzcut and swinging it at Torchwick.

"Oh dear!" Roman exclaimed, Ducking under the massive red blade. Ruby went for another swing as Torchwick staggered away from the first strike. Ruby was already dulling her sword by funnelling the smallest bit of aura into augmentation on her current weapon. Sure, she wanted to hurt the guy for what he did to her machine parts, but not kill him. So instead of a sharp blade ready to bisect Torchwick, it would feel more like a baseball bat cracking into him. The satisfaction of inflicting pain without the regret of murder later! That was a win-win for Ruby!

But as Ruby went in for her fourth swing, she instead had to brace herself as a bullhead-type airship swooped in and pulled right up next to the rooftops. Putting her arms up and leaning into the great gust of forceful air the vehicle was displacing, Ruby did her level best to keep focused and not be blown back.

"End of the line, Red!" Torchwick mocked, ignoring Ruby's demand to not refer to her by her nickname. Reaching into his coat pocket, Torchwick pulled out what was clearly some blazius dust fuelled grenade, which Ruby knew would hurt if she took the full brunt of it.

Leaving the teen girl little time to react, Torchwick primed the grenade and casually tossed it towards Ruby almost as soon as it had come into view, meaning it now rolled in her direction. With even less aura than the last time she was in this pickle, the Redflektors weren't an option to Ruby, so using the scant moments she created both BdGs to act as shields. But much like before, the best the fists could do was dampen the impact of the blast instead of outright blocking the full force of impact.

…That was if Ruby had stayed standing in the same place just like last time. Instead, learning from her mistake, she jumped back to lessen the kinetic force that was pushing her and used it to propel her far enough away to deploy one of her more… devastating weapon builds.

Ruby had once come up with the name for it when her older sister Yang was teasing her one day. Named partly after the annoying epithet she was given and partly after a cold star, the deadly weapon began to unfold from both of Ruby's arms and merge together to create a single barrel. The long, horizontally split red barrel, supported on a bipod, with a revolver-like cylinder spinning rapidly and glowing red hot. Both hands were moulded into the base of the abominable firearm, steadying the massive railgun whilst Ruby looked down the scope. The magnets lining the barrel began to charge, the concealed metal rod floating between them, ready to be pushed out the mouth of the weapon as soon as it was fired. And fired it was.

Torchwick dove to the floor, just as Ruby fired off the first shot, blowing out the opposite wall of the Bullhead with searing plasma and intentionally missing Torchwick, even if he hadn't dropped to the floor and scuttled into the cockpit.

Ruby began slowly charging up 'Red Dwarf' again, preparing to take off a wing or tailfin. But distracting her was another figure who walked out from the cockpit and into the bay of the airship, their top half obscured by shadow. They stopped with a strut in their step, and a lone hand on one of their hips that gave them the air of someone who moved suggestively in a more instinctual way. Like a runway model or something. But that wasn't what Ruby had focused on, that was more the gauntlet they were sporting a bracer on their right arm, crystals of blazius dust of some grade could be seen embedded in the armwear. Making a motion like scraping against the glove with the opposite arm, sparks began to fly off the person's arm and clatter against the airship floor before dissipating. Great. they were probably going to shoot something at Ruby again Like that hadn't happened enough tonight.

Ruby's sigh of annoyance morphed into one of relief when the dust crystals began to dim and nothing had shot at her, and then morphed again, this time into a frightened yip, when she realized that some sort of explosion was going to go off right under her feet? Was it some kind of augmentation? A semblance? Or maybe it was some really advanced dust-powered tech?! Ruby didn't have the time or frame of mind to investigate, only to try and dodge it.

Trying to quickly shift her feet into her Big Kicks, Ruby was fearing she wasn't going to make it in time before being blasted by what was most certainly going to be some kind of explosion. Luckily for her, she didn't have to. Because just at that very moment, a hand closed around the back of her jacket and pulled itself back with Ruby in tow.

Ruby turned her head around to see who had saved her from a lot of pain.

"Uncle Six!" Ruby exclaimed happily, upon seeing her honorary uncle standing there in his green suit and sunglassed glory. Just like she saw him every time they met. A green suit and sunglasses were all he seemed to wear any time she saw him.

"And what, pray tell, are you doing?" He asked in his usual, stern voice. It was without emotion and certainly without amusement.

"Trying to catch a criminal?" Ruby said, trying to guess the response that wouldn't get her in trouble as in the corner of her vision she saw another person dancing around the shrouded person's explosions.

"Wrong answer." Six dashed Ruby's hopes.

"Heh, heh, heh..." Ruby chuckled awkwardly, wishing she could just sink into her jacket and disappear forever.

If you see any mistakes I've made, please tell me so that I can fix them.

Till next time!